The Modern Regime Volume II Part 2

are ill-disposed towards the Pope, their princ.i.p.al adversary, and well-disposed towards the First Consul, their unique patron. Hence, "the heads[5179] of the Catholic clergy, that is to say, the bishops and grand-vicars,... are attached to the government;" they are "enlightened"

people, and can be made to listen to reason.

"But we have three or four thousand cures or vicars, the progeny of ignorance and dangerous through their fanaticism and their pa.s.sions."

If these and their superiors show any undisciplined tendencies, the curb must be tightly drawn. Fournier, a priest, having reflected on the government from his pulpit in Saint-Roch, is arrested by the police, put in Bicetre as mad,[5180] and the First Consul replies to the Paris clergy who claim his release "in a well-drawn-up pet.i.tion,":

"I wanted[5181] to prove to you, when I put my cap on the wrong side out, that priests must obey the civil power."

Now and then, a rude stroke of this sort sets an example and keeps the intractable on the right path who would otherwise be tempted to leave it. At Bayonne, concerning a clerical epistle in which an ill-sounding phrase occurs, "the grand-vicar who drew it up is sent to Pignerol for ten years, and I think that the bishop is exiled."[5182]

At Seez, when const.i.tutional priests are in disfavor, the bishop is compelled to resign on the instant, while Abbe Langlois, his princ.i.p.al counsellor, taken by the gendarmes, led to Paris from police station to police station, is shut up in La Force, in secret confinement, with straw for a bed, during fourteen days, then imprisoned in Vincennes for nine months, so that, finally, seized with paralysis, he is transferred to an insane retreat, where he remains a prisoner up to the end of the reign.

Let us provide for the future as well as for the present, and, beyond the present clergy, let us train the future clergy. The seminaries will answer this purpose: "Public ones must be organized[5183] so that there may be no clandestine seminaries, such as formerly existed in the departments of Calvados, Morbihan and many others;... the formation of young priests must not be left to ignorance and fanaticism."--"Catholic schools need the surveillance of the government."--There is to be one of these in each metropolitan district, and "this special school must be in the hands of the authorities."--"The directors and teachers shall be appointed by the First Consul"; men will be placed there who are "cultivated, devoted to the government and friendly to toleration; they will not confine themselves to teaching theology, but will add to this a sort of philosophy and correct worldliness."--A future cure, a priest who controls laymen and belongs to his century, must not be a monk belonging to the other world, but a man of this world, able to adapt himself to it, do his duty in it with propriety and discretion, accept the legal establishment of which he is a part, not d.a.m.n his Protestant neighbors, Jews or freethinkers too openly, be a useful member of temporal society and a loyal subject of the civil power; let him be a Catholic and pious, but within just limits; he shall not be an ultramontanist or a bigot.--Precautions are taken to this effect. No seminarist may become subdeacon without the consent of the government, and the list of ordinations each year, sent to him at Paris by the bishop, is returned, cut down to the strictly necessary.[5184] From the very beginning, and in express terms,[5185] Napoleon has reserved all curacies and vicarages for "ecclesiastics pensioned by virtue of the laws of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly." Not only, through this confusion between pension and salary, does he lighten a pecuniary burden, but he greatly prefers old priests to young ones; many of them have been const.i.tutionnels, and all are imbued with Gallicanism; it is he who has brought them back from exile or saved them from oppression, and they are grateful for it; having suffered long and patiently, they are weary, they must have grown wiser, and they will be manageable. Moreover, he has precise information about each one; their past conduct is a guarantee of their future conduct; he never chooses one of them with his eyes shut. On the contrary, the candidates for ordination are strangers, the government which accepts them knows nothing about them except that, at the age when the fever of growth or of the imagination takes a fixed form, they have been subject for five years to a theological education and to a cloistral life. The chances are that, with them, the feverishness of youth will end in the heat of conviction and in the prejudices of inexperience; in this event, the government which exempts them from the conscription to admit them in the Church exchanges a good military recruit for a bad ecclesiastical recruit; in place of a servant it creates an opponent. Hence, during the fifteen years of his reign, Napoleon authorizes only six thousand new ordinations,[5186] in all four hundred per annum, one hundred for each diocese or six or seven per annum. Meanwhile, by his university decrees, he lets lay daylight into clerical enclosures[5187] and shuts the door of all ecclesiastical dignities to suspicious priests.[5188] For more security, in every diocese in which "the principles of the bishop" do not give him full satisfaction, he prohibits all ordination, nomination, promotion, or favor whatever. "I have stricken off[5189] all demands relating to the bishoprics of Saint-Brieuc, Bordeaux, Ghent, Tournay, Troyes and the Maritime Alps.... My intention is that you do not, for these dioceses, propose to me any exemption of service for conscripts, no nominations for scholars.h.i.+ps, for curacies, or for canonries. You will send in a report on the dioceses which it would be well to strike with this ban."

Towards the end, the Gallicism of Bossuet no longer suffices for him; he allowed it to be taught at Saint-Sulpice, and M. Emery, director of this inst.i.tution, was the priest in France whom he esteemed the most and most willingly consulted; but a pupil's imprudent letter had been just intercepted, and, accordingly, the spirit of that a.s.sociation is a bad one. An order of expulsion of the director is issued and the installation in his place of a new one "day after to-morrow," as well as new administrators of whom none shall be Sulpician.[5190] "Take measures to have this congregation dissolved. I will have no Sulpicians in the seminary of Paris.[5191] Let me know the seminaries that are served by Sulpicians in order that they too may be sent away from these seminaries."[5192]--And let the seminarists who have been badly taught by their masters take heed not to practice in their own behalf the false doctrines which the State proscribes; especially, let them never undertake, as they do in Belgium, to disobey the civil power in deference to the Pope and their bishop. At Tournay,[5193] all those over eighteen years of age are sent to Magdebourg; at Ghent, the very young or those not fit for military service are put in Saint-Pelagie; the rest, two hundred and thirty-six in number, including forty deacons or sub-deacons, incorporated in an artillery brigade, set out for Wesel, a country of marshes and fevers, where fifty of them soon die of epidemics and contagion.--There is ever the same terminal procedure; to Abbe d'Astros, suspected of having received and kept a letter of the Pope, Napoleon, with threats, gave him this ecclesiastical watchword:

"I have heard that the liberties of the Gallican Church are being taught: but for all that, I wear the sword, so watch out!"

So behind all his inst.i.tutions one discovers the military sanction, the arbitrary punishment, physical constraint, the sword ready to strike; involuntarily, the eyes antic.i.p.ates the flash of the blade, and the flesh is feels in advance the rigid incision of the steel.

VIII. Administrative Control.

Changes in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.--Motives for subordinating the lesser clergy.--The displacement of a.s.sistant priests.--Increase of episcopal authority.--Hold of Napoleon over the bishops.

Thus is a conquered country treated. He is, in relation to the Church, as in a conquered country.[5194] Like Westphalia or Holland, she is a naturally independent country which he has annexed by treaty, which he has been able to include but not absorb in his empire, and which remains invincibly distinct. The temporal sovereign, in a spiritual society, especially such a sovereign as he is,--nominally Catholic, scarcely Christian, at best a deist and from time to time as it suits,--will never be other than an external suzerain and a foreign prince. To become and remain master in such an annexed country it is always advisable to exhibit the sword. Nevertheless, it would not be wise to strike incessantly; the blade, used too often, would wear out; it is better to utilize the const.i.tution of the annex, rule over it indirectly, not by an administrative bureau (regie), but by a protectorate, in which all indigenous authorities can be employed and be made responsible for the necessary rigors. Now, by virtue of the indigenous const.i.tution, the governors of the Catholic annex--all designated beforehand by their suitable and indelible character, all tonsured, robed in black, celibates and speaking Latin--form two orders, unequal in dignity and in number; one inferior, comprising myriads of cures and vicars, and the other superior, comprising some dozens of prelates.

Let us turn this ready-made hierarchy to account; and, the better to use it, let us tighten the strings. In agreement with the upper clergy and the Pope, we will increase the subjection of the lower clergy; we will govern the inferiors through the superiors; whoever has the head has the body; it is much easier to handle sixty bishops and archbishops than forty thousand vicars and cures; in this particular we need not undertake to restore primitive discipline; we must not be either antiquaries or Gallicans. Let us be careful not to give back to the second-cla.s.s clergy the independence and stability they enjoyed before 1789, the canonical guarantees which protected them against episcopal despotism, the inst.i.tution of compet.i.tion, the rights conferred by theological grades, the bestowal of the best places on the wisest, the appeal to the diocesan court in case of disgrace, the opposing plea before the officialite, the permanent tie by which the t.i.tular cure, once planted in his parish, took root there for life, and believed himself bound to his local community like Jesus Christ to the universal Church, indissolubly, through a sort of mystic marriage. "The number of cures," says Napoleon,[5195] "must be reduced as much as possible, and the number of a.s.sistants (desservans) multiplied who can be changed at will," not only transferable to another parish, but revocable from day to day, without formalities or delay, without appeal or pleading in any court whatsoever. Henceforth, the sole irremovable cures are the four thousand; the rest, under the name of succursalists, numbering thirty thousand,[5196] are ecclesiastical clerks, surrendered to the discretionary power of the bishop. The bishop alone appoints, places and displaces all belonging to his diocese at his pleasure, and with a nod, he transfers the most competent from the best to the worst post, from the large borough or small town, where he was born and has lived at ease near his family, to some wretched parish in this or that village buried in the woods or lost on a mountain, without income or presbytery; and still better, he cuts down his wages, he withdraws the State salary of five hundred francs, he turns him out of the lodgings allowed him by the commune, on foot on the highway, with no viatic.u.m, even temporary, excluded from ecclesiastical ministries, without respect, demeaned, a vagabond in the great lay world whose ways are unknown to him and whose careers are closed to him. Henceforth, and forever, bread is taken out of his mouth; if he has it to-day, it is lacking on the morrow. Now, every three months, the list of succursalists at five hundred francs drawn up by the bishop, must be countersigned by the prefect. In his upper cabinet, near the mantelpiece on which the visiting-cards of every considerable personage in the department are displayed, facing the emperor's bust, the two delegates of the emperor, his two responsible and judicial managers, the two superintended overseers of the conscription, confer together on the ecclesiastical staff of the department. In this as in other matters, they are and feel themselves kept in check from on high, curbed and forced, willingly or not, to come to some agreement. Compulsory collaborators by inst.i.tution, each an auxiliary of the other in the maintenance of public order, they read over article by article the list of appointments of their common subordinates; should any name have bad notes, should any succursalist be marked as noisy, undesirable, or suspect, should there be any unfavorable report by the mayor, gendarmerie or upper police, the prefect, about to sign, lays down his pen, quotes his instructions and demands of the bishop against the delinquent some repressive measure, either dest.i.tution, suspension or displacement, removal to an inferior parish, or, at least, a comminatory reprimand, while the bishop, whom the prefect may denounce to the minister, does not refuse to the prefect this act of complacency.

Some months after the publication of the Concordat,[5197] Mademoiselle Chameron, an opera-dancer, dies, and her friends bear her remains to the church of Saint-Roch for internment. They are refused admittance, and the cure, very rigid, "in a fit of ill-humor," orders the doors of the church to be shut; a crowd gathers around, shouts and launches threats at the cure; an actor makes a speech to appease the tumult, and finally the coffin is borne off to the church of Les Filles-Saint-Thomas, where the a.s.sistant priest, "familiar with the moral of the gospel," performs the funeral service. Incidents of this kind disturb the tranquility of the streets and denote a relaxation of administrative discipline.

Consequently the government, doctor in theology and canon law, intervenes and calls the ecclesiastical superior to account. The first Consul, in an article in the Moniteur, haughtily gives the clergy their instructions and explains the course that will be pursued against them by his prelates. "The Archbishop of Paris orders the cure of Saint-Roch into retirement for three months, in order that he may bear in mind the injunction of Jesus Christ to pray for one's enemies, and, made sensible of his duties by meditation, may become aware that these superst.i.tious customs..., which degrade religion by their absurdities, have been done away with by the Concordat and the law of Germinal 18." From now on all priests and cures are prudent, circ.u.mspect, obedient, and reserved,[5198] because their spiritual superiors are so as well, and could not be otherwise. Each prelate, posted in his diocese, is maintained there in isolation; a watch is kept on his correspondence; he may communicate with the Pope only through the Minister of Wors.h.i.+p; he has no right to act in concert with his colleagues; all the general a.s.semblies of the clergy, all metropolitan councils, all annual synods are suppressed. The Church of France has ceased to exist as one corps, while its members, carefully detached from each other and from their Roman head, are no longer united, but juxtaposed. Confined to a circ.u.mscription, like the prefect, the bishop himself is simply an ecclesiastical prefect, a little less uncertain of his tenure of office; undoubtedly, his removal will not be effected by order, but he can be forced to send in his resignation. Thus, in his case, as well as for the prefect, his first care will be not to excite displeasure, and the next one, to please. To stand well at court, with the minister and with the sovereign, is a positive command, not only on personal grounds, but for the sake of Catholic interests. To obtain scholars.h.i.+ps for the pupils of his seminary,[5199] to appoint the teachers and the director that suits him, to insure the acceptance of his canons, cantonal cures, and candidates for the priesthood, to exempt his sub-deacons from military service, to establish and to defray the expenses of the chapels of his diocese, to provide parishes with the indispensable priest, with regular services and the sacraments, requires favors, which favors cannot be enjoyed without an affectation of obedience and zeal and, more important still, devotion. Moreover, he is only a human being. If Napoleon has selected him, it is on account of his intelligence, knowing what he is about, open to human motives, not too rigid and of too easy conscience; in the eyes of the master, the first quality is an obedient personality attached to his system and person.[51100] Moreover, with his candidates, he has always taken into consideration the hold they give him through their weaknesses, vanity and needs, their ostentatious ways and expenditure, their love of money, t.i.tles and precedence, their ambition, desire for promotion, enjoyment of credit, and right of obtaining places for proteges and relations. He avails himself of all these advantages and finds that they answer his purpose. With the exception of three or four saints, like Monsignor d'Aviau[51101] or Monsignor Dessolles, who he has inadvertently put into the episcopate, the bishops are content to be barons, and the archbishops counts. They are glad to rank higher and higher in the Legion of Honor; they loudly a.s.sert, in praise of the new order of things, the honors and dignities it confers on these or those prelates who have become members of the legislative corps or been made senators.[51102] Many of them receive secret pay for secret services, pecuniary incentives in the shape of this or that amount in ready money.

In sum, Napoleon has judged accurately; with hesitation and remorse, nearly the whole of his episcopal staff, Italian and French, 66 prelates out of 80, are open to "temporal influences". They yield to seductions and threats; they accept or submit, even in spiritual matters, to his positive ascendancy.[51103]

Moreover, among these dignitaries, nearly all of whom are blameless, or, at least, who behave well and are generally honorable, Napoleon[51104]

finds a few whose servility is perfect, unscrupulous individuals ready for anything that an absolute prince could desire, like Bishops Bernier and De Pancemont, one accepting a reward of 30,000 francs and the other the sum of 50,000 francs[51105] for the vile part they have played in the negotiations for the Concordat; a miserly, brutal cynic like Maury, archbishop of Paris, or an intriguing, mercenary skeptic like De Pradt, archbishop of Malines; or an old imbecile, falling on his knees before the civil power, like Rousseau, bishop of Orleans, who writes a pastoral letter declaring that the Pope is as free in his Savona prison as on his throne at Rome. After 1806,[51106] Napoleon, that he may control men of greater suppleness, prefers to take his prelates from old n.o.ble families--the frequenters of Versailles, who regard the episcopate as a gift bestowed by the prince and not by the Pope, a lay favor reserved for younger sons, a present made by the sovereign to those around his person, on the understood condition that the partisan courtier who is promoted shall remain a courtier of the master. Henceforth nearly all his episcopal recruits are derived from "members of the old n.o.ble stock." "Only these," says Napoleon, "know how to serve well."

IX. The Imperial Catechism

Political use of the episcopacy.--The imperial catechism.

--Pastoral letters.

From the first year the effect arrived at is better than could be expected. "Look at the clergy,"[51107] said the First Consul to Roederer; "every day shows that in spite of themselves their devotion to the government is increasing, and much beyond their antic.i.p.ation. Have you seen the pastoral declaration of Boisgelin, archbishop of Tours?...

He says that the actual government is the legitimate government, that G.o.d disposes of thrones and kings as he pleases and that he adopts the chiefs whom the people prefer. Your yourself could not have said that better." But notwithstanding that this is said in the pastoral letter, it is again said in the catechism. No ecclesiastical publication is more important: all Catholic children are to learn this by heart, for the phrases they recite will be firmly fixed in their memories. Bossuet's catechism is good enough, but it may be improved,--there is nothing that time, reflection, emulation, and administrative zeal cannot render perfect! Bossuet teaches children "to respect all superiors, pastors, kings, magistrates, and the rest." "But these generalities," says Portalis,[51108] "no longer suffice. They do not give the proper tendency to the subject's submission. The object is to center the popular conscience on the person of Your Majesty." Accordingly, let us be precise, make appointments and secure support.

The imperial catechism, a great deal more explicit than the royal catechism, adds significant development to the old one, along with extra motives:

"We specially owe to our Emperor, Napoleon the First, love, respect, obedience, fidelity, military service, and tributes ordained for the preservation of the empire and his throne... For G.o.d has raised him up for us in times of peril that he might restore public wors.h.i.+p and the holy religion of our fathers and be its protector."

Every boy and girl in each parish recite this to the vicar or cure after vespers in their tiny voices as a commandment of G.o.d and of the Church, as a supplementary article of the creed. Meanwhile the officiating priest in the pulpit gravely comments on this article, already clear enough, at every morning or evening service;[51109] by order, he preaches in behalf of the conscription and declares that it is a sin to try to escape from it, to be refractory; by order, again, he reads the army bulletins giving accounts of the latest victories; always by order, he reads the last pastoral letter of his bishop, a doc.u.ment authorized, inspired and corrected by the police. Not only are the bishops obliged to submit their pastoral letters and public instructions to the censors.h.i.+p; not only by way of precaution, are they forbidden to print anything except on the prefecture presses, but again, for still greater security, the bureau of public wors.h.i.+p is constantly advising them what they must say. First and foremost, they must laud the Emperor. But in what terms, and with what epithets, without indiscretion or mistake, in order not to meddle with politics, not to appear as a party managed from above, not to pa.s.s for megaphones, is not explained, and is therefore a difficult matter. "You must praise the Emperor more in your pastoral letters," said Real, prefect of police, to a new bishop. "Tell me in what measure." "I do not know," was the reply. Since the measure cannot be prescribed, it must be ample enough. There is no difficulty as regards other articles.--On every occasion the Paris offices take care to furnish each bishop with a ready-made draft of his forthcoming pastoral letter--the canvas on which the customary flowers of ecclesiastical amplification are to be embroidered. It differs according to time and place. In La Vendee and in the west, the prelates are to stigmatize "the odious machinations of perfidious Albion," and explain to the faithful the persecutions to which the English subject the Irish Catholics. When Russia is the enemy, the pastoral letter must dwell on her being schismatic; also on the Russian misunderstanding of the supremacy of the Pope. Inasmuch as bishops are functionaries of the empire, their utterances and their acts belong to the Emperor.

Consequently he makes use of them against all enemies, against each rival, rebel or adversary, against the Bourbons, against the English and the Russians, and, finally, against the Pope.

X. The Council of 1811.--The Concordat of 1813.

Similar to the Russian expedition, this is the great and last throw of the dice, the decisive and most important of his ecclesiastical undertakings, as the other is in political and military affairs. Just as, under his leaders.h.i.+p, he forces by constraint and, under his lead, a coalition of the political and military powers of his Europe against the Czar,--Austria, Prussia, the Confederation of the Rhine, Holland, Switzerland, the kingdom of Italy, Naples, and even Spain,--so does he by constraint and under his lead coalesce all the spiritual authorities of his empire against the Pope. He summons a council, consisting of eighty-four bishops that are available in Italy and in France. He takes it upon himself to drill them, and he makes them march. To state what influences he uses would require a volume[51110]--theological and canonical arguments, appeals to Gallican souvenirs and Jansenist rancors, eloquence and sophisms, preparatory maneuvers, secret intrigues, public acting, private solicitations, steady intimidation, successful pressures, thirteen cardinals exiled and deprived of their insignia, two other cardinals confined in Vincennes, nineteen Italian bishops conveyed to France under escort, without bread or clothes. Fifty priests of Parma, fifty of Plaisance, besides one hundred other Italian priests, sent away or confined in Corsica. All congregations of men in France--Saint-Lazare, Mission, Christian Doctrine, Saint-Sulpice--dissolved and suppressed. Three bishops of the council seized in bed at daylight, put into a cell and kept in close confinement, forced to resign and to promise in writing not to carry on correspondence with their dioceses; arrest of their adherents in their dioceses; the Ghent seminarists turned into soldiers, and, with knapsack on their backs, leaving for the army; professors at Ghent, the canons of Tournay, and other Belgian priests shut up in the citadels of Bouillon, Ham and Pierre-Chatel.[51111] Near the end, the council suddenly dissolved because scruples arise, because it does not yield at once to the pressure brought to bear on it, because its ma.s.s const.i.tutes its firmness, because men standing close together, side by side, stand all the longer. "Our wine in the cask is not good," said Cardinal Maury; "you will find that it will be better in bottles." Accordingly, to make it ready for bottling, it must be filtered and clarified, so as to get rid of the bad elements which disturb it and cause fermentation. Many Opponents are in prison, many have retired from their dioceses, while the rest are brought to Paris and cunningly worked upon, each member in turn, apart and confined, tete-a-tete with the Minister of Wors.h.i.+p, until all, one by one, are brought to sign the formula of adhesion.

On the strength of this, the council, purged and prepared, is summoned afresh to give its vote sitting or standing, in one unique session; through a remnant of virtue it inserts a suspensive clause in the decree, apparently a reservation,[51112] but the decree is pa.s.sed as ordered. Like the foreign regiment in an army corps which, enlisted, forced into line, and goaded on with a sharp sword, serves, in spite of itself, against its legitimate prince, unwilling to march forward to the attack, meaning at the last moment to fire in the air, so does it finally march and fire its volley notwithstanding.

Napoleon, on the other hand, treats the Pope in the same fas.h.i.+on, and with like skill and brutality. As with the Russian campaign, he has prepared himself for it long beforehand. At the outset there is an alliance, and he concedes great advantages to the Pope as to the Czar, which will remain to them after his fall; but these concessions are made only with a mental reservation, with the instinctive feeling and predetermination to profit by the alliance, even to making an independent sovereign whom he recognizes as his equal, his subordinate and a tool; hence, quarrels and war. This time also, in the expedition against the Pope, his strategy is admirable,--the entire ecclesiastical territory studied beforehand, the objective point selected,[51113] all disposable forces employed and directed by fixed marches to where the victory is to be decisive, the conquest extended and the seat of the final dominion established; the successive and simultaneous use of every kind of means--cunning, violence, seduction and terror. Calculation of the weariness, anxiety and despair of the adversary; at first menaces and constant disputes, and then flashes of lightning and multiplied claps of thunder, every species of brutality that force can command; the States of the Church invaded in times of peace, Rome surprised and occupied by soldiers, the Pope besieged in the Quirinal, in a year the Quirinal taken by a nocturnal a.s.sault, the Pope seized and carried off by post to Savona and there confined as a prisoner of state almost in cellular seclusion,[51114] subject to the entreaties and manoeuvres of an adroit prefect who works upon him, of the physician who is a paid spy, of the servile bishops who are sent thither, alone with his con-science, contending with inquisitors relieving each other, subject to moral tortures as subtile and as keen as old-time physical tortures, to tortures so steady and persistent that he sinks, loses his head, "no longer sleeps and scarcely speaks," falling into a senile condition and even more than senile condition, "a state of mental alienation."[51115]

Then, on issuing from this, the poor old man is again beset; finally, after waiting patiently for three years, he is once more brusquely conducted at night, secretly and incognito, over the entire road, with no repose or pity though ill, except stopping once in a snow-storm at the hospice on Mount Cenis, where he comes near dying; put back after twenty-four hours in his carriage, bent double by suffering and in constant pain; jolting over the pavement of the grand highway until almost dead and landed at Fontainebleau, where Napoleon wishes to have him ready at hand to work upon. "Indeed," he himself says, "he is a lamb, an excellent, worthy man whom I esteem and am very fond of."[51116]

An improvised tete-a-tete may probably prove effective with this gentle, candid and tender spirit. Pius VII., who had never known ill-will, might be won by kindly treatment, by an air of filial respect, by caresses; he may feel the personal ascendency of Napoleon, the prestige of his presence and conversation, the invasion of his genius.

Inexhaustible in arguments, matchless in the adaptation of ideas to circ.u.mstances, the most amiable and most imperious of interlocutors, stentorian and mild, tragic and comic by turns, the most eloquent of sophists and the most irresistible of fascinators, as soon as he meets a man face to face, he wins him, conquers him, and obtains the mastery.[51117] In effect, after seeing the Pope for six days, Napoleon obtains by persuasion what he could not obtain afar by constraint. Pius VII. signs the new Concordat in good faith, himself unaware that, on regaining his freedom and surrounded by his cardinals, who inform him on the political situation, he will emerge from his bewilderment, be attacked by his conscience, and, through his office, publicly accuse himself, humbly repent, and in two months withdraw his signature.

Such, after 1812 and 1813, is the duration of Napoleon's triumphs and the ephemeral result of his greatest military and ecclesiastical achievements--Moskow, Lutzen, Bautzen and Dresden, the Council of 1811 and the Concordat of 1813. Whatever the vastness of his genius may be, however strong his will, however successful his attacks, his success against nations and churches never is, and never can be, other than temporary. Great historical and moral forces elude his grasp. In vain does he strike, for their downfall gives them new life, and they rise beneath the blow. With Catholic inst.i.tutions,[51118] as with other powers, not only do his efforts remain sterile, but what he accomplishes remains inverse to the end he has in view. He aims to subjugate the Pope, and he led the Pope on to omnipotence He aims at the maintenance and strength of the Gallican spirit among the French clergy, and yet brings them under the rule of the ultramontane spirit.[51119] With extraordinary energy and tenacity, with all his power, which was enormous, through the systematic and constant application of diverse and extreme measures, he labored for fifteen years to rend the ties of the Catholic hierarchy, take it to pieces, and, in sum, the final result of all is to tie them faster and hasten its completion.

[Footnote 5101: Se preface to "The Modern Regime," Vol. I.]

[Footnote 5102: On some of the ideas above indicated see "The Modern Regime," Vol. I. p.120.]

[Footnote 5103: An allusion to Malthusianism, practiced by many heads of families in France. M. Taine would probably have shown this practice contrary to national welfare.--Tr.]

[Footnote 5104: Idolizing of children. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5105: Cf. "Les carnets de voyage."]

[Footnote 5106: On this idea see Volume I of "The Modern Regime," page 332, to the end of the chapter. (Ed. Laff. II. pp. 592 to 605).]

[Footnote 5107: Today this would probably be the media especially television.]

[Footnote 5108: Memorial, IV.,259 (June 7 and 8, 1816); V., 323 (Aug.

17, 1816).]

[Footnote 5109: Thibaudeau, p. 152 (Prairial 21, year X.]

[Footnote 5110: Idem, IV.,259, (June 7 and 8, 1816).--Pelet de la Lozere, "Opinions de Napoleon au conseil d'etat," p 223, (March 4, 1806).]

[Footnote 5111: "Discours, rapports et travaux sur le Concordat de 1801," by Portalis (published by Frederick Portalis), p.10.--In his speech on the organization of cults (Germinal 15, year X), Portalis, although a good Catholic, adopts the same idea, because he is a legist and one of the ancient Regime. "Religions, even false, have this advantage, that they are an obstacle to the introduction of arbitrary doctrines. Individuals have a center of faith; governments have no fear of dogmas once known and which do not change. Superst.i.tion, so to say, is regulated, circ.u.mscribed and kept within bounds which it cannot, or dare not, go outside of."]

[Footnote 5112: Thibaudeau, p. 151 (Prairial 21, year X). "The First Consul combated at length the different systems of the philosophy on cults, natural religions, deism, etc. All that according to him, was mere ideology."]