The Modern Regime, Volume 1 [Napoleon]
The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5
by Hippolyte A. Taine
Contents:
PREFACE
BOOK FIRST. Napoleon Bonaparte.
Chapter I. Historical Importance of his Character and Genius.
Chapter II. His Ideas, Passions and Intelligence.
BOOK SECOND. Formation and Character of the New State.
Chapter I. The Institution of Government.
Chapter II. Use and Abuse of Government Services.
Chapter III. The New Government Organization.
BOOK THIRD. Object and Merits of the System.
Chapter I. Recovery of Social Order.
Chapter II. Taxation and Conscription.
Chapter III. Ambition and Self-esteem.
BOOK FOURTH. Defect and Effects of the System.
Chapter I. Local Society.
Chapter II. Local society since 1830.
___________________________________________________________________
PREFACE
The following third and last part of the Origins of Contemporary
France is to consist of two volumes. After the present volume, the
second is to treat of the Church, the School and the Family, describe
the modern milieu and note the facilities and obstacles which a
society like our own encounters in this new milieu: here, the past and
the present meet, and the work already done is continued by the work
which is going on under our eyes. - -The undertaking is hazardous and
more difficult than with the two preceding parts. For the Ancient
Régime and the Revolution are henceforth complete and finished
periods; we have seen the end of both and are thus able to comprehend
their entire course. On the contrary, the end of the ulterior period
is still wanting ; the great institutions which date from the
Consulate and the Empire, either consolidation or dissolution, have
not yet reached their historic term: since 1800, the social order of
things, notwithstanding eight changes of political form, has remained
almost intact. Our children or grandchildren will know whether it
will finally succeed or miscarry; witnesses of the denouement, they
will have fuller light by which to judge of the entire drama. Thus
far four acts only have been played; of the fifth act, we have simply
a presentiment. - On the other hand, by dint of living under this
social system, we have become accustomed to it; it no longer excites
our wonder; however artificial it may be it seems to us natural. We
can scarcely conceive of another that is healthier; and what is much
worse, it is repugnant to us to do so. For, such a conception would
soon lead to comparisons and hence to a judgment and, on many points,
to an unfavorable judgment, one which would be a censure, not only of
our institutions but of ourselves. The machine of the year VIII,[1]
applied to us for three generations, has permanently shaped and fixed
us as we are, for better or for worse. If, for a century, it sustains
us, it represses us for a century. We have contracted the infirmities
it imports - stoppage of development, instability of internal balance,
disorders of the intellect and of the will, fixed ideas and ideas that
are false. These ideas are ours; therefore we hold on to them, or,
rather, they have taken hold of us. To get rid of them, to impose the
necessary recoil on our mind, to transport us to a distance and place
us at a critical point of view, where we can study ourselves, our
ideas and our institutions as scientific objects, requires a great
effort on our part, many precautions, and long reflection. - Hence,
the delays of this study; the reader will pardon them on considering
that an ordinary opinion, caught on the wing, on such a subject, does
not suffice. In any event, when one presents an opinion on such a
subject one is bound to believe it. I can believe in my own only when
it has become precise and seems to me proven.
Menthon Saint-Bernard, September, 1890.
_____________________________________________________________________
BOOK FIRST. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.
CHAPTER I. Historical Importance of his Character and Genius.
If you want to comprehend a building, you have to imagine the
circumstances, I mean the difficulties and the means, the kind and
quality of its available materials, the moment, the opportunity, and
the urgency of the demand for it. But, still more important, we must
consider the genius and taste of the architect, especially whether he
is the proprietor, whether he built it to live in himself, and, once
installed in it, whether he took pains to adapt it to how own way of
living, to his own necessities, to his own use. - Such is the social
edifice erected by Napoleon Bonaparte, its architect, proprietor, and
principal occupant from 1799 to 1814. It is he who has made modern
France; never was an individual character so profoundly stamped on any
collective work, so that, to comprehend the work, we must first study
the character of the Man.[2]
I. Napoleon's Past and Personality.
He is of another race and another century. - Origin of his paternal
family. - Transplanted to Corsica. - His maternal family. -
Laetitia Ramolino. - Persistence of Corsican souvenirs in Napoleon's
mind. - His youthful sentiments regarding Corsica and France. -
Indications found in his early compositions and in his style. -
Current monarchical or democratic ideas have no hold on him. - His
impressions of the 20th of June and 10th of August after the 31st of
May. - His associations with Robespierre and Barras without
committing himself. - His sentiments and the side he takes Vendémiaire
13th. - The great Condottière. - His character and conduct in Italy.
- Description of him morally and physically in 1798. - The early and
sudden ascendancy which he exerts. Analogous in spirit and character
to his Italian ancestors of the XVth century.
Disproportionate in all things, but, stranger still, he is not only
out of the common run, but there is no standard of measurement for
him; through his temperament, instincts, faculties, imagination,
passions, and moral constitution he seems cast in a special mould,
composed of another metal than that which enters into the composition
of his fellows and contemporaries. Evidently he is not a Frenchman,
nor a man of the eighteenth century; he belongs to another race and
another epoch.[3] We detect in him, at the first glance, the
foreigner, the Italian,[4] and something more, apart and beyond these,
surpassing all similitude or analogy.-Italian he was through blood and
lineage; first, through his paternal family, which is Tuscan,[5] and
which we can follow down from the twelfth century, at Florence, then
at San Miniato ; next at Sarzana, a small, backward, remote town in
the state of Genoa, where, from father to son, it vegetates obscurely
in provincial isolation, through a long line of notaries and municipal
syndics. "My origin," says Napoleon himself,[6] " has made all
Italians regard me as a compatriot. . . . When the question of the
marriage of my sister Pauline with Prince Borghése came up there was
but one voice in Rome and in Tuscany, in that family, and with all its
connections: 'It will do,' said all of them, 'it's amongst ourselves,
it is one of our own families...'" When the Pope later hesitated about
coming to Paris to crown Napoleon, "the Italian party in the Conclave
prevailed against the Austrian party by supporting political arguments
with the following slight tribute to national amour propre: 'After all
we are imposing an Italian family on the barbarians, to govern them.
We are revenging ourselves on the Gauls.'" Significant words, which
will one day throw light upon the depths of the Italian nature, the
eldest daughter of modern civilization, imbued with her right of
primogeniture, persisting in her grudge against the transalpines, the
rancorous inheritor of Roman pride and of antique patriotism.[7]
From Sarzana, a Bonaparte emigrates to Corsica, where he establishes
himself and lives after 1529. The following year Florence is taken
and subjugated for good. Henceforth, in Tuscany, under Alexander de
Medici, then under Cosmo I. and his successors, in all Italy under
Spanish rule, municipal independence, private feuds, the great
exploits of political adventures and successful usurpations, the
system of ephemeral principalities, based on force and fraud, all give
way to permanent repression, monarchical discipline, external order,
and a certain species of public tranquility. Thus, just at the time
when the energy and ambition, the vigorous and free sap of the Middle
Ages begins to run down and then dry up in the shriveled trunk,[8] a
small detached branch takes root in an island, not less Italian but
almost barbarous, amidst institutions, customs, and passions belonging
to the primitive medieval epoch,[9] and in a social atmosphere
sufficiently rude for the maintenance of all its vigor and harshness.
- Grafted, moreover, by frequent marriages, on the wild stock of the
island, Napoleon, on the maternal side, through his grandmother and
mother, is wholly indigenous. His grandmother, a Pietra-Santa,
belonged to Sarténe,[10] a Corsican canton par excellence where, in
1800, hereditary vendettas still maintained the system of the eleventh
century; where the permanent strife of inimical families was suspended
only by truces; where, in many villages, nobody stirred out of doors
except in armed bodies, and where the houses were crenellated like
fortresses. His mother, Laetitia Ramolini, from whom, in character
and in will, he derived much more than from his father,[11] is a
primitive soul on which Civilization has taken no hold. She is
simple, all of a piece, unsuited to the refinements, charms, and
graces of a worldly life; indifferent to comforts, without literary
culture, as parsimonious as any peasant woman, but as energetic as the
leader of a band. She is powerful, physically and spiritually,
accustomed to danger, ready in desperate resolutions. She is, in
short, a "rural Cornelia," who conceived and gave birth to her son
amidst the risks of battle and of defeat, in the thickest of the
French invasion, amidst mountain rides on horseback, nocturnal
surprises, and volleys of musketry.[12]
"Losses, privations, and fatigue," says Napoleon, "she endured all and
braved all. Hers was a man's head on a woman's shoulders."
Thus fashioned and brought into the world, he felt that, from first to
the last, he was of his people and country.
"Everything was better there," said he, at Saint Helena,[13] "even the
very smell of the soil, which he could have detected with his eyes
shut; nowhere had he found the same thing. He imagined himself there
again in early infancy, and lived over again the days of his youth,
amidst precipices, traversing lofty peaks, deep valleys, and narrow
defiles, enjoying the honors and pleasures of hospitality," treated
everywhere as a brother and compatriot," without any accident or
insult ever suggesting to him that his confidence was not well
grounded." At Bocognano,[14] where his mother, pregnant with him, had
taken refuge, "where hatred and vengeance extended to the seventh
degree of relationship, and where the dowry of a young girl was
estimated by the number of her Cousins, I was feasted and made
welcome, and everybody would have died for me." Forced to become a
Frenchman, transplanted to France, educated at the expense of the king
in a French school, he became rigid in his insular patriotism, and
loudly extolled Paoli, the liberator, against whom his relations had
declared themselves. "Paoli," said he, at the dinner table,[15]" was
a great man. He loved his country. My father was his adjutant, and
never will I forgive him for having aided in the union of Corsica with
France. He should have followed her fortunes and have succumbed only
with her." Throughout his youth he is at heart anti-French, morose,
"bitter, liking very few and very little liked, brooding over
resentment," like a vanquished man, always moody and compelled to work
against the grain. At Brienne, he keeps aloof from his comrades,
takes no part in their sports, shuts himself in the library, and opens
himself up only to Bourrienne in explosions of hatred: "I will do you
Frenchmen all the harm I can! - "Corsican by nation and character,"
wrote his professor of history in the Military Academy, "he will go
far if circumstances favor him."[16] - Leaving the Academy, and in
garrison at Valence and Auxonne, he remains always hostile,
denationalized; his old bitterness returns, and, addressing his
letters to Paoli, he says: "I was born when our country perished.
Thirty thousand Frenchmen vomited on our shores, drowning the throne
of liberty in floods of blood -such was the odious spectacle on which
my eyes first opened! The groans of the dying, the shrieks of the
oppressed, tears of despair, surrounded my cradle from my birth. . .
I will blacken those who betrayed the common cause with the brush of
infamy. . . . vile, sordid souls corrupted by gain!"[17] A little
later, his letter to Buttafuoco, deputy in the Constituent Assembly
and principal agent in the annexation to France, is one long strain of
renewed, concentrated hatred, which, after at first trying to restrain
it within the bounds of cold sarcasm, ends in boiling over, like red-
hot lava, in a torrent of scorching invective. - From the age of
fifteen, at the Academy and afterwards in his regiment, he finds
refuge in imagination in the past of his island;[18] he recounts its
history, his mind dwells upon it for many years, and he dedicates his
work to Paoli. Unable to get it published, he abridges it, and
dedicates the abridgment to Abbé Raynal, recapitulating in a strained
style, with warm, vibrating sympathy, the annals of his small
community, its revolts and deliverances, its heroic and sanguinary
outbreaks, its public and domestic tragedies, ambuscades, betrayals,
revenges, loves, and murders, - in short, a history similar to that of
the Scottish highlanders, while the style, still more than the
sympathies, denotes the foreigner. Undoubtedly, in this work, as in
other youthful writings, he follows as well as he can the authors in
vogue - Rousseau, and especially Raynal; he gives a schoolboy
imitation of their tirades, their sentimental declamation, and their
humanitarian grandiloquence. But these borrowed clothes, which
incommode him, do not fit him; they are too tight, and the cloth is
too fine; they require too much circumspection in walking; he does not
know how to put them on, and they rip at every seam. Not only has he
never learned how to spell, but he does not know the true meaning,
connections, and relations of words, the propriety or impropriety of
phrases, the exact significance of imagery;[19] he strides on
impetuously athwart a pell-mell of incongruities, incoherencies,
Italianisms, and barbarisms, undoubtedly stumbling along through
awkwardness and inexperience, but also through excess of ardor and of
heat;[20] his jerking, eruptive thought, overcharged with passion,
indicates the depth and temperature of its source. Already, at the
Academy, the professor of belles-lettres[21] notes down that "in the
strange and incorrect grandeur of his amplifications he seems to see
granite fused in a volcano." However original in mind and in
sensibility, ill-adapted as he is to the society around him, different
from his comrades, it is clear beforehand that the current ideas which
take such hold on them will obtain no hold on him.
Of the two dominant and opposite ideas which clash with each other, it
might be supposed that he would lean either to one or to the other,
although accepting neither. - Pensioner of the king, who supported
him at Brienne, and afterwards in the Military Academy; who also
supported his sister at Saint-Cyr; who, for twenty years, is the
benefactor of his family; to whom, at this very time, he addresses
entreating or grateful letters over his mother's signature - he does
not regard him as his born general; it does not enter his mind to take
sides and draw his sword in his patron's behalf;' in vain is he a
gentleman, to whom, d'Hozier has certified; reared in a school of
noble cadets, he has no noble or monarchical traditions.[22] - Poor
and tormented by ambition, a reader of Rousseau, patronized by Raynal,
and tacking together sentences of philosophic fustian about equality,
if he speaks the jargon of the day, it is without any belief in it.
The phrases in vogue form a decent, academical drapery for his ideas,
or serve him as a red cap for the club; he is not bewildered by
democratic illusions, and entertains no other feeling than disgust for
the revolution and the sovereignty of the populace. - At Paris, in
April,1792, when the struggle between the monarchists and the
revolutionaries is at its height, he tries to find "some successful
speculation,"[23] and thinks he will hire and sublet houses at a
profit. On the 20th of June he witnesses, only as a matter of
curiosity, the invasion of the Tuileries, and, on seeing the king at a
window place the red cap on his head, exclaims, so as to be heard, "
Che Caglione!" Immediately after this: "How could they let that rabble
enter! Mow down four or five hundred of them with cannons and the rest
would run away." On August 10, when the tocsin sounds, he regards the
people and the king with equal contempt; he rushes to a friend's house
on the Carrousel and there, still as a looker-on, views at his ease
all the occurrences of the day.[24] Finally, the chateau is forced
and he strolls through the Tuileries, looks in at the neighboring
cafés, and that is all: he is not disposed to take sides, he has no
Jacobin or royalist inclination. His features, even, are so calm "as
to provoke many hostile and distrustful stares, as someone who is
unknown and suspicious." - Similarly, after the 31st of May and the
2nd of June, his "Souper de Beaucaire" shows that if he condemns the
departmental insurrection it is mainly because he deems it futile: on
the side of the insurgents, a defeated army, no position tenable, no
cavalry, raw artillerymen, Marseilles reduced to its own troops, full
of hostile sans-culottes and so besieged, taken and pillaged. Chances
are against it: "Let the impoverished regions, the inhabitants of
Vivaris, of the Cevennes, of Corsica, fight to the last extremity, but
if you lose a battle and the fruit of a thousand years of fatigue,
hardship, economy, and happiness become the soldier's prey."[25] Here
was something with which the Girondists could be converted! - None of
the political or social convictions which then exercised such control
over men's minds have any hold on him. Before the 9th of Thermidor he
seemed to be a "republican montagnard," and we follow him for months
in Provence. "the favorite and confidential adviser of young
Robespierre," "admirer" of the elder Robespierre,[26] intimate at Nice
with Charlotte Robespierre. After the 9th of Thermidor has passed, he
frees himself with bombast from this compromising friendship: "I
thought him sincere," says he of the younger Robespierre, in a letter
intended to be shown, "but were he my father and had aimed at tyranny,
I would have stabbed him myself." On returning to Paris, after having
knocked at several doors, he takes Barras for a patron. Barras, the
most brazen of the corrupt, Barras, who has overthrown and contrived
the death of his two former protectors.[27] Among the contending
parties and fanaticisms which succeed each other he keeps cool and
free to dispose of himself as he pleases, indifferent to every cause
and concerning himself only with his own interests. - On the evening
of the 12th of Vendémiaire, on leaving the Feydeau theatre, and
noticing the preparations of the sectionists,[28] he said to Junot:
"Ah, if the sections put me in command, I would guarantee to place
them in
the Tuileries in two hours and have all those Convention rascals
driven out! "
Five hours later, summoned by Barras and the Conventionalists, he
takes "three minutes" to make up his mind, and, instead of "blowing up
the representatives," he mows down the Parisians. Like a good
condottière, he does not commit himself, considers the first that
offers and then the one who offers the most, only to back out
afterwards, and finally, seizing the opportunity, to grab everything.
- He will more and more become a true condottière, that is to say,
leader of a band, increasingly independent, pretending to submit under
the pretext of the public good, looking out only for his own interest,
self-centered, general on his own account and for his own advantage in
his Italian campaign before and after the 18th of Fructidor.[29] He
is, however, a condottière of the first class, already aspiring to the
loftiest summits, "with no stopping-place but the throne or the
scaffold,"[30] "determined[31] to master France, and through France
Europe. Without distraction, sleeping only three hours during the
night," he plays with ideas, men, religions, and governments,
exploiting people with incomparable dexterity and brutality. He is,
in the choice of means as of ends, a superior artist, inexhaustible in
glamour, seductions, corruption, and intimidation, fascinating, and
yet more terrible than any wild beast suddenly released among a herd
of browsing cattle. The expression is not too strong and was uttered
by an eye-witness, almost at this very date, a friend and a competent
diplomat: "You know that, while I am very fond of the dear general, I
call him to myself the little tiger, so as to properly characterize
his figure, tenacity, and courage, the rapidity of his movements, and
all that he has in him which maybe fairly regarded in that sense."[32]
At this very date, previous to official adulation and the adoption of
a recognized type, we see him face to face in two portraits drawn from
life, one physical, by a truthful painter, Guérin, and the other
moral, by a superior woman, Madame de Staël, who to the best European
culture added tact and worldly perspicacity. Both portraits agree so
perfectly that each seems to interpret and complete the other. "I saw
him for the first time,"[33] says Madame de Staël, "on his return to
France after the treaty of Campo-Formio. After recovering from the
first excitement of admiration there succeeded to this a decided
sentiment of fear." And yet, "at this time he had no power, for it was
even then supposed that the Directory looked upon him with a good deal
of suspicion." People regarded him sympathetically, and were even
prepossessed in his favor;
"thus the fear he inspired was simply due to the singular effect of
his person on almost all who approached him. I had met men worthy of
respect and had likewise met men of ferocious character; but nothing
in the impression which Bonaparte produced on me reminded me of
either. I soon found, in the various opportunities I had of meeting
him during his stay in Paris, that his character was not to be
described in terms commonly employed; he was neither mild nor)violent,
nor gentle nor cruel, like certain personages one happens to know. A
being like him, wholly unlike anybody else, could neither feel nor
excite sympathy; he was both more and less than a man; his figure,
intellect, and language bore the imprint of a foreign nationality . .
. . far from being reassured on seeing Bonaparte oftener, he
intimidated me more and more every day. I had a confused impression
that he was not to be influenced by any emotion of sympathy or
affection. He regards a human being as a fact, an object, and not as
a fellow-creature. He neither hates nor loves, he exists for himself
alone; the rest of humanity are so many ciphers. The force of his
will consists in the imperturbable calculation of his egoism. He is a
skillful player who has the human species for an antagonist, and whom
he proposes to checkmate. . . Every time that I heard him talk I
was struck with his superiority; it bore no resemblance to that of men
informed and cultivated through study and social intercourse, such as
we find in France and England. His conversation indicated the tact of
circumstances, like that of the hunter in pursuit of his prey. His
spirit seemed a cold, keen sword-blade, which freezes while it wounds.
I felt a profound irony in his mind, which nothing great or beautiful
could escape, not even his own fame, for he despised the nation whose
suffrages he sought. . . " - "With him, everything was means or
aims; spontaneity, whether for good or for evil, was entirely absent."
No law, no ideal and abstract rule, existed for him;
"he examined things only with reference to their immediate
usefulness; a general principle was repugnant to him, either as so
much nonsense or as an enemy."
Now, if we contemplate Guérin's portrait,[34] we see a spare body,
whose narrow shoulders under the uniform wrinkled by sudden movements,
the neck swathed in its high twisted cravat, the temples covered by
long, smooth, straight hair, exposing only the mask, the hard features
intensified through strong contrasts of light and shade, the cheeks
hollow up to the inner angle of the eye, the projecting cheek-bones,
the massive, protuberant jaw, the sinuous, mobile lips, pressed
together as if attentive, the large, clear eyes, deeply sunk under the
broad, arched eyebrows, the fixed, oblique look, as penetrating as a
rapier, and the two creases which extend from the base of the nose to
the brow, as if in a frown of suppressed anger and determined will.
Add to this the accounts of his contemporaries[35] who saw or heard
the curt accent or the sharp, abrupt gesture, the interrogating,
imperious, absolute tone of voice, and we comprehend how, the moment
they accosted him, they felt the dominating hand which seizes them,
presses them down, holds them firmly and never relaxes its grasp.
Already, at the receptions of the Directory, when conversing with men,
or even with ladies, he puts questions "which prove the superiority of
the questioner to those who have to answer them."[36] "Are you
married?" says he to this one, and "How many children have you? "to
another. To that one, "When did you come here?" or, again, "When are
you going away ? He places himself in front of a French lady, well-
known for her beauty and wit and the vivacity of her opinions, "like
the stiffest of German generals, and says : 'Madame, I don't like
women who meddle with politics!'" Equality, ease, familiarity and
companionship, vanish at his approach. Eighteen months before this,
on his appointment as commander-in-chief of the army in Italy, Admiral
Decrès, who had known him well at Paris,[37] learns that he is to pass
through Toulon: "I at once propose to my comrades to introduce them,
venturing to do so on my acquaintance with him in Paris. Full of
eagerness and joy, I start off. The door opens and I am about to
press forwards," he afterwards wrote, "when the attitude, the look,
and the tone of voice suffice to arrest me. And yet there was nothing
offensive about him; still, this was enough. I never tried after that
to overstep the line thus imposed on me." A few days later, at
Albenga,[38] certain generals of division, and among them Augereau, a
vulgar, heroic old soldier, vain of his tall figure and courage,
arrive at headquarters, not well disposed toward the little parvenu
sent out to them from Paris. Recalling the description of him which
had been given to them, Augereau is abusive and insubordinate
beforehand: one of Barras' favorites, the Vendémiaire general, a
street general, "not yet tried out on the field of battle,[39] hasn't
a friend, considered a loner because he is the only one who can thinks
for himself, looking peaky, said to be a mathematician and a dreamer!"
They enter, and Bonaparte keeps them waiting. At last he appears,
with his sword and belt on, explains the disposition of the forces,
gives them his orders, and dismisses them. Augereau has remained
silent; It is only when he gets out of doors does he recover himself
and fall back on his accustomed oaths. He admits to Massena that
"that little bastard of a general frightened him." He cannot
"comprehend the ascendancy which made him feel crushed right
away."[40]
Extraordinary and superior, made for command[41] and for conquest,
singular and of an unique species, is the feeling of all his
contemporaries. Those who are most familiar with the histories of
other nations, Madame de Staël and, after her, Stendhal, go back to
the right sources to comprehend him, to the "petty Italian tyrants of
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries," to Castruccio-Castracani, to
the Braccio of Mantua, to the Piccinino, the Malatestas of Rimini, and
the Sforzas of Milan. In their opinion, however, it is only a chance
analogy, a psychological resemblance. Really, however,
and)historically it is a positive relationship. He is a descendant of
the great Italians, the men of action of the year 1400, the military
adventurers, usurpers, and founders of governments lasting their life-
time. He inherits in direct affiliation their blood and inward
organization, mental and moral.[42] A bud, collected in their forest,
before the age of refinement, impoverishment, and decay, has been
transported into a similar and remote nursery, where a tragic and
militant régime is permanently established. There the primitive germ
is preserved intact and transmitted from one generation to another,
renewed and invigorated by interbreeding. Finally, at the last stage
of its growth, it springs out of the ground and develops
magnificently, blooming the same as ever, and producing the same fruit
as on the original stem. Modern cultivation and French gardening have
pruned away but very few of its branches and blunted a few of its
thorns: its original texture, inmost substance, and spontaneous
development have not changed. The soil of France and of Europe,
however, broken up by revolutionary tempests, is more favorable to its
roots than the worn-out fields of the Middle Ages and there it grows
by itself, without being subject, like its Italian ancestors, to
rivalry with its own species; nothing checks the growth; it may absorb
all the juices of the ground, all the air and sunshine of the region,
and become the Colossus which the ancient plants, equally deep-rooted
and certainly as absorbent, but born in a less friable soil and more
crowded together, could not provide.
II. The Leader and Statesman
Intelligence during the Italian Renaissance and at the present day. -
Integrity of Bonaparte's mental machinery. - Flexibility, force, and
tenacity of his attention. - Another difference between Napoleon's
intellect and that of his contemporaries. - He thinks objects and not
words. - His antipathy to Ideology. - Little or no literary or
philosophical education. - Self-taught through direct observation and
technical instruction. - His fondness for details. - His inward
vision of physical objects and places. - His mental portrayal of
positions, distances, and quantities.
"The human plant," said Alfieri, "is in no country born more vigorous
than in Italy"; and never, in Italy, was it so vigorous as from 1300
to 1500, from the contemporaries of Dante down to those of Michael
Angelo, Caesar Borgia, Julius II., and Macchiavelli.[43] The first
distinguishing mark of a man of those times is the soundness of his
mental instrument. Nowadays, after three hundred years of service,
ours has lost somewhat of its moral fiber, sharpness, and versatility:
usually the compulsory specialization has caused it to become lop-
sided making it unfit for other purposes. What's more, the increase
in ready-made ideas and clichés and acquired methods incrusts it and
reduces its scope to a sort of routine. Finally, it is exhausted by
an excess of intellectual activity and diminished by the continuity of
sedentary habits. It is just the opposite with those impulsive minds
of uncorrupted blood and of a new stock. - Roederer, a competent and
independent judge, who, at the beginning of the consular government,
sees Bonaparte daily at the meetings of the Council of State, and who
notes down every evening the impressions of the day, is carried away
with admiration:[44]
"Punctual at every sitting, prolonging the session five or six hours,
discussing before and afterwards the subjects brought forward, always
returning to two questions, 'Can that be justified?[45]' 'Is that
useful?' examining each question in itself, in these two respects,
after having subjected it to a most exact and sharp analysis; next,
consulting the best authorities, the pasts, experience, and obtaining
information about bygone jurisprudence, the laws of Louis XIV. and of
Frederick the Great. . . . Never did the council adjourn without
its members knowing more than the day before; if not through knowledge
derived from him, at least through the researches he obliged them to
make. Never did the members of the Senate and the Legislative Corps,
or of the tribunals, pay their respects to him without being rewarded
for their homage by valuable instructions. He cannot be surrounded by
public men without being the statesman, all forming for him a council
of state."
"What characterizes him above them all," is not alone the penetration
and universality of his comprehension, but likewise and especially
"the force, flexibility, and constancy of his attention. He can work
eighteen hours at a stretch, on one or on several subjects. I never
saw him tired. I never found his mind lacking in inspiration, even
when weary in body, nor when violently exercised, nor when angry. I
never saw him diverted from one matter by another, turning from that
under discussion to one he had just finished or was about to take up.
The news, good or bad, he received from Egypt, did not divert his mind
from the civil code, nor the civil code from the combinations which
the safety of Egypt required. Never did a man more wholly devote
himself to the work in hand, nor better devote his time to what he had
to do. Never did a mind more inflexibly set aside the occupation or
thought which did not come at the right day or hour, never was one
more ardent in seeking it, more alert in its pursuit, more capable of
fixing it when the time came to take it up."
He himself said later on:[46]
"Various subjects and affairs are stowed away in my brain as in a
chest of drawers. When I want to take up any special business I shut
one drawer and open another. None of them ever get mixed, and never
does this incommode me or fatigue me. If I feel sleepy I shut all the
drawers and go to sleep."
Never has brain so disciplined and under such control been seen, one
so ready at all times for any task, so capable of immediate and
absolute concentration. Its flexibility[47] is wonderful, "in the
instant application of every faculty and energy, and bringing them all
to bear at once on any object that concerns him, on a mite as well as
on an elephant, on any given individual as well as on an enemy's army.
. . . When specially occupied, other things do not exist for him;
it is a sort of chase from which nothing diverts him." And this hot
pursuit, which nothing arrests save capture, this tenacious hunt, this
headlong course by one to whom the goal is never other than a fresh
starting-point, is the spontaneous gait, the natural, even pace which
his mind prefers.
"I am always at work," says he to Roederer.[48] "I meditate a great
deal. If I seem always equal to the occasion, ready to face what
comes, it is because I have thought the matter over a long time before
undertaking it. I have anticipated whatever might happen. It is no
spirit which suddenly reveals to me what I ought to do or say in any
unlooked-for circumstance, but my own reflection, my own meditation.
. . . I work all the time, at dinner, in the theatre. I wake up at
night in order to resume my work. I got up last night at two o'clock.
I stretched myself on my couch before the fire to examine the army
reports sent to me by the Minister of War. I found twenty mistakes in
them, and made notes which I have this morning sent to the minister,
who is now engaged with his clerks in rectifying them." -
His associates weaken and sink under the burden imposed on them and
which he supports without feeling the weight. When Consul,[49] "he
sometimes presides at special meetings of the section of the interior
from ten o'clock in the evening until five o'clock in the morning. .
. . Often, at Saint-Cloud, he keeps the counselors of state from
nine o'clock in the morning until five in the evening, with fifteen
minutes' intermission, and seems no more fatigued at the close of the
session than when it began." During the night sessions "many of the
members succumb through weariness, while the Minister of War falls
asleep"; he gives them a shake and wakes them up, "Come, come,
citizens, let us bestir ourselves, it is only two o'clock and we must
earn the money the French people pay us." Consul or Emperor,[50] "he
demands of each minister an account of the smallest details: It is not
rare to see them leaving the council room overcome with fatigue, due
to the long interrogatories to which he has subjected them; he appears
not to have noticed, and talks about the day's work simply as a
relaxation which has scarcely given his mind exercise." And what is
worse, "it often happens that on returning home they find a dozen of
his letters requiring immediate response, for which the whole night
scarcely suffices." The quantity of facts he is able to retain and
store away, the quantity of ideas he elaborates and produces, seems to
surpass human capacity, and this insatiable, inexhaustible, unmovable
brain thus keeps on working uninterruptedly for thirty years.
Through another result of the same mental organization, Napoleon's
brain is never unproductive; that's today our great danger. - During
the past three hundred years we have more and more lost sight of the
exact and direct meaning of things. Subject to the constraints of a
conservative, complex, and extended educational system we study
* the symbols of objects rather than on the objects themselves;
* instead of the ground itself, a map of it;
* instead of animals struggling for existence,[51] nomenclatures and
classifications, or, at best, stuffed specimens displayed in a museum;
* instead of persons who feel and act, statistics, codes, histories,
literatures, and philosophies;
in short, printed words. Even worse, abstract terms, which from
century to century have become more abstract and therefore further
removed from experience, more difficult to understand, less adaptable
and more deceptive, especially in all that relates to human life and
society. Here, due to the growth of government, to the multiplication
of services, to the entanglement of interests, the object,
indefinitely enlarged and complex, now eludes our grasp. Our vague,
incomplete, incorrect idea of it badly corresponds with it, or does
not correspond at all. In nine minds out of ten, or perhaps ninety-
nine out of a hundred, it is but little more than a word. The others,
if they desire some significant indication of what society actually is
beyond the teachings of books, require ten or fifteen years of close
observation and study to re-think the phrases with which these have
filled their memory, to interpret them anew, to make clear their
meaning, to get at and verify their sense, to substitute for the more
or less empty and indefinite term the fullness and precision of a
personal impression. We have seen how ideas of Society, State,
Government, Sovereignty, Rights, Liberty, the most important of all
ideas, were, at the close of the eighteenth century, curtailed and
falsified; how, in most minds, simple verbal reasoning combined them
together in dogmas and axioms; what an offspring these metaphysical
simulacra gave birth to, how many lifeless and grotesque abortions,
how many monstrous and destructive chimeras. There is no place for
any of these fanciful dreams in the mind of Bonaparte; they cannot
arise in it, nor find access to it; his aversion to the unsubstantial
phantoms of political abstraction extends beyond disdain, even to
disgust.[52] That which was then called ideology, is his particular
bugbear; he loathes it not alone through calculation, but still more
through an instinctive demand for what is real, as a practical man and
statesman, always keeping in mind, like the great Catherine, "that he
is operating, not on paper, but on the human hide, which is ticklish."
Every idea entertained by him had its origin in his personal
observation, and he used his own personal observations to control
them.
If books are useful to him it is to suggest questions, which he never
answers but through his own experience. He has read only a little,
and hastily;[53] his classical education is rudimentary; in the way of
Latin, he remained in the lower class. The instruction he got at the
Military Academy as well as at Brienne was below mediocrity, while,
after Brienne, it is stated that "for the languages and belles-
lettres, he had no taste." Next to this, the literature of elegance
and refinement, the philosophy of the closet and drawing-room, with
which his contemporaries are imbued, glided over his intellect as over
a hard rock. None but mathematical truths and positive notions about
geography and history found their way into his mind and deeply
impressed it. Everything else, as with his predecessors of the
fifteenth century, comes to him through the original, direct action of
his faculties in contact with men and things, through his prompt and
sure tact, his indefatigable and minute attention, his indefinitely
repeated and rectified divinations during long hours of solitude and
silence. Practice, and not speculation, is the source of his
instruction, the same as with a mechanic brought up amongst machinery.
"There is nothing relating to warfare that I cannot make myself. If
nobody knows how to make gunpowder, I do. I can construct gun-
carriages. If cannon must be cast, I will see that it is done
properly. If tactical details must be taught, I will teach them."[54]
This is why he is competent right from the beginning, general in the
artillery, major-general, diplomatist, financier and administrator of
all kinds. Thanks to this fertile apprenticeship, beginning with the
Consulate, he shows officials and veteran ministers who send in their
reports to him what to do.
"I am a more experienced administrator than they,[55] when one has
been obliged to extract from his brains the ways and means with which
to feed, maintain, control, and move with the same spirit and will two
or three hundred thousand men, a long distance from their country, one
has soon discovered the secrets of administration."
In each of the human machines he builds and manipulates, he perceives
right away all the parts, each in its proper place and function, the
motors, the transmissions, the wheels, the composite action, the speed
which ensues, the final result, the complete effect, the net product.
Never is he content with a superficial and summary inspection; he
penetrates into obscure corners and to the lowest depths "through the
technical precision of his questions," with the lucidity of a
specialist, and in this way, borrowing an expression from the
philosophers, with him the concept should be adequate to its
purpose.[56]
Hence his eagerness for details, for these form the body and substance
of the concept; the hand that has not grasped these, or lets them go,
retains only the shell, an envelope. With respect to these his
curiosity is "insatiable."[57] In each ministerial department he knows
more than the ministers, and in each bureau he knows as much as the
clerks. "On his table[58] lie reports of the positions of his forces
on land and on water. He has furnished the plans of these, and fresh
ones are issued every month"; such is the daily reading he likes best.
"I have my reports on positions always at hand; my memory for an
Alexandrine is not good, but I never forget a syllable of my reports
on positions. I shall find them in my room this evening, and I shall
not go to bed until I have read them."
He always knows "his position" on land and at sea better than is known
in the War and Navy departments; better even than his staff-officers
the number, size, and qualities of his ships in or out of port, the
present and future state of vessels under construction, the
composition and strength of their crews, the formation, organization,
staff of officers, material, stations, and enlistments, past and to
come, of each army corps and of each regiment. It is the same in the
financial and diplomatic services, in every branch of the
administration, laic or ecclesiastical, in the physical order and in
the moral order. His topographical memory and his geographical
conception of countries, places, ground, and obstacles culminate in an
inward vision which he evokes at will, and which, years afterwards,
revives as fresh as on the first day. His calculation of distances,
marches, and maneuvers is so rigid a mathematical operation that,
frequently, at a distance of two or four hundred leagues,[59] his
military foresight, calculated two or four months ahead, turns out
correct, almost on the day named, and precisely on the spot
designated.[60] Add to this one other faculty, and the rarest of all.
For, if things turn out as he foresaw they would, it is because, as
with great chess-players, he has accurately measured not alone the
mechanical moves of the pieces, but the character and talent of his
adversary, "sounded his draft of water," and divined his probable
mistakes. He has added the calculation of physical quantities and
probabilities to the calculation of moral quantities and
probabilities, thus showing himself as great a psychologist as he is
an accomplished strategist. In fact, no one has surpassed him in the
art of judging the condition and motives of an individual or of a
group of people, the real motives, permanent or temporary, which drive
or curb men in general or this or that man in particular, the
incentives to be employed, the kind and degree of pressure to be
employed. This central faculty rules all the others, and in the art
of mastering Man his genius is found supreme.
III. His acute Understanding of Others.
His psychological faculty and way of getting at the thought and
feeling of others.- His self-analysis. - How he imagines a general
situation by selecting a particular case, imagining the invisible
interior by deducting from the visible exterior. - Originality and
superiority of his style and discourse. - His adaptation of these to
his hearers and to circumstances. - His notation and calculation of
serviceable motives.
No faculty is more precious for a political engineer; for the forces
he acts upon are never other than human passions. But how, except
through divination, can these passions, which grow out of the deepest
sentiments, be reached? How, save by conjecture, can forces be
estimated which seem to defy all measurement? On this dark and
uncertain ground, where one has to grope one's way, Napoleon moves
with almost absolute certainty; he moves promptly. First of all, he
studies himself; indeed, to find one's way into another's soul
requires, preliminarily, that one should dive deep into one's own.[61]
"I have always delighted in analysis," said he, one day, "and should I
ever fall seriously in love I would take my sentiment to pieces. Why
and How are such important questions one cannot put them to one's self
too often."
"It is certain," writes an observer, "that he, of all men, is the one
who has most meditated on the why which controls human actions."
His method, that of the experimental sciences, consists in testing
every hypothesis or deduction by some positive fact, observed by him
under definite conditions; a physical force being ascertained and
accurately measured through the deviation of a needle, or through the
rise and fall of a fluid, this or that invisible moral force can
likewise be ascertained and approximately measured through some
emotional sign, some decisive manifestation, consisting of a certain
word, tone, or gesture. It is these words, tones, and gestures which
he dwells on; he detects inward sentiments by the outward expression;
he figures to himself the internal by the external, by some facial
appearance, some telling attitude, some brief and topical scene, by
such specimen and shortcuts, so well chosen and detailed that they
provide a summary of the innumerable series of analogous cases. In
this way, the vague, fleeting object is suddenly arrested, brought to
bear, and then gauged and weighed, like some impalpable gas collected
and kept in a graduated transparent glass tube. - Accordingly, at the
Council of State, while the others, either jurists or administrators,
see abstractions, articles of the law and precedents, he sees people
as they are - the Frenchman, the Italian, the German; that of the
peasant, the workman, the bourgeois, the noble, the returned
émigré,[62] the soldier, the officer and the functionary - everywhere
the individual man as he is, the man who plows, manufactures, fights,
marries, brings forth children, toils, enjoys himself, and dies. -
Nothing is more striking than the contrast between the dull, grave
arguments advanced by the wise official editor, and Napoleon's own
words caught on the wing, at the moment, vibrating and teeming with
illustrations and imagery.[63] Apropos of divorce, the principle of
which he wishes to maintain:
"Consult, now, national manners and customs. Adultery is no
phenomenon; it is common enough - une affaire de canapé . . . There
must be some curb on women who commit adultery for trinkets, poetry,
Apollo, and the muses, etc."
But if divorce be allowed for incompatibility of temper you undermine
marriage; the fragility of the bond will be apparent the moment the
obligation is contracted;
"it is just as if a man said to himself, 'I am going to marry until I
feel different.' "
Nullity of marriage must not be too often allowed; once a marriage is
made it is a serious matter to undo it.
"Suppose that, in marrying my cousin just arrived from the Indies, I
wed an adventuress. She bears me children, and I then discover she is
not my cousin - is that marriage valid? Does not public morality
demand that it should be so considered? There has been a mutual
exchange of hearts, of transpiration."
On the right of children to be supported and fed although of age, he
says:
"Will you allow a father to drive a girl of fifteen out of his house?
A father worth 60,000 francs a year might say to his son, 'You are
stout and fat; go and turn plowman.' The children of a rich father, or
of one in good circumstances, are always entitled to the paternal
porridge. Strike out their right to be fed, and you compel children
to murder their parents."
As to adoption :
"You regard this as law-makers and not as statesmen. It is not a
civil contract nor a judicial contract. The analysis (of the jurist)
leads to vicious results. Man is governed by imagination only;
without imagination he is a brute. It is not for five cents a day,
simply to distinguish himself, that a man consents to be killed; if
you want to electrify him touch his heart. A notary, who is paid a
fee of twelve francs for his services, cannot do that. It requires
some other process, a legislative act. Adoption, what is that? An
imitation by which society tries to counterfeit nature. It is a new
kind of sacrament. . . . Society ordains that the bones and blood
of one being shall be changed into the bones and blood of another. It
is the greatest of all legal acts. It gives the sentiments of a son
to one who never had them, and reciprocally those of a parent. Where
ought this to originate? From on high, like a clap of thunder !"
All his expressions are bright flashes one after another.[64] Nobody,
since Voltaire and Galiani, has launched forth such a profusion of
them; on society, laws, government, France and the French, some
penetrate and explain, like those of Montesquieu, as if with a flash
of lightening. He does not hammer them out laboriously, but they
burst forth, the outpourings of his intellect, its natural,
involuntary, constant action. And what adds to their value is that,
outside of councils and private conversations, he abstains from them,
employing them only in the service of thought; at other times he
subordinates them to the end he has in view, which is always their
practical effect. Ordinarily, he writes and speaks in a different
language, in a language suited to his audience; he dispenses with the
oddities, the irregular improvisations and imagination, the outbursts
of genius and inspiration. He retains and uses merely those which are
intended to impress the personage whom he wishes to dazzle with a
great idea of himself, such as Pius VII., or the Emperor Alexander.
In this case, his conversational tone is that of a caressing,
expansive, amiable familiarity; he is then before the footlights, and
when he acts he can play all parts, tragedy or comedy, with the same
life and spirit whether he fulminates, insinuates, or even affects
simplicity. When he is with his generals, ministers, and principal
performers, he falls back on the concise, positive, technical business
style; any other would be harmful. The keen mind only reveals itself
through the brevity and imperious strength and rudeness of the accent.
For his armies and the common run of men, he has his proclamations and
bulletins, that is to say, sonorous phrases composed for effect, a
statement of facts purposely simplified and falsified,[65] in short,
an excellent effervescent wine, good for exciting enthusiasm, and an
equally excellent narcotic for maintaining credulity,[66] a sort of
popular mixture to be distributed just at the proper time, and whose
ingredients are so well proportioned that the public drinks it with
delight, and becomes at once intoxicated. - His style on every
occasion, whether affected or spontaneous, shows his wonderful
knowledge of the masses and of individuals; except in two or three
cases, on one exalted domain, of which he always remains ignorant, he
has ever hit the mark, applying the appropriate lever, giving just the
push, weight, and degree of impulsion which best accomplishes his
purpose. A series of brief, accurate memoranda, corrected daily,
enables him to frame for himself a sort of psychological tablet
whereon he notes down and sums up, in almost numerical valuation, the
mental and moral dispositions, characters, faculties, passions, and
aptitudes, the strong or weak points, of the innumerable human beings,
near or remote, on whom he operates.
IV. His Wonderful Memory.
His Three Atlases. - Their scale and completeness.
Let us try for a moment to show the range and contents of this
intellect; we may have to go back to Caesar to his equal; but, for
lack of documents, we have nothing of Caesar but general features - a
summary outline. Of Napoleon we have, besides the perfect outline,
the features in detail. Read his correspondence, day by day, then
chapter by chapter;[67] for example, in 1806, after the battle of
Austerlitz, or, still better, in 1809, after his return from Spain, up
to the peace of Vienna; whatever our technical shortcomings may be, we
shall find that his mind, in its comprehensiveness and amplitude,
largely surpasses all known or even credible proportions.
He has mentally within him three principal atlases, always at hand,
each composed of "about twenty note-books," each distinct and each
regularly posted up. -
1. The first one is military, forming a vast collection of
topographical charts as minute as those of an general staff, with
detailed plans of every stronghold, also specific indications and the
local distribution of all forces on sea and on land - crews,
regiments, batteries, arsenals, storehouses, present and future
resources in supplies of men, horses, vehicles, arms, munitions, food,
and clothing.
2. The second, which is civil, resembles the heavy, thick volumes
published every year, in which we now read the state of the budget,
and comprehend, first, the innumerable items of ordinary and
extraordinary receipt and expenditure, internal taxes, foreign
contributions, the products of the domains in France and out of
France, the fiscal services, pensions, public works, and the rest;
next, all administrative statistics, the hierarchy of functions and of
functionaries, senators, deputies, ministers, prefects, bishops,
professors, judges, and those under their orders, each where he
resides, with his rank, jurisdiction, and salary.
3. The third is a vast biographical and moral dictionary, in which,
as in the pigeon-holes of the Chief of Police, each notable personage
and local group, each professional or social body, and even each
population, has its label, along with a brief note on its situation,
needs, and antecedents, and, therefore, its demonstrated character,
eventual disposition, and probable conduct. Each label, card, or
strip of paper has its summary; all these partial summaries,
methodically classified, terminate in totals, and the totals of the
three atlases, combined together, thus furnish their possessor with an
estimate of his disposable forces.
Now, in 1809, however full these atlases, they are clearly imprinted
on Napoleon's mind he knows not only the total and the partial
summaries, but also the slightest details; he reads them readily and
at every hour; he comprehends in a mass, and in all particulars, the
various nations he governs directly, or through some one else; that is
to say, 60,000,000 men, the different countries he has conquered or
overrun, consisting of 70,000 square leagues[68]. At first, France
increased by the addition of Belgium and Piedmont; next Spain, from
which he is just returned, and where he has placed his brother Joseph;
southern Italy, where, after Joseph, he has placed Murat; central
Italy, where he occupies Rome; northern Italy, where Eugène is his
delegate; Dalmatia and Istria, which he has joined to his empire;
Austria, which he invades for the second time; the Confederation of
the Rhine, which he has made and which he directs; Westphalia and
Holland, where his brothers are only his lieutenants; Prussia, which
he has subdued and mutilated and which he oppresses, and the
strongholds of which he still retains; and, add a last mental tableau,
that which represents the northern seas, the Atlantic and the
Mediterranean, all the fleets of the continent at sea and in port from
Dantzic to Flessingen and Bayonne, from Cadiz to Toulon and Gaëta,
from Tarentum to Venice, Corfu, and Constantinople.[69] - On the
psychological and moral atlas, besides a primitive gap which he will
never fill up, because this is a characteristic trait, there are some
estimates which are wrong, especially with regard to the Pope and to
Catholic conscience. In like manner he rates the energy of national
sentiment in Spain and Germany too low. He rates too high his own
prestige in France and in the countries annexed to her, the balance of
confidence and zeal on which he may rely. But these errors are rather
the product of his will than of his intelligence, he recognizes them
at intervals; if he has illusions it is because he fabricates them;
left to himself his good sense would rest infallible, it is only his
passions which blurred the lucidity of his intellect. - As to the
other two atlases, the topographical and the military, they are as
complete and as exact as ever; No matter how much the realities they
contain will swell and daily become ever more complex, they continue
to correspond to it in their fullness and precision, trait for trait.
V. His Imagination and its Excesses.
His constructive imagination. - His projects and dreams. -
Manifestation of the master faculty and its excesses.
But this multitude of information and observations form only the
smallest portion of the mental population swarming in this immense
brain; for, on his idea of the real, germinate and swarm his concepts
of the possible; without these concepts there would be no way to
handle and transform things, and that he did handle and transform them
we all know. Before acting, he has decided on his plan, and if this
plan is adopted, it is one among several others,[70] after examining,
comparing, and giving it the preference; he has accordingly thought
over all the others. Behind each combination adopted by him we detect
those he has rejected; there are dozens of them behind each of his
decisions, each maneuver effected, each treaty signed, each decree
promulgated, each order issued, and I venture to say, behind almost
every improvised action or word spoken. For calculation enters into
everything he does, even into his apparent expansiveness, also into
his outbursts when in earnest; if he gives way to these, it is on
purpose, foreseeing the effect, with a view to intimidate or to
dazzle. He turns everything in others as well as in himself to
account - his passion, his vehemence, his weaknesses, his
talkativeness, he exploits it all for the advancement of the edifice
he is constructing.[71] Certainly among his diverse faculties, however
great, that of the constructive imagination is the most powerful. At
the very beginning we feel its heat and boiling intensity beneath the
coolness and rigidity of his technical and positive instructions.
"When I plan a battle," said he to Roederer, "no man is more spineless
than I am. I over exaggerate to myself all the dangers and all the
evils that are possible under the circumstances. I am in a state of
truly painful agitation. But this does not prevent me from appearing
quite composed to people around me ; I am like a woman giving birth to
a child.[72]
Passionately, in the throes of the creator, he is thus absorbed with
his coming creation; he already anticipates and enjoys living in his
imaginary edifice. "General," said Madame de Clermont-Tonnerre to
him, one day, "you are building behind a scaffolding which you will
take down when you have done with it." "Yes, Madame, that's it,"
replied Bonaparte; "you are right. I am always living two years in
advance."[73] His response came with "incredible vivacity," as if a
sudden inspiration, that of a soul stirred in its innermost fiber. -
Here as well, the power, the speed, fertility, play, and abundance of
his thought seem unlimited. What he has accomplished is astonishing,
but what he has undertaken is more so; and whatever he may have
undertaken is far surpassed by what he has imagined. However vigorous
his practical faculty, his poetical faculty is stronger; it is even
too vigorous for a statesman; its grandeur is exaggerated into
enormity, and its enormity degenerates into madness. In Italy, after
the 18th of Fructidor, he said to Bourrienne:
"Europe is a molehill; never have there been great empires and great
revolutions, except in the Orient, with its 600,000,000
inhabitants."[74]
The following year at Saint-Jean d'Acre, on the eve of the last
assault, he added
"If I succeed I shall find in the town the pasha's treasure and arms
for 300,000 men. I stir up and arm all Syria. . . . I march on
Damascus and Aleppo; as I advance in the country my army will increase
with the discontented. I proclaim to the people the abolition of
slavery, and of the tyrannical government of the pashas. I reach
Constantinople with armed masses. I overthrow the Turkish Empire; I
found in the East a new and grand empire, which fixes my place with
posterity, and perhaps I return to Paris by the way of Adrianople, or
by Vienna, after having annihilated the house of Austria." [75]
Become consul, and then emperor, he often referred to this happy
period, when, "rid of the restraints of a troublesome civilization,"
he could imagine at will and construct at pleasure.[76]
"I created a religion; I saw myself on the road to Asia, mounted on an
elephant, with a turban on my head, and in my hand a new Koran, which
I composed to suit myself."
Confined to Europe, he thinks, after 1804, that he will reorganize
Charlemagne's empire.
"The French Empire will become the mother country of other
sovereignties. . . I mean that every king in Europe shall build a
grand palace at Paris for his own use; on the coronation of the
Emperor of the French these kings will come and occupy it; they will
grace this imposing ceremony with their presence, and honor it with
their salutations."[77] The Pope will come; he came to the first one;
he must necessarily return to Paris, and fix himself there
permanently. Where could the Holy See be better off than in the new
capital of Christianity, under Napoleon, heir to Charlemagne, and
temporal sovereign of the Sovereign Pontiff? Through the temporal the
emperor will control the spiritual,[78] and through the Pope,
consciences."
In November, 1811, unusually excited, he says to De Pradt:
"In five years I shall be master of the world; only Russia will
remain, but I will crush her.[79] . . . Paris will extend out to
St. Cloud."
To render Paris the physical capital of Europe is, through his own
confession, "one of his constant dreams."
"At times," he says,[80]"I would like to see her a city of two,
three, four millions of inhabitants, something fabulous, colossal,
unknown down to our day, and its public establishments adequate to its
population. . . . Archimedes proposed to lift the world if he
could be allowed to place his lever; for myself, I would have changed
it wherever I could have been allowed to exercise my energy,
perseverance, and budgets."
At all events, he believes so ; for however lofty and badly supported
the next story of his structure may be, he has always ready a new
story, loftier and more unsteady, to put above it. A few months
before launching himself, with all Europe at his back, against Russia,
he said to Narbonne:[81]
"After all, my dear sir, this long road is the road to India.
Alexander started as far off as Moscow to reach the Ganges; this has
occurred to me since St. Jean d'Acre. . . . To reach England to-
day I need the extremity of Europe, from which to take Asia in the
rear. . . . Suppose Moscow taken, Russia subdued, the czar
reconciled, or dead through some court conspiracy, perhaps another and
dependent throne, and tell me whether it is not possible for a French
army, with its auxiliaries, setting out from Tiflis, to get as far as
the Ganges, where it needs only a thrust of the French sword to bring
down the whole of that grand commercial scaffolding throughout India.
It would be the most gigantic expedition, I admit, but practicable in
the nineteenth century. Through it France, at one stroke, would
secure the independence of the West and the freedom of the seas."
While uttering this his eyes shone with strange brilliancy, and he
accumulates subjects, weighing obstacles, means, and chances: the
inspiration is under full headway, and he gives himself up to it. The
master faculty finds itself suddenly free, and it takes flight; the
artist,[82] locked up in politics, has escaped from his sheath; he is
creating out of the ideal and the impossible. We take him for what he
is, a posthumous brother of Dante and Michael Angelo. In the clear
outlines of his vision, in the intensity, coherency, and inward logic
of his dreams, in the profundity of his meditations, in the superhuman
grandeur of his conceptions, he is, indeed, their fellow and their
equal. His genius is of the same stature and the same structure; he
is one of the three sovereign minds of the Italian Renaissance. Only,
while the first two operated on paper and on marble, the latter
operates on the living being, on the sensitive and suffering flesh of
humanity.
_______________________________________________________________________
Notes:
[1] Reforms introduced by Napoleon after his coup d'état 9 Nov. 1799.
(SR.)
[2] The main authority is, of course, the "correspondance de
l'Empereur Napoléon I.," in thirty-two-volumes. This correspondance,"
unfortunately, is still incomplete, while, after the sixth volume, it
must not be forgotten that much of it has been purposely stricken out.
"In general," say the editors (XVI., p.4), "we have been governed
simply by this plain rule, that we were required to publish only what
the Emperor himself would have given to the public had he survived
himself, and, anticipating the verdict of time, exposed to posterity
his own personality and system." - The savant who has the most
carefully examined this correspondence, entire in the French archives,
estimates that it comprises about 80,000 pieces, of which 30,000 have
been published in the collection referred to; passages in 20,000 of
the others have been stricken out on account of previous publication,
and about 30,000 more, through considerations of propriety or policy.
For example, but little more than one-half of the letters from
Napoleon to Bigot de Préameneu on ecclesiastical matters have been
published; many of these omitted letters, all important and
characteristic, may be found in "L'Église romaine et le Premier
Empire," by M. d'Haussonville. The above-mentioned savant estimates
the number of important letters not yet published at 2,000.
[3] "Mémorial de Sainte Héléne," by Las Casas (May 29, 1816).---"In
Corsica, Paoli, on a horseback excursion, explained the positions to
him, the places where liberty found resistance or triumphed.
Estimating the character of Napoleon by what he saw of it through
personal observation, Paoli said to him, "Oh, Napoleon, there is
nothing modern in you, you belong wholly to Plutarch!"-- Antonomarchi,
"Mémoires," Oct. 25, 1819. The same account, slightly different, is
there given: "Oh. Napoleon," said Paoli to me, "you do not belong to
this century; you talk like one of Plutarch's characters. Courage,
you will take flight yet!"
[4] De Ségur, "Histoire et Mémoires," I., 150. (Narrative by
Pontécoulant, member of the committee in the war, June, 1795.) "Boissy
d'Anglas told him that he had seen the evening before a little
Italian, pale, slender, and puny, but singularly audacious in his
views and in the vigor of his expressions. - The next day, Bonaparte
calls on Pontécou1ant, "Attitude rigid through a morbid pride, poor
exterior, long visage, hollow and bronzed. . . . He is just from
the army and talks like one who knows what he is talking about."
[5] Coston, "Biographie des premières années de Napoléon Buonaparte,"
2 vols. (1840), passim. - Yung, " Bonaparte et son Temps," I., 300,
302. (Pièces généalogiques.) - King Joseph, "Mémoires," I., 109, 111.
(On the various branches and distinguished men of the Bonaparte
family.) - Miot de Melito, "Mémoires," II., 30. (Documents on the
Bonaparte family, collected on the spot by the author in 1801.)
[6] "Mémorial," May 6, 1816. - Miot de Melito, II., 30. (On the
Bonapartes of San Miniato): "The last offshoot of this branch was a
canon then still living in this same town of San Miniato, and visited
by Bonaparte in the year IV, when he came to Florence."
[7] "Correspondance de l'Empereur Napoléon I." (Letter of Bonaparte,
Sept.29, 1797, in relation to Italy): "A people at bottom inimical to
the French through the prejudices, character, and customs of
centuries."
[8] Miot de Melito, I., 126, (1796): "Florence, for two centuries and
a half, had lost that antique energy which, in the stormy times of the
Republic, distinguished this city. Indolence was the dominant spirit
of all classes. . . Almost everywhere I saw only men lulled to
rest by the charms of the most exquisite climate, occupied solely with
the details of a monotonous existence, and tranquilly vegetating under
its beneficent sky." - (On Milan, in 1796, cf. Stendhal,
introduction to the "Chartreuse de Parme.")
[9] "Miot de Melito, I., 131: "Having just left one of the most
civilized cities in Italy, it was not without some emotion that I
found myself suddenly transported to a country (Corsica) which, in its
savage aspect, its rugged mountains, and its inhabitants uniformly
dressed in coarse brown cloth, contrasted so strongly with the rich
and smiling landscape of Tuscany, and with the comfort, I should
almost say elegance, of costume worn by the happy cultivators of that
fertile soil."
[10] Miot de Melito, II., 30: "Of a not very important family of
Sartène." - II., 143. (On the canton of Sartène and the Vendettas of
1796). - Coston, I., 4: "The family of Madame Laetitia, sprung from
the counts of Cotalto, came originally from Italy."
[11] His father, Charles Bonaparte, weak and even frivolous, "too fond
of pleasure to care about his children," and to see to his affairs,
tolerably learned and an indifferent head of a family, died at the age
of thirty-nine of a cancer in the stomach, which seems to be the only
bequest he made to his son Napoleon. - His mother, on the contrary,
serious, authoritative, the true head of a family, was, said Napoleon,
"hard in her affections she punished and rewarded without
distinction, good or bad; she made us all feel it." - On becoming head
of the household, "she was too parsimonious-even ridiculously so.
This was due to excess of foresight on her part; she had known want,
and her terrible sufferings were never out of her mind. . . .
Paoli had tried persuasion with her before resorting to force. . .
. Madame replied heroically, as a Cornelia would have done. . . .
From 12 to 15,000 peasants poured down from the mountains of Ajaccio;
our house was pillaged and burnt, our vines destroyed, and our flocks.
. . . In other respects, this woman, from whom it would have been
so difficult to extract five francs, would have given up everything to
secure my return from Elba, and after Waterloo she offered me all she
possessed to restore my affairs." (" Mémorial," May 29, 1816, and
"Mémoires d'Antonomarchi," Nov. 18, 1819. - On the ideas and ways
of Bonaparte's mother, read her "Conversation" in "Journal et
Mémoires," vol. IV., by Stanislas Girardin.) Duchesse d'Abrantès, "
Mémoires," II., 318, 369. "Avaricious out of all reason except on a
few grave occasions. . . . No knowledge whatever of the usages of
society. . . . very ignorant, not alone of our literature, but of
her own." - Stendhal, "Vie de Napoleon": "The character of her son is
to be explained by the perfectly Italian character of Madame
Laetitia."
[12] The French conquest is effected by armed force between July 30,
1768, and May 22, 1769. The Bonaparte family submitted May 23, 1769,
and Napoleon was born on the following 15th of August.
[13] Antonomarchi, "Mémoires," October 4, 1819. "Mémorial," May 29,
1816.
[14] Miot de Melito, II., 33: "The day I arrived at Bocognano two men
lost their lives through private vengeance. About eight years before
this one of the inhabitants of the canton had killed a neighbor, the
father of two children. . . . On reaching the age of sixteen or
seventeen years these children left the country in order to dog the
steps of the murderer, who kept on the watch, not daring to go far
from his village. . . . Finding him playing cards under a tree,
they fired at and killed him, and besides this accidentally shot
another man who was asleep a few paces off. The relatives on both
sides pronounced the act justifiable and according to rule." Ibid.,
I., 143: "On reaching Bastia from Ajaccio the two principal families
of the place, the Peraldi and the Visuldi, fired at each other, in
disputing over the honor of entertaining me.
[15] Bourrienne," Mémoires," I., 18, 19.
[16] De Ségur, "Histoire et Mémoires," I,, 74.
[17] Yung, I., 195. (Letter of Bonaparte to Paoli, June 12, 1789);
I., 250 (Letter of Bonaparte to Buttafuoco, January 23 1790).
[18] Yung, I., 107 (Letter of Napoleon to his father, Sept. 12,
1784); I., 163 (Letter of Napoleon to Abbé Raynal, July, 1786); I.,
197 (Letter of Napoleon to Paoli, June 12, 1789). The three letters
on the history of Corsica are dedicated to Abbé Raynal in a letter of
June 24, 1790, and may be found in Yung, I., 434.
[19] Read especially his essay "On the Truths and Sentiments most
important to inculcate on Men for their Welfare" (a subject proposed
by the Academy of Lyons in 1790). Some bold men driven by genius. .
. . Perfection grows out of reason as fruit out of a tree. . . .
Reason's eyes guard man from the precipice of the passions. . .
The spectacle of the strength of virtue was what the Lacedaemonians
principally felt. . . . Must men then be lucky in the means by
which they are led on to happiness? . . . . My rights (to
property) are renewed along with my transpiration, circulate in my
blood, are written on my nerves, on my heart. . . . Proclaim to
the rich -your wealth is your misfortune, withdrawn within the
latitude of your senses. . . . Let the enemies of nature at thy
voice keep silence and swallow their rabid serpents' tongues. . . .
The wretched shun the society of men, the tapestry of gayety turns to
mourning. . . . Such, gentlemen, are the Sentiments which, in
animal relations, mankind should have taught it for its welfare."
[20] Yung, I., 252 (Letter to Buttafuoco). "Dripping with the blood
of his brethren, sullied by every species of crime, he presents
himself with confidence under his vest of a general, the sole reward
of his criminalities." - I., 192 (Letter to the Corsican Intendant,
April 2, 1879). "Cultivation is what ruins us" - See various
manuscript letters, copied by Yung, for innumerable and gross mistakes
in French. - Miot de Melito, I., 84 (July, 1796). "He spoke curtly
and, at this time, very incorrectly." - Madame de Rémusat, I., 104.
"Whatever language he spoke it never seemed familiar to him; he
appeared to force himself in expressing his ideas."- Notes par le
Comte Chaptal (unpublished), councillor of state and afterwards
minister of the interior under the Consulate: "At this time, Bonaparte
did not blush at the slight knowledge of administrative details which
he possessed; he asked a good many questions and demanded definitions
and the meaning of the commonest words in use. As it very often
happened with him not to clearly comprehend words which he heard for
the first time, he always repeated these afterwards as he understood
them; for example, he constantly used section for session, armistice
for amnesty, fulminating point for culminating point, rentes voyagères
for 'rentes viagères,' etc."
[21] De Ségur, I., 174
[22] Cf. the "Mémoires" of Marshal Marmont, I., 15, for the ordinary
sentiments of the young nobility. "In 1792 I had a sentiment for the
person of the king, difficult to define, of which I recovered the
trace, and to some extent the power, twenty-two years later; a
sentiment of devotion almost religious in character, an innate respect
as if due to a being of a superior order. The word King then
possessed a magic, a force, which nothing had changed in pure and
honest breasts. . . . This religion of royalty still existed in
the mass of the nation,, and especially amongst the well-born, who,
sufficiently remote from power, were rather struck with its brilliancy
than with its imperfections. . . . This love became a sort of
worship."
[23] Bourrienne, "Mémoires,' I. 27. - Ségur, I. 445. In 1795, at
Paris, Bonaparte, being out of military employment, enters upon
several commercial speculations, amongst which is a bookstore, which
does not succeed. (Stated by Sebastiani and many others.)
[24] "Mémorial," Aug. 3, 1816.
[25] Bourrienne, I., 171. (Original text of the "Souper de
Beaucaire.")
[26] Yung, II., 430, 431. (Words of Charlotte Robespierre.) Bonaparte
as a souvenir of his acquaintance with her, granted her a pension,
under the consulate, of 3600 francs. - Ibid. (Letter of Tilly,
chargé d'affaires at Genoa, to Buchot, commissioner of foreign
affairs.) Cf. in the "Mémorial," Napoleon's favorable judgment of
Robespierre.
[27] Yung, II., 455. (Letter from Bonaparte to Tilly, Aug. 7,
1794.) Ibid., III., 120. (Memoirs of Lucien.) "Barras takes care of
Josephine's dowry, which is the command of the army in Italy." Ibid.,
II., 477. (Grading of general officers, notes by Schérer on
Bonaparte.) "He knows all about artillery, but is rather too
ambitious, and too intriguing for promotion."
[28] De Ségur, I., 162. - La Fayette, "Mémoires," II., 215.
"Mémorial" (note dictated by Napoleon). He states the reasons for and
against, and adds, speaking of himself: "These sentiments, twenty-five
years of age, confidence in his strength, his destiny, determined
him." Bourrienne, I., 51: " It is certain that he has always bemoaned
that day; he has often said to me that he would give years of his life
to efface that page of his history."
[29] "Mémorial," I., Sept 6, 1815. " It is only after Lodi that the
idea came to me that I might, after all, become a decisive actor on
our political stage. Then the first spark of lofty ambition gleamed
out." On his aim and conduct in the Italian campaign of Sybel,
"Histoire de l'Europe pendant la Révolution Française" (Dosquet
translation), vol. IV., books II. and III., especially pp.182, 199,
334, 335, 406, 420, 475, 489.
[30] Yung, III., 213. (Letter of M. de Sucy, August 4, 1797.)
[31] Ibid., III., 214. (Report of d'Entraigues to M. de Mowikinoff,
Sept., 1797.) "If there was any king in France which was not himself,
he would like to have been his creator, with his rights at the end of
his sword, this sword never to be parted with, so that he might plunge
it in the king's bosom if he ever ceased to be submissive to him." -
Miot de Melito, I., 154. (Bonaparte to Montebello, before Miot and
Melzi, June, 1797.) Ibid, I., 184. (Bonaparte to Miot, Nov. 18,
1797, at Turin.)
[32] D'Haussonville, "L'Église Romaine et la Premier Empire," I., 405.
(Words of M. Cacault, signer of the Treaty of Tolentino, and French
Secretary of Legation at Rome, at the commencement of negotiations for
the Concordat.) M. Cacaut says that he used this expression, "After
the scenes of Tolentino and of Leghorn, and the fright of Manfredini,
and Matéi threatened, and so many other vivacities."
[33] Madame de Staël, "Considérations sur la Révolution Française,"
3rd part, ch. XXVI., and 4th part, ch. XVIII.
[34] Portrait of Bonaparte in the "Cabinet des Etampes," "drawn by
Guérin, engraved by Fiesinger, deposited in the National Library,
Vendémiaire 29, year VII."
[35] Madame de Rémusat, "Mémoires," I., 104. - Miot de Melito, I.,
84.
[36] Madame de Staël, "Considerations," etc., 3rd part, ch. XXV. -
Madame de Rémusat, II., 77.
[37] Stendhal, "Mémoires sur Napoléon," narration of Admiral Decrès.
- Same narration in the "Mémorial."
[38] De Ségur, I., 193.
[39] Roederer, "Oeuvres complétes," II., 560. (Conversations with
General Lasalle in 1809, and Lasalle's judgment on the débuts of
Napoleon).
[40] Another instance of this commanding influence is found in the
case of General Vandamme, an old revolutionary soldier still more
brutal and energetic than Augereau. In 1815, Vandamme said to Marshal
d'Ornano, one day, on ascending the staircase of the Tuileries
together: "My dear fellow, that devil of a man (speaking of the
Emperor) fascinates me in a way I cannot account for. I, who don't
fear either God or the devil, when I approach him I tremble like a
child. He would make me dash through the eye of a needle into the
fire!" ("Le Général Vandamme," by du Casse, II., 385).
[41] Roederer, III., 356. (Napoleon himself says, February 11, 1809):
"I, military! I am so, because I was born so; it is my habit, my very
existence. Wherever I have been I have always had command. I
commanded at twenty-three, at the siege of Toulon; I commanded at
Paris in Vendémiaire; I won over the soldiers in Italy the moment I
presented myself. I was born for that."
[42] Observe the various features of the same mental and moral
structure among different members of the family. (Speaking of his
brothers and sisters in the "Memorial" Napoleon says): "What family as
numerous presents such a splendid group?" - "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER
(Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie
Plon, Paris 1893. Vol. I. p. 400. (This author, a young magistrate
under Louis XVI., a high functionary under the Empire, an important
political personage under the restoration and the July monarchy, is
probably the best informed and most judicious of eye-witnesses during
the first half of our century.): "Their vices and virtues surpass
ordinary proportions and have a physiognomy of their own. But what
especially distinguishes them is a stubborn will, and inflexible
resolution. . . . All possessed the instinct of their greatness."
They readily accepted "the highest positions; they even got to
believing that their elevation was inevitable. . . . Nothing in
the incredible good fortune of Joseph astonished him; often in
January, 1814, I heard him say over and over again that if his brother
had not meddled with his affairs after the second entry into Madrid,
he would still be on the throne of Spain. As to determined obstinacy
we have only to refer to the resignation of Louis, the retirement of
Lucien, and the resistances of Fesch; they alone could stem the will
of Napoleon and sometimes break a lance with him. -Passion,
sensuality, the habit of considering themselves outside of rules, and
self-confidence combined with talent, super abound among the women, as
in the fifteenth century. Elisa, in Tuscany, had a vigorous brain,
was high spirited and a genuine sovereign, notwithstanding the
disorders of her private life, in which even appearances were not
sufficiently maintained." Caroline at Naples, "without being more
scrupulous than her sisters," better observed the proprieties; none of
the others so much resembled the Emperor; "with her, all tastes
succumbed to ambition"; it was she who advised and prevailed upon her
husband, Murat, to desert Napoleon in 1814. As to Pauline, the most
beautiful woman of her epoch, "no wife, since that of the Emperor
Claude, surpassed her in the use she dared make of her charms; nothing
could stop her, not even a malady attributed to the strain of this
life-style and for which we have so often seen her borne in a litter."
- Jerome, " in spite of the uncommon boldness of his debaucheries,
maintained his ascendancy over his wife to the last." - On the
"pressing efforts and attempts" of Joseph on Maria Louise in 1814,
Chancelier Pasquier, after Savary's papers and the evidence of M. de
Saint-Aignan, gives extraordinary details. - "Mes souvenirs sur
Napoléon, 346, by the count Chaptal: "Every member of this numerous
family (Jérôme, Louis, Joseph, the Bonaparte sisters) mounted thrones
as if they had recovered so much property."
[43] Burkhardt, "Die Renaissance in Italien," passim. - Stendhal,
"Histoire de la peinture en Italie"(introduction), and" Rome, Naples,
et Florence," passim. - " Notes par le Comte Chaptal": When these
notes are published, many details will be found in them in support of
the judgment expressed in this and the following chapters. The
psychology of Napoleon as here given is largely confirmed by them.
[44] Roederer, III, 380 (1802).
[45] Napoleon uses the French word just which means both fair,
justifiable, pertinent, correct, and in music true.
[46] "Mémorial."
[47] De Pradt, "Histoire de l'Ambassade dans la grande-duché de
Varsovie en 1812," preface, p. X, and 5.
[48] Roederer, III., 544 (February 24, 1809). Cf. Meneval, "Napoléon
et Marie-Louise, souvenirs historiques," I., 210-213.
[49] Pelet de la Lozère," Opinions de Napoléon au conseil d'état,"
p.8. - Roederer, III., 380.
[50] Mollien, "Mémoires," I., 379; II., 230.-Roederer, III., 434. "He
is at the head of all things. He governs, administrates, negotiates,
works eighteen hours a day, with the clearest and best organized head;
he has governed more in three years than kings in a hundred years." -
Lavalette, "Mémoires," II., 75. (The words of Napoleon's secretary on
Napoleon's labor in Paris, after Leipsic) "He retires at eleven, but
gets up at three o'clock in the morning, and until the evening there
is not a moment he does not devote to work. It is time this stopped,
for he will be used up, and myself before he is."- Gaudin, Duc de
Gaëte, "Mémoires," III. (supplement), p.75. Account of an evening in
which, from eight o'clock to three in the morning, Napoleon examines
with Gaudin his general budget, during seven consecutive hours,
without stopping a minute. -Sir Neil Campbell, "Napoléon at
Fontainebleau and at Elbe," p.243. "Journal de Sir Neil Campbell a'
l'ile d'Elbe": I never saw any man, in any station in life, so
personally active and so persistent in his activity. He seems to take
pleasure in perpetual motion and in seeing those who accompany him
completely tired out, which frequently happened in my case when I
accompanied him. . . Yesterday, after having been on his legs from
eight in the morning to three in the afternoon, visiting the frigates
and transports, even to going down to the lower compartments among the
horses, he rode on horseback for three hours, and, as he afterwards
said to me, to rest himself."
[51] The starting-point of the great discoveries of Darwin is the
physical, detailed description he made in his study of animals and
plants, as living; during the whole course of life, through so many
difficulties and subject to a fierce competition. This study is
wholly lacking in the ordinary zoologist or botanist, whose mind is
busy only with anatomical preparations or collections of plants. In
every science, the difficulty lies in describing in a nutshell, using
significant examples, the real object, just as it exists before us,
and its true history. Claude Bernard one day remarked to me, "We
shall know physiology when we are able to follow step by step a
molecule of carbon or azote in the body of a dog, give its history,
and describe its passage from its entrance to its exit."
[52] Thibaudeau, "Mémoires sur le Consulat," 204. (Apropos of the
tribunate): "They consist of a dozen or fifteen metaphysicians who
ought to be flung into the water; they crawl all over me like vermin.
[53] Madame de Rémusat, I., 115: "He is really ignorant, having read
very little and always hastily." - Stendhal, "Mémoires sur Napoleon":
" His education was very defective. . . .He knew nothing of the
great principles discovered within the past one hundred years," and
just those which concern man or society. "For example, he had not
read Montesquieu as this writer ought to be read, that is to say, in a
way to accept or decidedly reject each of the thirty-one books of the
'Esprit des lois.' He had not thus read Bayle's Dictionary nor the
Essay on the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. This ignorance of the
Emperor's was not perceptible in conversation, and first, because he
led in conversation, and next because with Italian finesse no question
put by him, or careless supposition thrown out, ever betrayed that
ignorance." - Bourrienne. I., 19, 21: At Brienne, "unfortunately for
us, the monks to whom the education of youth was confided knew
nothing, and were too poor to pay good foreign teachers. . . . It
is inconceivable how any capable man ever graduated from this
educational institution." - Yung, I., 125 (Notes made by him on
Bonaparte, when he left the Military Academy): "Very fond of the
abstract sciences, indifferent to others, well grounded in mathematics
and geography."
[54] Roederer, III., 544 (March 6, 1809), 26, 563 (Jan. 23, 1811, and
Nov. 12, 1813).
[55] Mollien, I., 348 (a short time before the rupture of the peace of
Amiens), III., 16: "It was at the end of January, 1809, that he wanted
a full report of the financial situation on the 31st of December, 1808
. . . . This report was to be ready in two days." - III., 34: "A
complete balance sheet of the public treasury for the first six months
of 1812 was under Napoleon's eyes at Witebsk, the 11th of August,
eleven days after the close of these first six months. What is truly
wonderful is, that amidst so many different occupations and
preoccupations . . . . he could preserve such an accurate run of
the proceedings and methods of the administrative branches about which
he wanted to know at any moment. Nobody had any excuse for not
answering him, for each was questioned in his own terms; it is that
singular aptitude of the head of the State, and the technical
precision of his questions, which alone explains how he could maintain
such a remarkable ensemble in an administrative system of which the
smallest threads centered in himself."
[56] 200 years after the death of Napoleon Sir Alfred Ayer thus
writes in "LANGUAGE, TRUTH AND LOGIC": 'Actually, we shall see that
the only test to which a form of scientific procedure which satisfies
the necessary condition of self-consistency is subject, is the test of
its success in practice. We are entitled to have faith in our
procedure just so long as it does the work it is designed to do - that
is, enables us to predict future experience, and so to control our
environment."
And on the Purpose of Inquiry:
'The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as
unwarranted as they are unfruitful. The surest way to end them is to
establish beyond question what should be the purpose and the method of
philosophical inquiry.' (SR.)
[57] An expression of Mollien.
[58] Meneval, I., 210, 213. - Roederer, III., 537, 545 (February and
March, 1889): Words of Napoleon: "At this moment it was nearly
midnight." - Ibid., IV., 55 (November, 1809). Read the admirable
examination of Roederer by Napoleon on the Kingdom of Naples. His
queries form a vast systematic and concise network, embracing the
entire subject, leaving no physical or moral data, no useful
circumstance not seized upon. - Ségur, II., 231: M. De Ségur, ordered
to inspect every part of the coast-line, had sent in his report: "'I
have seen your reports,' said the First Consul to me, 'and they are
exact. Nevertheless, you forgot at Osten two cannon out of the four.'
- And he pointed out the place, 'a roadway behind the town.' I went
out overwhelmed with astonishment that among thousands of cannon
distributed among the mounted batteries or light artillery on the
coast, two pieces should not have escaped his recollection." -
"Correspondance," letter to King Joseph, August 6, 1806: "The
admirable condition of my armies is due to this, that I give attention
to them every day for an hour or two, and, when the monthly reports
come in, to the state of my troops and fleets, all forming about
twenty large volumes. I leave every other occupation to read them
over in detail, to see what difference there is between one month and
another. I take more pleasure in reading those than any young girl
does in a novel." - Cadet de Gassicourt, "Voyage en Autriche"(1809).
On his reviews at Schoenbrunn and his verification of the contents of
a pontoon-wagon, taken as an example.
[59] One ancient French league equals app. 4 km. (SR.)
[60] Bourrienne, II., 116; IV., 238: "He had not a good memory for
proper names, words, and dates, but it was prodigious for facts and
localities. I remember that, on the way from Paris to Toulon, he
called my attention to ten places suitable for giving battle. . .
. It was a souvenir of his youthful travels, and he described to me
the lay of the ground, designating the positions he would have taken
even before we were on the spot." March 17, 1800, puncturing a card
with a pin, he shows Bourrienne the place where he intends to beat
Mélas, at San Juliano. "Four months after this I found myself at San
Juliano with his portfolio and dispatches, and, that very evening, at
Torre-di-Gafolo, a league off, I wrote the bulletin of the battle
under his dictation" (of Marengo). -De Ségur, II., 30 (Narrative of
M. Daru to M. De Ségur Aug. 13, 1805, at the headquarters of La
Manche, Napoleon dictates to M. Daru the complete plan of the campaign
against Austria): "Order of marches, their duration, places of
convergence or meeting of the columns, attacks in full force, the
various movements and mistakes of the enemy, all, in this rapid
dictation, was foreseen two months beforehand and at a distance of two
hundred leagues. . . . The battle-field, the victories, and even
the very days on which we were to enter Munich and Vienna were then
announced and written down as it all turned out. . . . Daru saw
these oracles fulfilled on the designated days up to our entry into
Munich; if there were any differences of time and not of results
between Munich and Vienna, they were all in our favor." -M. de La
Vallette, "Mémoires," II., p. 35. (He was postmaster-general): "It
often happened to me that I was not as certain as he was of distances
and of many details in my administration on which he was able to set
me straight." - On returning from the camp at Bologna, Napoleon
encounters a squad of soldiers who had got lost, asks what regiment
they belong to, calculates the day they left, the road they took, what
distance they should have marched. and then tells them, "You will
find your battalion at such a halting place." - At this time, "the
army numbered 200,000 men."
[61] Madame de Rémusat, I., 103, 268.
[62] Thibaudeau, p.25, I (on the Jacobin survivors): "They are nothing
but common artisans, painters, etc., with lively imaginations, a
little better instructed than the people, living amongst the people
and exercising influence over them." - Madame de Rémusat, I., 271 (on
the royalist party): "It is very easy to deceive that party because
its starting-point is not what it is, but what it would like to have."
- I., 337: "The Bourbons will never see anything except through the
Oeil de Boeuf." - Thibaudeau, p.46: "Insurrections and emigrations are
skin diseases; terrorism is an internal malady." Ibid., 75: "What now
keeps the spirit of the army up is the idea soldiers have that they
occupy the places of former nobles."
[63] Thibaudeau, pp.419 to 452. (Both texts are given in separate
columns.) And passim, for instance, p.84, the following portrayal of
the decadal system of worship under the Republic: "It was imagined
that citizens could be got together in churches, to freeze with cold
and hear, read, and study laws, in which there was already but little
fun for those who executed them." Another example of the way in which
his ideas expressed themselves through imagery (Pelet de la Lozère, p.
242): "I am not satisfied with the customs regulations on the Alps.
They show no life. We don't hear the rattle of crown pieces pouring
into the public treasury." To appreciate the vividness of Napoleon's
expressions and thought the reader must consult, especially, the five
or six long conversations, noted on the very evening of the day they
occurred by Roederer; the two or three conversations likewise noted by
Miot de Melito; the scenes narrated by Beugnot; the notes of Pelet de
la Lozère and by Stanislas de Girardin, and nearly the entire volume
by Thibaudeau.
[64] Pelet de la Lozère, 63, 64. (On the physiological differences
between the English and the French.) - Madame de Rémusat, I., 273,
392: "You, Frenchmen, are not in earnest about anything, except,
perhaps, equality, and even here you would gladly give this up if you
were sure of being the foremost. . . . The hope of advancement in
the world should be cherished by everybody. . . . Keep your vanity
always alive The severity of the republican government would have
worried you to death. What started the Revolution? Vanity. What
will end it? Vanity, again. Liberty is merely a pretext." - III., 153
"Liberty is the craving of a small and privileged class by nature,
with faculties superior to the common run of men; this class,
therefore, may be put under restraint with impunity; equality, on the
contrary, catches the multitude." - Thibaudeau, 99: "What do I care
for the opinions and cackle of the drawing-room? I never heed it. I
pay attention only to what rude peasants say." His estimates of
certain situations are masterpieces of picturesque concision. "Why
did I stop and sign the preliminaries of Leoben? Because I played
vingt-et-un and was satisfied with twenty." His insight into
(dramatic) character is that of the most sagacious critic. "The
'Mahomet' of Voltaire is neither a prophet nor an Arab, only an
impostor graduated out of the École Polytechnique." - " Madame de
Genlis tries to define virtue as if she were the discoverer of it." -
(On Madame de Staël): "This woman teaches people to think who never
took to it, or have forgotten how." - (On Chateaubriand, one of whose
relations had just been shot) : "He will write a few pathetic pages
and read them aloud in the faubourg Saint-Germain; pretty women will
shed tears, and that will console him." - (On Abbé Delille) : "He is
wit in its dotage." - (On Pasquier and Molé): "I make the most of one,
and made the other." - Madame de Rémusat, II., 389, 391, 394, 399,
402; III., 67.
[65] Bourrienne, II., 281, 342: "It pained me to write official
statements under his dictation, of which each was an imposture." He
always answered: "My dear sir, you are a simpleton - you understand
nothing!" - Madame de Rémusat, II., 205, 209.
[66] See especially the campaign bulletins for 1807, so insulting to
the king and queen of Prussia, but, owing to that fact, so well
calculated to excite the contemptuous laughter and jeers of the
soldiers.
[67] In "La Correspondance de Napoleon," published in thirty-two
volumes, the letters are arranged under dates. - In his
'"Correspondance avec Eugène, vice-roi d'Italie," they are arranged
under chapters; also with Joseph, King of Naples and afterwards King
of Spain. It is easy to select other chapters not less instructive:
one on foreign affairs (letters to M. de Champagny, M de Talleyrand,
and M. de Bassano); another on the finances (letters to M. Gaudin and
to M. Mollien); another on the navy (letters to Admiral Decrès);
another on military administration (letters to General Clarke);
another on the affairs of the Church (letters to M. Portalis and to M.
Bigot de Préameneu); another on the Police (letters to Fouché), etc.
- Finally, by dividing and distributing his letters according as they
relate to this or that grand enterprise, especially to this or that
military campaign, a third classification could be made. - In this
way we can form a concept of the vastness of his positive knowledge,
also of the scope of his intellect and talents. Cf. especially the
following letters to Prince Eugène, June II, 1806 (on the supplies and
expenses of the Italian army); June 1st and 18th, 1806 (on the
occupation of Dalmatia, and on the military situation, offensive and
defensive). To Gen. Dejean, April 28, 1806 (on the war supplies);
June 27, 1806 (on the fortifications of Peschiera) July 20, 1806 (on
the fortifications of Wesel and of Juliers). - "Mes souvenirs sur
Napoleon", p. 353 by the Count Chaptal: "One day, the Emperor said to
me that he would like to organize a military school at Fontainebleau;
he then explained to me the principal features of the establishment,
and ordered me to draw up the necessary articles and bring them to him
the next day. I worked all night and they were ready at the appointed
hour. He read them over and pronounced them correct, but not
complete. He bade me take a seat and then dictated to me for two or
three hours a plan which consisted of five hundred and seventeen
articles. Nothing more perfect, in my opinion, ever issued from a
man's brain. - At another time, the Empress Josephine was to take the
waters at Aix-la-Chapelle, and the Emperor summoned me. 'The
Empress,' said he, 'is to leave to-morrow morning. She is a good-
natured, easy-going woman and must have her route and behavior marked
out for her. Write it down.' He then dictated instructions to me on
twenty-one large sheets of paper, in which everything she was to say
and to do was designated, even the questions and replies she was to
make to the authorities on the way."
[68] One French league equals approximately 4 km. 70,000 square
leagues then equal 1,120,000 km.2, or 400,000 square miles or 11% of
the United States but 5 times the size of Great Britain. (SR.)
[69] Cf. in the "Correspondance" the letters dated at Schoenbrunn
near Vienna, during August and September, 1809, and especially:
the great number of letters and orders relating to the English
expeditions to Walcheren;
the letters to chief-judge Régnier and to the arch-chancellor
Cambacérès on expropriations for public benefit (Aug. 21, Sept. 7
and 29);
the letters and orders to M. de Champagny to treat with Austria (Aug.
19, and Sept. 10, 15, 18, 22, and 23);
the letters to Admirable Decrès, to despatch naval expeditions to the
colonies (Aug.17 and Sept. 26);
the letter to Mollien on the budget of expenditure (Aug. 8);
the letter to Clarke on the statement of guns in store throughout the
empire (Sept. 14).
Other letters, ordering the preparation of two treatises on military
art (Oct. 1), two works on the history and encroachments of the Holy
See (Oct. 3), prohibiting conferences at Saint-Sulpice (Sept. 15),
and forbidding priests to preach outside the churches (Sept. 24).-
From Schoenbrunn, he watches the details of public works in France and
Italy; for instance, the letters to M. le Montalivet (Sept.30), to
send an auditor post to Parma, to have a dyke repaired at once, and
(Oct. 8) to hasten the building of several bridges and quays at
Lyons.
[70] He says himself; "I always transpose my theme in many ways."
[71] Madame de Rémusat, I., 117, 120. "1 heard M. de Talleyrand
exclaim one day, some what out of humor, 'This devil of a man misleads
you in all directions. Even his passions escape you, for he finds
some way to counterfeit them, although they really exist.'" - For
example, immediately prior to the violent confrontation with Lord
Whitworth, which was to put an end to the treaty of Amiens, he was
chatting and amusing himself with the women and the infant Napoleon,
his nephew, in the gayest and most unconcerned manner: "He is suddenly
told that the company had assembled. His countenance changes like
that of an actor when the scene shifts. He seems to turn pale at will
and his features contract"; he rises, steps up precipitately to the
English ambassador, and fulminates for two hours before two hundred
persons. (Hansard's Parliamentary History, vol. XXVI, dispatches of
Lord Whitworth, pp. 1798, 1302, 1310.) - "He often observes that the
politician should calculate every advantage that could be gained by
his defects." One day, after an explosion he says to Abbé de Pradt:
"You thought me angry! you are mistaken. Anger with me never mounts
higher than here (pointing to his neck)."
[72] Roederer, III. (The first days of Brumaire, year VIII.)
[73] Bourrienne, III., 114.
[74] Bourrienne, II., 228. (Conversation with Bourrienne in the park
at Passeriano.)
[75] Ibid., II., 331. (Written down by Bourrienne the same evening.)
[76] Madame de Rémusat, I., 274. - De Ségur, II., 459. (Napoleon's
own words on the eve of the battle of Austerlitz): "Yes, if I had
taken Acre, I would have assumed the turban, I would have put the army
in loose breeches; I would no longer have exposed it, except at the
last extremity; I would have made it my sacred battalion, my
immortals. It is with Arabs, Greeks, and Armenians that I would have
ended the war against the Turks. Instead of one battle in Moravia I
would have gained a battle of Issus; I would have made myself emperor
of the East, and returned to Paris by the way of Constantinople." - De
Pradt, p.19 (Napoleon's own words at Mayence, September, 1804): "Since
two hundred years there is nothing more to do in Europe; it is only in
the East that things can be carried out on a grand scale."
[77] Madame de Rémusat, I., 407. - Miot de Melito, II., 214 (a few
weeks after his coronation): "There will be no repose in Europe until
it is under one head, under an Emperor, whose officers would be kings,
who would distribute kingdoms to his lieutenants, who would make one
of them King of Italy, another King of Bavaria, here a landmann of
Switzerland, and here a stadtholder of Holland, etc."
[78] "Correspondance de Napoleon I.," vol. XXX., 550, 558. (Memoirs
dictated by Napoleon at Saint Hélène.) - Miot de Melito, II., 290. -
D'Hausonvillc, "l'Église Romaine et le Premier Empire," passiM. -"
Mémorial." "Paris would become the capital of the Christian world, and
I would have governed the religious world as well as the political
world."
[79] De Pradt, 23.
[80] "Mémoires et Mémorial." "It was essential that Paris should
become the unique capital, not to be compared with other capitals.
The masterpieces of science and of art, the museums, all that had
illustrated past centuries, were to be collected there. Napoleon
regretted that he could not transport St. Peter's to Paris; the
meanness of Notre Dame dissatisfied him."
[81] Villemain, "Souvenir contemporaines," I., 175. Napoleon's
statement to M. de Narbonne early in March, 1812, and repeated by him
to Villemain an hour afterwards. The wording is at second hand and
merely a very good imitation, while the ideas are substantially
Napoleon's. Cf. his fantasies about Italy and the Mediterranean,
equally exaggerated ("Correspondence," XXX., 548), and an admirable
improvisation on Spain and the colonies at Bayonne. - De Pradt.
"Mémoires sur les revolutions d'Espagne," p.130: "Therefore Napoleon
talked, or rather poetised; he Ossianized for a long time . . .
like a man full of a sentiment which oppressed him, in an animated,
picturesque style, and with the impetuosity, imagery, and originality
which were familiar to him, . . . on the vast throne of Mexico and
Peru, on the greatness of the sovereigns who should possess them . .
. . and on the results which these great foundations would have on
the universe. I had often heard him, but under no circumstances had I
ever heard him develop such a wealth and compass of imagination.
Whether it was the richness of his subject, or whether his faculties
had become excited by the scene he conjured up, and all the chords of
the instrument vibrated at once, he was sublime."
[82] Roederer, III., 541 (February 2, 1809): "I love power. But I
love it as an artist. . . . I love it as a musician loves his
violin, for the tones, chords, and harmonies he can get out of it."
CHAPTER II. His Ideas, Passions and Intelligence.
I. Intense Passions.
Personality and character during the Italian Renaissance and during
the present time. - Intensity of the passions in Bonaparte. - His
excessive touchiness. - His immediate violence. - His impatience,
rapidity, and need of talking. - His temperament, tension, and faults.
On taking a near view of the contemporaries of Dante and Michael
Angelo, we find that they differ from us more in character than in
intellect.[1] With us, three hundred years of police and of courts of
justice, of social discipline and peaceful habits, of hereditary
civilization, have diminished the force and violence of the passions
natural to Man. In Italy, in the Renaissance epoch, they were still
intact; human emotions at that time were keener and more profound than
at the present day; the appetites were ardent and more unbridled;
man's will was more impetuous and more tenacious; whatever motive
inspired, whether pride, ambition, jealousy, hatred, love, envy, or
sensuality, the inward spring strained with an energy and relaxed with
a violence that has now disappeared. All these energies reappear in
this great survivor of the fifteenth century; in him the play of the
nervous machine is the same as with his Italian ancestors; never was
there, even with the Malatestas and the Borgias, a more sensitive and
more impulsive intellect, one capable of such electric shocks and
explosions, in which the roar and flashes of tempest lasted longer and
of which the effects were more irresistible. In his mind no idea
remains speculative and pure; none is a simple transcript of the real,
or a simple picture of the possible; each is an internal eruption,
which suddenly and spontaneously spends itself in action; each darts
forth to its goal and would reach it without stopping were it not kept
back and restrained by force[2] Sometimes, the eruption is so sudden,
that the restraint does not come soon enough. One day, in Egypt,[3]
on entertaining a number of French ladies at dinner, he has one of
them, who was very pretty and whose husband he had just sent off to
France, placed alongside of him; suddenly, as if accidentally, he
overturns a pitcher of water on her, and, under the pretence of
enabling her to rearrange her wet dress, he leads her into another
room where he remains with her a long time, too long, while the other
guests seated at the table wait quietly and exchange glances. Another
day, at Paris, toward the epoch of the Concordat,[4] he says to
Senator Volney: "France wants a religion." Volney replies in a frank,
sententious way, "France wants the Bourbons." Whereupon he gives
Volney a kick in the stomach and he falls unconscious; on being moved
to a friend's house, he remains there ill in bed for several days. -
No man is more irritable, so soon in a passion; and all the more
because he purposely gives way to his irritation; for, doing this just
at the right moment, and especially before witnesses, it strikes
terror; it enables him to extort concessions and maintain obedience.
His explosions of anger, half-calculated, half-involuntary, serve him
quite as much as they relieve him, in public as well as in private,
with strangers as with intimates, before constituted bodies, with the
Pope, with cardinals, with ambassadors, with Talleyrand, with Beugnot,
with anybody that comes along,[5] whenever he wishes to set an example
or "keep the people around him on the alert." The public and the army
regard him as impassible; but, apart from the battles in which he
wears a mask of bronze, apart from the official ceremonies in which he
assumes a necessarily dignified air, impression and expression with
him are almost always confounded, the inward overflowing in the
outward, the action, like a blow, getting the better of him. At Saint
Cloud, caught by Josephine in the arms of another woman, he runs after
the unlucky interrupter in such a way that "she barely has time to
escape";[6] and again, that evening, keeping up his fury so as to put
her down completely, "he treats her in the most outrageous manner,
smashing every piece of furniture that comes in his way." A little
before the Empire, Talleyrand, a great mystifier, tells Berthier that
the First Consul wanted to assume the title of king. Berthier, in
eager haste, crosses the drawing-room full of company, accosts the
master of the house and, with a beaming smile, "congratulates him."[7]
At the word king, Bonaparte's eyes flash. Grasping Berthier by the
throat, he pushes him back against the wall, exclaiming, "You fool!
who told you to come here and stir up my bile in this way? Another
time don't come on such errands." - Such is the first impulse, the
instinctive action, to pounce on people and seize them by the throat;
we divine under each sentence, and on every page he writes, out-bursts
and assaults of this description, the physiognomy and intonation of a
man who rushes forward and knocks people down. Accordingly, when
dictating in his cabinet, "he strides up and down the room," and, " if
excited," which is often the case, " his language consists of violent
imprecations, and even of oaths, which are suppressed in what is
written."[8] But these are not always suppressed, for those who have
seen the original minutes of his correspondence on ecclesiastical
affairs find dozens of them, the b..., the p... and the swearwords of
the coarsest kind.[9]
Never was there such impatient touchiness. "When dressing
himself,[10] he throws on the floor or into the fire any part of his
attire which does not suit him. . . . On gala-days and on grand
ceremonial occasions his valets are obliged to agree together when
they shall seize the right moment to put some thing on him. . . He
tears off or breaks whatever causes him the slightest discomfort,
while the poor valet who has been the means of it meets with a violent
and positive proof of his anger. No thought was ever more carried
away by its own speed. "His handwriting, when he tries to write, "is
a mass of disconnected and undecipherable signs;[11] the words lack
one-half of their letters." On reading it over himself, he cannot tell
what it means. At last, he becomes almost incapable of producing a
handwritten letter, while his signature is a mere scrawl. He
accordingly dictates, but so fast that his secretaries can scarcely
keep pace with him: on their first attempt the perspiration flows
freely and they succeed in noting down only the half of what he says.
Bourrienne, de Meneval, and Maret invent a stenography of their own,
for he never repeats any of his phrases; so much the worse for the pen
if it lags behind, and so much the better if a volley of exclamations
or of oaths gives it a chance to catch up. - Never did speech flow and
overflow in such torrents, often without either discretion or
prudence, even when the outburst is neither useful nor creditable the
reason is that both spirit and intellect are charged to excess subject
to this inward pressure the improvisator and polemic, under full
headway,[12] take the place of the man of business and the statesman.
"With him," says a good observer,[13] "talking is a prime necessity,
and, assuredly, among the prerogatives of high rank, he ranks first
that of speaking without interruption."
Even at the Council of State he allows himself to run on, forgetting
the business on hand; he starts off right and left with some
digression or demonstration, some invective or other, for two or three
hours at a stretch,[14] insisting over and over again, bent on
convincing or prevailing, and ending in demanding of the others if he
is not right, "and, in this case, never failing to find that all have
yielded to the force of his arguments." On reflection, he knows the
value of an assent thus obtained, and, pointing to his chair, he
observes:
"It must be admitted that it is easy to be brilliant when one is in
that seat!"
Nevertheless he has enjoyed his intellectual exercise and given way to
his passion, which controls him far more than he controls it.
"My nerves are very irritable," he said of himself, "and when in this
state were my pulse not always regular I should risk going crazy."[15]
The tension of accumulated impressions is often too great, and it ends
in a physical break-down. Strangely enough in so great a warrior and
with such a statesman, "it is not infrequent, when excited, to see him
shed tears." He who has looked upon thousands of dying men, and who
has had thousands of men slaughtered, "sobs," after Wagram and after
Bautzen,[16] at the couch of a dying comrade. "I saw him," says his
valet, "weep while eating his breakfast, after coming from Marshal
Lannes's bedside; big tears rolled down his cheeks and fell on his
plate." It is not alone the physical sensation, the sight of a
bleeding, mangled body, which thus moves him acutely and deeply; for a
word, a simple idea, stings and penetrates almost as far. Before the
emotion of Dandolo, who pleads for Venice his country, which is sold
to Austria, he is agitated and his eyes moisten.[17] Speaking of the
capitulation of Baylen, at a full meeting of the Council of State,[18]
his voice trembles, and "he gives way to his grief, his eyes even
filling with tears." In 1806, setting out for the army and on taking
leave of Josephine, he has a nervous attack which is so severe as to
bring on vomiting.[19] "We had to make him sit down," says an eye-
witness, "and swallow some orange water; he shed tears, and this
lasted a quarter of an hour." The same nervous and stomachic crisis
came on in 1808, on deciding on the divorce; he tosses about a whole
night, and laments like a woman; he melts, and embraces Josephine; he
is weaker than she is: "My poor Josephine, I can never leave you!"
Folding her in his arms, he declares that she shall not quit him; he
abandons himself wholly to the sensation of the moment; she must
undress at once, sleep alongside of him, and he weeps over her ;
"literally," she says, " he soaked the bed with his tears." -
Evidently, in such an organism, however powerful the superimposed
regulator, there is a risk of the equilibrium being destroyed. He is
aware of this, for he knows himself well; he is afraid of his own
nervous sensibility, the same as of an easily frightened horse; at
critical moments, at Berezina, he refuses to receive the bad news
which might excite this, and, on the informer's insisting on it, he
asks him again,[20] "Why, sir, do you want to disturb me?" -
Nevertheless, in spite of his precautions, he is twice taken unawares,
at times when the peril was alarming and of a new kind; he, so clear
headed and so cool under fire, the boldest of military heroes and the
most audacious of political adventurers, quails twice in a
parliamentary storm and again in a popular crisis. On the 18th of
Brumaire, in the Corps Législatif, "he turned pale, trembled, and
seemed to lose his head at the shouts of outlawry . . . . they had to
drag him out . . . . they even thought for a moment that he was going
to faint."[21] After the abdication at Fontainebleau, on encountering
the rage and imprecations which greeted him in Provence, he seemed for
some days to be morally shattered; the animal instincts assert their
supremacy; he is afraid and makes no attempt at concealment.[22] After
borrowing the uniform of an Austrian colonel, the helmet of a Prussian
quartermaster, and the cloak of the Russian quartermaster, he still
considers that he is not sufficiently disguised. In the inn at
Calade, "he starts and changes color at the slightest noise"; the
commissaries, who repeatedly enter his room, "find him always in
tears." "He wearies them with his anxieties and irresolution"; he says
that the French government would like to have him assassinated on the
road, refuses to eat for fear of poison, and thinks that he might
escape by jumping out of the window. And yet he gives vent to his
feelings and lets his tongue run on about himself without stopping,
concerning his past, his character, unreservedly, indelicately,
trivially; like a cynic and one who is half-crazy; his ideas run loose
and crowd each other like the anarchical gatherings of a tumultuous
mob; he does not recover his mastery of them until he reaches Fréjus,
the end of his journey, where he feels himself safe and protected from
any highway assault; then only do they return within ordinary limits
and fall back in regular line under the control of the sovereign
intellect which, after sinking for a time, revives and resumes its
ascendancy. - There is nothing in him so extraordinary as this almost
perpetual domination of the lucid, calculating reason; his willpower
is still more formidable than his intelligence; before it can obtain
the mastery of others it must be master at home. To measure its
power, it does not suffice to note its fascinations; to enumerate the
millions of souls it captivates, to estimate the vastness of the
obstacles it overcomes: we must again, and especially, represent to
ourselves the energy and depth of the passions it keeps in check and
urges on like a team of prancing, rearing horses - it is the driver
who, bracing his arms, constantly restrains the almost ungovernable
steeds, who controls their excitement, who regulates their bounds, who
takes advantage even of their viciousness to guide his noisy vehicle
over precipices as it rushes on with thundering speed. If the pure
ideas of the reasoning brain thus maintain their daily supremacy it is
due to the vital flow which nourishes them; their roots are deep in
his heart and temperament, and those roots which give them their
vigorous sap constitute a primordial instinct more powerful than
intellect, more powerful even than his will, the instinct which leads
him to center everything on himself, in other words egoism.[23]
II. Will and Egoism.
Bonaparte's dominant passion. - His lucid, calculating mind. - Source
and power of the Will. - Early evidences of an active, absorbing
egoism. - His education derived from the lessons of things. - In
Corsica. - In France during the Revolution. - In Italy. - In Egypt. -
His idea of Society and of Right. - Maturing after the 18th of
Brumaire. - His idea of Man. - It conforms to his character
It is egoism, not a passive, but an active and intrusive egoism,
proportional to the energy and extension of his faculties developed by
his education and circumstances, exaggerated by his success and his
omnipotence to such a degree that a monstrous colossal I has been
erected in society. It expands unceasingly the circle of a tenacious
and rapacious grasp, which regards all resistance as offensive, which
all independence annoys, and which, on the boundless domain it assigns
to itself, is intolerant of anybody that does not become either an
appendix or a tool. - The germ of this absorbing personality is
already apparent in the youth and even in the infant.
"Character: dominating, imperious, and stubborn,"
says the record at Brienne.[24] And the notes of the Military
Academy add;[25]
"Extremely inclined to egoism," - "proud, ambitious, aspiring in all
directions, fond of solitude,"
undoubtedly because he is not master in a group of equals and is ill
at ease when he cannot rule.
"I lived apart from my comrades," he says at a later date.[26] - "I
had selected a little corner in the playgrounds, where I used to go
and sit down and indulge my fancies. When my comrades were disposed
to drive me out of this corner I defended it with all my might . My
instinct already told me that my will should prevail against other
wills, and that whatever pleased me ought to belong to me."
Referring to his early years under the paternal roof at Corsica, he
depicts himself as a little mischievous savage, rebelling against
every sort of restraint, and without any conscience.[27] " I respected
nothing and feared nobody; I beat one and scratched another; I made
everybody afraid of me. I beat my brother Joseph; I bit him and
complained of him almost before he knew what he was about." A clever
trick, and one which he was not slow to repeat. His talent for
improvising useful falsehoods is innate; later on, at maturity, he is
proud of this ; he makes it the index and measure of "political
superiority," and "delights in calling to mind one of his uncles who,
in his infancy, prognosticated to him that he would govern the world
because he was fond of lying."[28]
Remark this observation of the uncles - it sums up the experiences of
a man of his time and of his country; it is what social life in
Corsica inculcated; morals and manners there adapted themselves to
each other through an unfailing connection. The moral law, indeed, is
such because similar customs prevail in all countries and at all times
where the police is powerless, where justice cannot be obtained, where
public interests are in the hands of whoever can lay hold of them,
where private warfare is pitiless and not repressed, where every man
goes armed, where every sort of weapon is fair, and where
dissimulation, fraud, and trickery, as well as gun or poniard, are
allowed, which was the case in Corsica in the eighteenth century, as
in Italy in the fifteenth century. - Hence the early impressions of
Bonaparte similar to those of the Borgias and of Macchiavelli; hence,
in his case, that first stratum of half-thought which, later on,
serves as the basis of complete thought; hence, the whole foundation
of his future mental edifice and of the conceptions he subsequently
entertains of human society. Afterwards, on leaving the French
schools and every time he returns to them and spends any time in them,
the same impressions, often renewed, intensify in his mind the same
final conclusion. In this country, report the French
commissioners,[29] "the people have no idea of principle in the
abstract," nor of social interest or justice. "Justice does not
exist; one hundred and thirty assassinations have occurred in ten
years. . . . The institution of juries has deprived the country of all
the means for punishing crime; never do the strongest proofs, the
clearest evidence, lead a jury composed of men of the same party, or
of the same family as the accused, to convict him; and, if the accused
is of the opposite party, the juries likewise acquit him, so as not to
incur the risk of revenge, slow perhaps but always sure." - "Public
spirit is unknown." There is no social body, except any number of
small parties hostile to each other. . . . One is not a Corsican
without belonging to some family, and consequently attached to some
party; he who would serve none, would be detested by all. . . . All
the leaders have the same end in view, that of getting money no matter
by what means, and their first care is to surround themselves with
creatures entirely devoted to them and to whom they give all the
offices. . . . The elections are held under arms, and all with
violence. . . . The victorious party uses its authority to avenge
itself on their opponents, and multiplies vexations and outrages. . .
. The leaders form aristocratic leagues with each other. . . . and
mutually tolerate abuses. They impose no assessment or collection (of
taxes) to curry favor with electors through party spirit and
relationships. . . . Customs-duties serve simply to compensate friends
and relatives. . . . Salaries never reach those for whom they are
intended. The rural districts are uninhabitable for lack of security.
The peasants carry guns even when at the plow. One cannot take a step
without an escort; a detachment of five or six men is often sent to
carry a letter from one post-office to another."
Interpret this general statement by the thousands of facts of which it
is the summary; imagine these little daily occurrences narrated with
all their material accompaniments, and with sympathetic or angry
comments by interested neighbors, and we have the moral lessons taught
to young Bonaparte.[30] At table, the child has listened to the
conversation of his elders, and at a word uttered, for instance, by
his uncle, or at a physiognomic expression, a sign of approbation, a
shrug of the shoulders, he has divined that the ordinary march of
society is not that of peace but of war; he sees by what ruses one
maintains one's-self, by what acts of violence one makes ones way, by
what sort of help one mounts upward. Left to himself the rest of the
day, to the nurse Ilaria, or to Saveria the housekeeper, or to the
common people amongst whom he strays at will, he listens to the
conversation of sailors or of shepherds assembled on the public
square, and their simple exclamations, their frank admiration of well-
planned ambuscades and lucky surprises, impress more profoundly on
him, often repeated with so much energy, the lessons which he has
already learned at home. These are the lessons taught by things. At
this tender age they sink deep, especially when the disposition is
favorable, and in this case the heart sanctions them beforehand,
because education finds its confederate in instinct. Accordingly, at
the outbreak of the Revolution, on revisiting Corsica, he takes life
at once as he finds it there, a combat with any sort of weapon, and,
on this small arena, he acts unscrupulously, going farther than
anybody.[31] If he respects justice and law, it is only in words, and
even here ironically; in his eyes, law is a term of the code, justice
a book term, while might makes right.
A second blow of the coining-press gives another impression of the
same stamp on this character already so decided, while French anarchy
forces maxims into the mind of the young man, already traced in the
child's mind by Corsican anarchy; the lessons of things provided by a
society going to pieces are the same as those of a society which is
not yet formed. - His sharp eyes, at a very early period, see through
the flourish of theory and the parade of phrases; they detect the real
foundation of the Revolution, namely, the sovereignty of unbridled
passions and the conquest of the majority by the minority; conquering
or conquered, a choice must be made between these two extreme
conditions; there is no middle course. After the 9th of Thermidor,
the last veils are torn away, and the instincts of license and
domination, the ambitions of individuals, fully display themselves.
There is no concern for public interests or for the rights of the
people; it is clear that the rulers form a band, that France is their
prey, and that they intend to hold on to it for and against everybody,
by every possible means, including bayonets. Under this civil régime,
a clean sweep of the broom at the center makes it necessary to be on
the side of numbers. - In the armies, especially in the army of Italy,
republican faith and patriotic abnegation, since the territory became
free, have given way to natural appetites and military passions.[32]
Barefoot, in rags, with four ounces of bread a day, paid in assignats
which are not accepted in the markets, both officers and men desire
above all things to be relieved of their misery; "the poor fellows,
after three years of longing on the summits of the Alps, reach the
promised land, and want to enjoy it."[33] Another spur consists in the
pride which is stimulated by the imagination and by success; add to
this the necessity for finding an outlet for their energy, the steam
and high pressure of youth ; nearly all are very young men, who regard
life, in Gallic or French fashion, as a party of pleasure and as a
duel. But to feel brave and to prove that one is so, to face bullets
for amusement and defiantly, to abandon a successful adventure for a
battle and a battle for a ball, to enjoy ones-self and take risks to
excess, without dissimulating, and with no other object than the
sensation of the moment,[34] to revel in excitement through emulation
and danger, is no longer self-devotion, but giving one's-self up to
one's fancies ; and, for all who are not harebrained, to give one's-
self up to one's fancies means to make one's way, obtain promotion,
pillage so as to become rich, like Massena, and conquer so as to
become powerful, like Bonaparte. - All this is understood between the
general and his army from the very first,[35] and, after one year's
experience, the understanding is perfect. One moral is derived from
their common acts, vague in the army, precise in the general; what the
army only half sees, he sees clearly; if he urges his comrades on, it
is because they follow their own inclination. He simply has a start on
them, and is quicker to make up his mind that the world is a grand
banquet, free to the first-comer, but at which, to be well served, one
must have long arms, be the first to get helped, and let the rest take
what is left.
So natural does this seem to him, he says so openly and to men who are
not his intimates; to Miot, a diplomat, and to Melzi a foreigner:
"Do you suppose, says he to them,[36] after the preliminaries of
Leoben, "that to make great men out of Directory lawyers, the Carnots'
and the Barras, I triumph in Italy? Do you suppose also that it is for
the establishment of a republic? What an idea! A republic of thirty
million men! With our customs, our vices, how is that possible? It is
a delusion which the French are infatuated with and which will vanish
along with so many others. What they want is glory, the gratification
of vanity - they know nothing about liberty. Look at the army! Our
successes just obtained, our triumphs have already brought out the
true character of the French soldier. I am all for him. Let the
Directory deprive me of the command and it will see if it is master.
The nation needs a chief, one who is famous though his exploits, and
not theories of government, phrases and speeches by ideologists, which
Frenchmen do not comprehend. . . . As to your country, Monsieur de
Melzi, it has still fewer elements of republicanism than France, and
much less ceremony is essential with it than with any other. . . In
other respects, I have no idea of coming to terms so promptly with
Austria. It is not for my interest to make peace. You see what I am,
what I can do in Italy. If peace is brought about, if I am no longer
at the head of this army which has become attached to me, I must give
up this power, this high position I have reached, and go and pay court
to lawyers in the Luxembourg. I should not like to quit Italy for
France except to play a part there similar to that which I play here,
and the time for that has not yet come - the pear is not ripe."
To wait until the pear is ripe, but not to allow anybody else to
gather it, is the true motive of his political fealty and of his
Jacobin proclamations: "A party in favor of the Bourbons is raising
its head; I have no desire to help it along. One of these days I
shall weaken the republican party, but I shall do it for my own
advantage and not for that of the old dynasty. Meanwhile, it is
necessary to march with the Republicans," along with the worst, and'
the scoundrels about to purge the Five Hundred, the Ancients, and the
Directory itself, and then re-establish in France the Reign of Terror.
- In effect, he contributes to the 18th of Fructidor, and, the blow
struck, he explains very clearly why he took part in it:
"Do not believe[37] I did it in conformity with the ideas entertained
by those with whom I acted. I did - not want a return of the
Bourbons, and especially if brought back by Moreau's army and by
Pichegru. . . Finally, I will not take the part of Monk, I will not
play it, and I will not have others play it. . . . As for myself, my
dear Miot, I declare to you that I can no longer obey; I have tasted
command and I cannot give it up. My mind is made up. If I cannot be
master I will leave France."
There is no middle course for him between the two alter natives. On
returning to Paris he thinks of "overthrowing the Directory,[38]
dissolving the councils and of making himself dictator"; but, having
satisfied himself that there was but little chance of succeeding, "he
postpones his design" and falls back on the second course. "This is
the only motive of his expedition into Egypt."[39] - That, in the
actual condition of France and of Europe, the expedition is opposed to
public interests, that France deprives itself of its best army and
offers its best fleet to almost certain destruction, is of little
consequence provided, in this vast and gratuitous adventure, Bonaparte
finds the employment he wants, a large field of action and famous
victories which, like the blasts of a trumpet, will swell beyond the
seas and renew his prestige: in his eyes, the fleet, the army, France,
and humanity exist only for him and are created only for his service.
- If, in confirmation of this persuasion, another lesson in things is
still necessary, it will be furnished by Egypt. Here, absolute
sovereign, free of any restraint, contending with an inferior order of
humanity, he acts the sultan and accustoms himself to playing the
part.[40] His last scruples towards the human species disappear; "I
became disgusted with Rousseau"; he is to say, later on, "After seeing
the Orient: the savage man is a dog,"[41] and, in the civilized man,
the savage is just beneath the skin; if the intellect has become
somewhat polished, there is no change in his instincts. A master is
as necessary to one as to the other - a magician who subjugates his
imagination, disciplines him, keeps him from biting without occasion,
ties him up, cares for him, and takes him out hunting. He is born to
obey, does not deserve any better lot, and has no other right.
Become consul and afterward emperor, he applies the theory on a grand
scale, and, in his hands, experience daily furnishes fresh
verifications of the theory. At his first nod the French prostrate
themselves obediently, and there remain, as in a natural position; the
lower class, the peasants and the soldiers, with animal fidelity, and
the upper class, the dignitaries and the functionaries, with Byzantine
servility.- The republicans, on their side, make no resistance; on the
contrary, among these he has found his best governing instruments -
senators, deputies, state councilors, judges, and administrators of
every grade.[42] He has at once detected behind their sermonizing on
liberty and equality, their despotic instincts, their craving for
command, for leadership, even as subordinates; and, in addition to
this, with most of them, the appetite for money or for sensual
pleasures. The difference between the delegate of the Committee of
Public Safety and the minister, prefect, or subprefect under the
Empire is small; it is the same person in two costumes: at first in
the carmagnole, and later in the embroidered coat. If a rude, poor
puritan, like Cambon or Baudot, refuses to don the official uniform,
if two or three Jacobin generals, like Lecourbe and Delmas, grumble at
the coronation parade, Napoleon, who knows their mental grasp, regards
them as ignoramuses, limited to and rigid inside a fixed idea. - As to
the cultivated and intelligent liberals of 1789, he consigns them with
a word to the place where they belong; they are "ideologists"; in
other words, their pretended knowledge is mere drawing-room prejudice
and the imagination of the study. "Lafayette is a political ninny,"
the eternal "dupe of men and of things."[43] With Lafayette and some
others, one embarrassing detail remains namely:
* impartiality and generosity,
* constant care for the common good,
* respect for others,
* the authority of conscience,
* loyalty,
* and good faith.
In short, noble and pure motives.
Napoleon does not accept the denial thus given to his theory; when he
talks with people, he questions their moral nobleness. "General
Dumas,"[44] said he, abruptly, to Mathieu Dumas, "you were one of the
imbeciles who believed in liberty?" "Yes, sire, and I was and am still
one of that class." "And you, like the rest, took part in the
Revolution through ambition?" "No, sire, I should have calculated
badly, for I am now precisely where I stood in 1790."
"You were not sufficiently aware of the motives which prompted you;
you cannot be different from other people; it is all personal
interest. Now, take Massena. He has glory and honors enough; but he
is not content. He wants to be a prince, like Murat and like
Bernadotte. He would risk being shot to-morrow to be a prince. That
is the incentive of Frenchmen." -
His system is based on this. The most competent witnesses, and those
who were most familiar with him certify to his fixed idea on this
point.
"His opinions on men," writes M. de Metternich,[45] "centered on one
idea, which, unfortunately for him, had acquired in his mind the force
of an axiom; he was persuaded that no man who was induced to appear on
the public stage, or who was merely engaged in the active pursuits of
life, governed himself, or was governed, otherwise than by his
interest."
According to him, Man is held through his egoistic passions, fear,
cupidity, sensuality, self-esteem, and emulation; these are the
mainsprings when he is not under excitement, when he reasons.
Moreover, it is not difficult to turn the brain of man; for he is
imaginative, credulous, and subject to being carried away; stimulate
his pride or vanity, provide him with an extreme and false opinion of
himself and of his fellow-men, and you can start him off head downward
wherever you please.[46] - None of these motives is entitled to much
respect, and beings thus fashioned form the natural material for an
absolute government, the mass of clay awaiting the potter's hand to
shape it. If parts of this mass are obdurate, the potter has only to
crush and pound them and mix them thoroughly.
Such is the final conception on which Napoleon has anchored himself,
and into which he sinks deeper and deeper, no matter how directly and
violently he may be contradicted by palpable facts. Nothing will
dislodge him; neither the stubborn energy of the English, nor the
inflexible gentleness of the Pope, nor the declared insurrection of
the Spaniards, nor the mute insurrection of the Germans, nor the
resistance of Catholic consciences, nor the gradual disaffection of
the French; the reason is, that his conception is imposed on him by
his character;[47] he sees man as he needs to see him.
III. Napoleon's Dominant Passion: Power.
His mastery of the will of others. - Degree of submission required by
him. - His mode of appreciating others and of profiting by them. -
Tone of command and of conversation.
We at last confront his dominant passion, the inward abyss into which
instinct, education, reflection, and theory have plunged him, and
which is to engulf the proud edifice of his fortune - I mean, his
ambition. It is the prime motor of his soul and the permanent
substance of his will, so profound that he no longer distinguishes
between it and himself, and of which he is sometimes unconscious.
"I," said he to Roederer,[48] "I have no ambition," and then,
recollecting himself, he adds, with his ordinary lucidity, "or, if I
have any, it is so natural to me, so innate, so intimately associated
with my existence, that it is like the blood which flows in my veins
and the atmosphere I breathe." -
Still more profoundly, he likens it to that unconscious, savage, and
irresistible emotion which vibrates the soul from one end to the
other, to this universal thrill moving all living beings, animal or
moral, to those keen and terrible tremors which we call the passion of
love.
"I have but one passion,[49] one mistress, and that is France. I
sleep with her. She has never been false to me. She lavishes her
blood and treasures on me. If I need 500,000 men, she gives them to
me."
Let no one come between him and her. Let Joseph, in relation to the
coronation, abstain from claiming his place, even secondary and
prospective, in the new empire; let him not put forth his fraternal
rights.[50] "It is to wound me in the most tender spot." This he does,
and, "Nothing can efface that from my souvenirs. It is as if he had
told an impassioned lover that he had slept with his mistress, or
merely that he hoped to succeed with her. My mistress is power. I
have worked too hard to obtain her, to let her be ravished from me, or
even suffer anybody to covet her." This ambition, as avid as it is
jealous, which becomes exasperated at the very idea of a rival, feels
hampered by the mere idea of setting a limit to it; however vast the
acquired power, he would like to have it still more vast; on quitting
the most copious banquet, he still remains insatiate. On the day
after the coronation he said to Decrés:[51]
"I come too late, there is no longer anything great to accomplish. I
admit that my career is brilliant and that I have made my way
successfully. But what a difference alongside of antiquity! Take
Alexander! After having conquered Asia, and proclaimed himself to the
people as the son of Jupiter, with the exception of Olympias, who knew
what all this meant, and Aristotle, and a few Athenian pedants, the
entire Orient believed him. Very well, should I now declare that I was
the son of God Almighty, and proclaim that I am going to worship him
under this title, every market woman would hoot at me as I walked
along the streets. People nowadays know too much. Nothing is left to
do."
And yet, even on this secluded, elevated domain, and which twenty
centuries of civilization keeps inaccessible, he still encroaches, and
to the utmost, in a roundabout way, by laying his hand on the Church,
and next on the Pope; here, as elsewhere, he takes all he can get.
Nothing in his eyes, is more natural; he has a right to it, because he
is the only capable one.
"My Italian people[52] must know me well enough not to forget that
there is more in my little finger than in all their brains put
together."
Alongside of him, they are children, "minors," the French also, and
likewise the rest of mankind. A diplomat, who often saw him and
studied him under all as aspects, sums up his character in one
conclusive phrase:
"He considered himself an isolated being in this world, made to govern
and direct all minds as he pleased."[53]
Hence, whoever has anything to do with him, must abandon his
independence and become his tool of government.
"That terrible man," often exclaimed Decrés[54] "has subjugated us
all! He holds all our imaginations in his hands, now of steel and now
of velvet, but whether one or the other during the day nobody knows,
and there is no way to escape from them whatever they seize on they
never let go!"
Independence of any kind, even eventual and merely possible, puts him
in a bad mood; intellectual or moral superiority is of this order, and
he gradually gets rid of it;[55] toward the end he no longer tolerates
alongside of him any but subject or captive spirits. His principal
servants are machines or fanatics, a devout worshipper, like Maret, a
gendarme, like Savary,[56] ready to do his bidding. From the outset,
he has reduced his ministers to the condition of clerks; for he is
administrator as well as ruler, and in each department he watches
details as closely as the entire mass. Accordingly, he requires
simply for head of departments active pen pushers, mute executors,
docile and special hands, no need for honest and independent advisers.
"I should not know what to do with them," he said, "if they were not
to a certain extent mediocre in mind and character."
As to his generals, he admits himself that "he likes to award fame
only to those who cannot stand it." In any event, "he must be sole
master in making or unmaking reputations," according to his personal
requirements. Too brilliant a soldier would become too important; a
subordinate should never be tempted to be less submissive. To this
end he studies what he will omit in his bulletins, what alterations
and what changes shall be made in them.
"It is convenient to keep silent about certain victories, or to
convert the defeat of this or that marshal into a success. Sometimes
a general learns by a bulletin of an action that he was never in and
of a speech that he never made."
If he complains, he is notified to keep still, or by way of recompense
he is allowed to pillage, levy contributions, and enrich himself. On
becoming duke or hereditary prince, with half a million or a million
of revenue from his estate, he is not less held in subjection, for the
creator has taken precautions against his own creations.
"There are men,"[57] he said, "who I have made independent, but I know
well where to find them and keep them from being ungrateful."
In effect, if he has endowed them magnificently it is with domains
assigned to them in conquered countries, which insures their fortune
being his fortune. Besides, in order that they may not enjoy any
pecuniary stability, he expressly encourages them and all his grand
dignitaries to make extravagant outlays; thus, through their financial
embarrassments be holds them in a leash. "We have seen most of his
marshals, constantly pressed by their creditors, come to him for
assistance, which he has given as he fancied, or as he found it for
his interest to attach some one to him."[58]
Thus, beyond the universal ascendancy which his power and genius have
conferred on him, he craves a personal, supplementary, and
irresistible hold on everybody. Consequently,[59]"he carefully
cultivates all the bad passions . . . . he is glad to find the bad
side in a man, so as to get him in his power"; the thirst for money in
Savary, the Jacobin defects of Fouché, the vanity and sensuality of
Cambacérès, the careless cynicism and "the easy immorality" of
Talleyrand, the "dry bluntness " of Duroc, the courtier-like
insipidity of Maret, "the silliness" of Berthier; he brings this out,
diverts himself with it, and profits by it. "Where he sees no vice,
he encourages weaknesses, and, in default of anything better, he
provokes fear, so that he may be ever and continually the strongest. .
. .He dreads ties of affection, and strives to alienate people from
each other. . . . He sells his favors only by arousing anxiety; he
thinks that the best way to attach individuals to him is to compromise
them, and often, even, to ruin them in public opinion." - " If
Caulaincourt is compromised," said he, after the murder of the Duc
d'Enghien, "it is no great matter, he will serve me all the better."
Once that the creature is in his clutches, let him not imagine that he
can escape or withhold anything of his own accord; all that he has
belongs to him. Zeal and success in the performance of duty, punctual
obedience within limits previously designated, is not enough; behind
the functionary he claims the man. "All that may well be," he
replies, to whatever may be said in praise of him,[60] "but he does
not belong to me as I would like." It is devotion which he exacts,
and, by devotion, he means the irrevocable and complete surrender "of
the entire person, in all his sentiments and opinions." According to
him, writes a witness, "one must abandon every old habit, even the
most trifling, and be governed by one thought alone,. that of his
will and interests."[61] For greater security, his servitors ought to
extinguish in themselves the critical sense. "What he fears the most
is that, close to him or far off, the faculty of judging should be
applied or even preserved."
"His idea is a marble groove," out of which no mind should
diverge.[62] Especially as no two minds could think of diverging at
the same time, and on the same side, their concurrence, even when
passive, their common understanding, even if kept to themselves, their
whispers, almost inaudible, constitute a league, a faction, and, if
they are functionaries, "a conspiracy." On his return from Spain he
declares, with a terrible explosion of wrath and threats,[63] "that
the ministers and high dignitaries whom he has created must stop
expressing their opinions and thoughts freely, that they cannot be
otherwise than his organs, that treason has already begun when they
begin to doubt, and that it is under full headway when, from doubt,
they proceed to dissent." If, against his constant encroachments, they
strive to preserve a last refuge, if they refuse to abandon their
conscience to him, their faith as Catholics or their honor as honest
men, he is surprised and gets irritated. In reply to the Bishop of
Ghent, who, in the most respectful manner, excuses himself for not
taking a second oath that is against his conscience, he rudely turns
his back, and says, "Very well, sir, your conscience is a
blockhead!"[64] Portalis, director of the publishing office,[65]
having received a papal brief from his cousin, the Abbé d'Astros,
respected a confidential communication; he simply recommended his
cousin to keep this document secret, and declared that, if it were
made public, he would prohibit its circulation; by way of extra
precaution he notified the prefect of police. But he did not
specially denounce his cousin, have the man arrested and the document
seized. On the strength of this, the Emperor, in full council of
state, apostrophizes him to his face, and, "with one of those looks
which go straight through one,"[66] declares that he has committed
"the vilest of perfidies"; he bestows on him for half an hour a
hailstorm of reproaches and insults, and then orders him out of the
room as if a lackey who had been guilty of a theft. Whether he keeps
within his function or not, the functionary must be content to do
whatever is demanded of him, and readily anticipate every commission.
If his scruples arrest him, if he alleges personal obligations, if he
had rather not fail in delicacy, or even in common loyalty, he incurs
the risk of offending or losing the favor of the master, which is the
case with M. de Rémusat,[67] who is unwilling to become his spy,
reporter, and denunciator for the Faubourg Saint-Germain, who does not
offer, at Vienna, to pump out of Madame d'André the address of her
husband so that M. d'André may be taken and immediately shot. Savary,
who was the negotiator for his being given up, kept constantly telling
M. de Rémusat, "You are going against your interest - I must say that
I do not comprehend you!" And yet Savary, himself minister of the
police, executor of most important services, head manager of the
murder of the Duc d'Enghien and of the ambuscade at Bayonne,
counterfeiter of Austrian bank-notes for the campaign of 1809 and of
Russian banknotes for that of 1812,[68] Savary ends in getting weary;
he is charged with too many dirty jobs; however hardened his
conscience it has a tender spot; he discovers at last that he has
scruples. It is with great repugnance that, in February, 1814, he
executes the order to have a small infernal machine prepared, moving
by clock-work, so as to blow up the Bourbons on their return into
France.[69] "Ah," said he, giving himself a blow on the forehead, "it
must be admitted that the Emperor is sometimes hard to serve!"
If he exacts so much from the human creature, it is because, in
playing the game he has to play, he must absorb everything; in the
situation in which be has placed himself, caution is unnecessary. "Is
a statesman," said he, "made to have feeling? Is he not wholly an
eccentric personage, always alone by himself, he on one side and the
world on the other?"[70]
In this duel without truce or mercy, people interest him only whilst
they are useful to him; their value depends on what he can make out of
them; his sole business is to squeeze them, to extract to the last
drop whatever is available in them.
"I find very little satisfaction in useless sentiments," said he
again,[71] "and Berthier is so mediocre that I do not know why I waste
my time on him. And yet when I am not set against him, I am not sure
that I do not like him."
He goes no further. According to him, this indifference is necessary
in a statesman. The glass he looks through is that of his own
policy;[72] he must take care that it does not magnify or diminish
objects. - Therefore, outside of explosions of nervous sensibility,
"he has no consideration for men other than that of a foreman for his
workmen,"[73] or, more precisely, for his tools; once the tool is worn
out, little does he care whether it rusts away in a corner or is cast
aside on a heap of scrap-iron. "Portalis, Minister of Justice,[74]
enters his room one day with a downcast look and his eyes filled with
tears. 'What's the matter with you, Portalis?' inquired Napoleon,
'are you ill? 'No, sire, but very wretched. The poor Archbishop of
Tours, my old schoolmate . . .' 'Eh, well, what has happened to him?'
'Alas, sire, he has just died.' 'What do I care? he was no longer good
for anything.'" Owning and making the most of men and of things, of
bodies and of souls, using and abusing them at discretion, even to
exhaustion, without being responsible to any one, he reaches that
point after a few years where he can say as glibly and more
despotically than Louis XIV. himself,
"My armies, my fleets, my cardinals, my councils, my senate, my
populations, my empire."[75]
Addressing army corps about to rush into battle:
"Soldiers, I need your lives, and you owe them to me."
He says to General Dorsenne and to the grenadiers of the guard:[76]
"I hear that you complain that you want to return to Paris, to your
mistresses. Undeceive yourselves. I shall keep you under arms until
you are eighty. You were born to the bivouac, and you shall die
there."
How he treats his brothers and relations who have become kings; how he
reins them in; how he applies the spur and the whip and makes them
trot and jump fences and ditches, may be found in his correspondence;
every stray impulse to take the lead, even when justified by an
unforeseen urgency and with the most evident good intention, is
suppressed as a deviation, is arrested with a brusque roughness which
strains the loins and weakens the knees of the delinquent. The
amiable Prince Eugene, so obedient and so loyal,[77] is thus warned:
"If you want orders or advice from His Majesty in the alteration of
the ceiling of your room you should wait till you get them; were Milan
burning and you asked orders for putting out the fire, you should let
Milan burn until you got them. . . His Majesty is displeased, and very
much displeased, with you; you must never attempt to do his work.
Never does he like this, and he will never forgive it."
This enables us to judge of his tone with subalterns. The French
battalions are refused admission into certain places in Holland:[78]
"Announce to the King of Holland, that if his ministers have acted on
their own responsibility, I will have them arrested and all their
heads cut off."
He says to M. de Ségur, member of the Academy commission which had
just approved M. de Chateaubriand's discourse:[79]
"You, and M. de Fontaines, as state councillor and grand master, I
ought to put in Vincennes. . . . Tell the second class of the
Institute that I will have no political subjects treated at its
meetings. . . . .If it disobeys, I will break it up like a bad club.
Even when not angry or scolding,[80] when the claws are drawn in, one
feels the clutch. He says to Beugnot, whom he has just berated,
scandalously and unjustly, - conscious of having done him injustice
and with a view to produce an effect on the bystanders, -
"Well, you great imbecile, you have got back your brains?"
On this, Beugnot, tall as a drum-major, bows very low, while the
smaller man, raising his hand, seizes him by the ear, "a heady mark of
favor," says Beugnot, a sign of familiarity and of returning good
humor. And better yet, the master deigns to lecture Beugnot on his
personal tastes, on his regrets, on his wish to return to France: What
would he like? To be his minister in Paris? "Judging by what he saw of
me the other day I should not be there very long; I might die of worry
before the end of the month." He has already killed Portalis, Cretet,
and almost Treilhard, even though he had led a hard life: he could no
longer urinate, nor the others either. The same thing would have
happened to Beignot, if not worse. . . .
" Stay here . . . . after which you will be old, or rather we all
shall be old, and I will send you to the Senate to drivel at your
ease."
Evidently,[81 the nearer one is to his person the more disagreeable
life becomes.[82] "Admirably served, promptly obeyed to the minute, he
still delights in keeping everybody around him in terror concerning
the details of all that goes on in his palace." Has any difficult task
been accomplished? He expresses no thanks, never or scarcely ever
praises, and, which happens but once, in the case of M. de Champagny,
Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is praised for having finished the
treaty of Vienna in one night, and with unexpected advantages;[83]
this time, the Emperor has thought aloud, is taken by surprise;
"ordinarily, he manifests approbation only by his silence." - When M.
de Rémusat, prefect of the palace, has arranged "one of those
magnificent fêtes in which all the arts minister to his enjoyment,"
economically, correctly, with splendor and success, his wife never
asks her husband[84] if the Emperor is satisfied, but whether he has
scolded more or less.
"His leading general principle, which he applies in every way, in
great things as well as in small ones, is that a man's zeal depends
upon his anxiety."
How insupportable the constraint he exercises, with what crushing
weight his absolutism bears down on the most tried devotion and on the
most pliable characters, with what excess he tramples on and wounds
the best dispositions, up to what point he represses and stifles the
respiration of the human being, he knows as well as anybody. He was
heard to say,
"The lucky man is he who hides away from me in the depths of some
province."
And, another day, having asked M. de Ségur what people would say of
him after his death, the latter enlarged on the regrets which would be
universally expressed. "Not at all," replied the Emperor; and then,
drawing in his breath in a significant manner indicative of universal
relief, he replied,
"They'll say, 'Whew!'"[85]
IV. His Bad Manners.
His bearings in Society. - His deportment toward Women. - His disdain
of Politeness.
There are very few monarchs, even absolute, who persistently, arid
from morning to night, maintain a despotic attitude. Generally, and
especially in France, the sovereign makes two divisions of his time,
one for business and the other for social duties, and, in the latter
case, while always head of the State, he is also head of his house:
for he welcomes visitors, entertains his guests, and, that his guests
may not be robots, he tries to put them at their ease. - That was the
case with Louis XIV.[86] - polite to everybody, always affable with
men, and sometimes gracious, always courteous with women, and some
times gallant, carefully avoiding brusqueness, ostentation, and
sarcasms, never allowing himself to use an offensive word, never
making people feel their inferiority and dependence, but, on the
contrary, encouraging them to express opinions, and even to converse,
tolerating in conversation a semblance of equality, smiling at a
repartee, playfully telling a story - such was his drawing-room
constitution. The drawing-room as well as every human society needs
one, and a liberal one; otherwise life dies out. Accordingly, the
observance of this constitution in by-gone society is known by the
phrase savoir-vivre, and, more rigidly than anybody else, Louis XIV.
submitted himself to this code of proprieties. Traditionally, and
through education, he had consideration for others, at least for the
people around him; his courtiers becoming his guests without ceasing
to be his subjects.
There is nothing of this sort with Napoleon. He preserves nothing of
the etiquette he borrows from the old court but its rigid discipline
and its pompous parade. "The ceremonial system," says an eyewitness,
"was carried out as if it had been regulated by the tap of a drum;
everything was done, in a certain sense, 'double-quick.'[87] . . .
This air of precipitation, this constant anxiety which it inspires,"
puts an end to all comfort, all ease, all entertainment, all agreeable
intercourse; there is no common bond but that of command and
obedience. " The few individuals he singles out, Savary, Duroc,
Maret, keep silent and simply transmit orders. . . . We did not appear
to them, in doing what we were ordered to do, and we did not appear to
ourselves, other than veritable machines, all resembling, or but
little short of it, the elegant gilded arm-chairs with which the
palaces of Saint-Cloud and the Tuileries had just been embellished."
For a machine to work well it is important that the machinist should
overhaul it frequently, which this one never fails to do, especially
after a long absence. Whilst he is on his way from Tilsit, "everybody
anxiously examines his conscience to ascertain what he has done that
this rigid master will find fault with on his return. Whether spouse,
family, or grand dignitary, each is more or less disturbed; while the
Empress, who knows him better than any one, naively says, 'As the
Emperor is so happy it is certain that he will do a deal of
scolding!'"[88] Actually, he has scarcely arrived when he gives a rude
and vigorous wrench of the bolt; and then, "satisfied at having
excited terror all around, he appears to have forgotten what has
passed and resumes the usual tenor of his life." "Through calculation
as well as from taste,[89] he never ceases to be a monarch"; hence, "a
mute, frigid court . . . . more dismal than dignified; every face
wears an expression of uneasiness . . . a silence both dull and
constrained." At Fontainebleau, "amidst splendors and pleasures,"
there is no real enjoyment nor anything agreeable, not even for
himself. "I pity you," said M. de Talleyrand to M. de Rémusat, "you
have to amuse the unamusable." At the theatre he is abstracted or
yawns. Applause is prohibited; the court, sitting out "the file of
eternal tragedies, is mortally bored . . . . the young ladies fall
asleep, people leave the theatre, gloomy and discontented." - There is
the same constraint in the drawing-room. "He did not know how to
appear at ease, and I believe that he never wanted anybody else to be
so, afraid of the slightest approach to familiarity, and inspiring
each with a fear of saying something offensive to his neighbor before
witnesses. . . . During the quadrille, he moves around amongst the
rows of ladies, addressing them with some trifling or disagreeable
remark," and never does he accost them otherwise than "awkwardly and
ill at his ease." At bottom, he distrusts them and is ill-disposed
toward them.[90] It is because "the power they have acquired in
society seems to him an intolerable usurpation. - "Never did he utter
to a woman a graceful or even a well-turned compliment, although the
effort to find one was often apparent on his face and in the tone of
his voice. . . . He talks to them only of their toilet, of which he
declares himself a severe and minute judge, and on which he indulges
in not very delicate jests; or again, on the number of their children,
demanding of them in rude language whether they nurse them themselves;
or again, lecturing them on their social relations."[91] Hence, "there
is not one who does not rejoice when he moves off."[92] He would often
amuse himself by putting them out of countenance, scandalizing and
bantering them to their faces, driving them into a corner the same as
a colonel worries his canteen women. "Yes, ladies, you furnish the
good people of the Faubourg Saint-Germain with something to talk
about. It is said, Madame A..., that you are intimate with Monsieur
B..., and you Madame C...., with Monsieur D ." On any intrigue
chancing to appear in the police reports, "he loses no time in
informing the husband of what is going on." - He is no less indiscreet
in relation to his own affairs;[93] when it is over he divulges the
fact and gives the name; furthermore, he informs Josephine in detail
and will not listen to any reproach: "I have a right to answer all
your objections with an eternal I!"
This term, indeed, answers to everything, and he explains it by
adding: "I stand apart from other men. I accept nobody's conditions,"
nor any species of obligation, no code whatever, not even the common
code of outward civility, which, diminishing or dissimulating
primitive brutality, allows men to associate together without
clashing. He does not comprehend it, and he repudiates it. "I have
little liking,"[94] he says, "for that vague, leveling word propriety
(convenances), which you people fling out every chance you get. It is
an invention of fools who want to pass for clever men; a kind of
social muzzle which annoys the strong and is useful only to the
mediocre. . . Ah, good taste ! Another classic expression which I do
not accept." "It is your personal enemy"; says Talleyrand to him, one
day, "if you could have shot it away with bullets, it would have
disappeared long ago!" - It is because good taste is the highest
attainment of civilization, the innermost vestment which drapes human
nudity, which best fits the person, the last garment retained after
the others have been cast off, and which delicate tissue continues to
hamper Napoleon; he throws it off instinctively, because it interferes
with his natural behavior, with the uncurbed, dominating, savage ways
of the vanquisher who knocks down his adversary and treats him as he
pleases.
V. His Policy.
His tone and bearing towards Sovereigns. - His Policy. - His means and
ends.- After Sovereigns he sets populations against him. - Final
opinion of Europe.
Such behavior render social intercourse impossible, especially among
the independent and armed personages known as nations or States. This
is why they are outlawed in politics and in diplomacy and every head
of a State or representative of a country, carefully and on principle,
abstains from them, at least with those on his own level. He is bound
to treat these as his equals, humor them, and, accordingly, not to
give way to the irritation of the moment or to personal feeling; in
short, to exercise self-control and measure his words. To this is due
the tone of manifestos, protocols, dispatches, and other public
documents the formal language of legations, so cold, dry, and
elaborated, those expressions purposely attenuated and smoothed down,
those long phrases apparently spun out mechanically and always after
the same pattern, a sort of soft wadding or international buffer
interposed between contestants to lessen the shocks of collision. The
reciprocal irritations between States are already too great; there are
ever too many unavoidable and regrettable encounters, too many causes
of conflict, the consequences of which are too serious; it is
unnecessary to add to the wounds of interest the wounds of imagination
and of pride; and above all, it is unnecessary to amplify these
without reason, at the risk of increasing the obstacles of to-day and
the resentments of to-morrow. - With Napoleon it is just the opposite:
his attitude, even at peaceful interviews, remains aggressive and
militant; purposely or in-voluntarily, he raises his hand and the blow
is felt to be coming, while, in the meantime, he insults. In his
correspondence with sovereigns, in his official proclamations, in his
deliberations with ambassadors, and even at public audiences,[95] he
provokes, threatens, and defies.[96] He treats his adversary with a
lofty air, insults him often to his face, and charges him with the
most disgraceful imputations.[97] He divulges the secrets of his
private life, of his closet, and of his bed; he defames or calumniates
his ministers, his court, and his wife;[98] he purposely stabs him in
the most sensitive part. He tells one that he is a dupe, a betrayed
husband; another that he is an abettor of assassination; he assumes
the air of a judge condemning a criminal, or the tone of a superior
reprimanding an inferior, or, at best, that of a teacher taking a
scholar to task. With a smile of pity, he points out mistakes, weak
points, and incapacity, and shows him beforehand that he must be
defeated. On receiving the envoy of the Emperor Alexander at
Wilna,[99] be says to him:
"Russia does not want this war; none of the European powers are in
favor of it; England herself does not want it, for she foresees the
harm it will do to Russia, and even, perhaps, the greatest. . . I know
as well as yourself, and perhaps even better, how many troops you
have. Your infantry in all amounts to 120,000 men and your cavalry to
about 60,000 or 70,000; I have three times as many. . . . The Emperor
Alexander is badly advised. How can he tolerate such vile people
around him - an Armfeld, an intriguing, depraved, rascally fellow, a
ruined debauchee, who is known only by his crimes and who is the enemy
of Russia; a Stein, driven from his country like an outcast, a
miscreant with a price on his head; a Bennigsen, who, it is said, has
some military talent, of which I know nothing, but whose hands are
steeped in blood?[100] . . . . Let him surround himself with the
Russians and I will say nothing. . . . Have you no Russian gentlemen
among you who are certainly more attached to him than these
mercenaries? Does he imagine that they are fond of him personally? Let
him put Armfeld in command in Finland and I have nothing to say; but
to have him about his person, for shame ! . . . . What a superb
perspective opened out to the Emperor Alexander at Tilsit, and
especially at Erfurt! . . . . He has spoilt the finest reign Russia
ever saw. . . . How can he admit to his society such men as a Stein,
an Armfeld, a Vinzingerode? Say to the Emperor Alexander, that as he
gathers around him my personal enemies it means a desire to insult me
personally, and, consequently, that I must do the same to him. I will
drive all his Baden, Wurtemburg, and Weimar relations out of Germany.
Let him provide a refuge for them in Russia!"
Note what he means by - personal insult[101], how he intends to avenge
himself by reprisals of the worst kind, to what excess he carries his
interference, how he enters the cabinets of foreign sovereigns,
forcibly entering and breaking, to drive out their councilors and
control their meetings: like the Roman senate with an Antiochus or a
Prusias, like an English Resident with the King of Oude or of Lahore.
With others as at home, he cannot help but act as a master. The
aspiration for universal dominion is in his very nature; it may be
modified, kept in check, but never can it be completely stifled."[102]
It declares itself on the organization of the Consulate. It explains
why the peace of Amiens could not last; apart from the diplomatic
discussions and behind his alleged grievances, his character, his
exactions, his avowed plans, and the use he intends making of his
forces form the real and true causes of the rupture. In
comprehensible sometimes even in explicit terms, he tells the English:
Expel the Bourbons from your island and close the mouths of your
journalists. If this is against your constitution so much the worse
for it, or so much the worse for you. "There are general principles
of international law to which the (special) laws of states must give
way."[103] Change your fundamental laws. Suppress the freedom of the
press and the right of asylum on your soil, the same as I have done.
"I have a very poor opinion of a government which is not strong enough
to interdict things objectionable to foreign governments."[104] As to
mine, my interference with my neighbors, my late acquisitions of
territory, that does not concern you: "I suppose that you want to talk
about Piedmont and Switzerland? These are trifles"[105] "Europe
recognizes that Holland, Italy, and Switzerland are at the disposition
of France.[106] On the other hand, Spain submits to me and through her
I hold Portugal. Thus, from Amsterdam to Bordeaux, from Lisbon to
Cadiz and Genoa, from Leghorn to Naples and to Tarentum, I can close
every port to you; no treaty of commerce between us. Any treaty that
I might grant to you would be trifling: for each million of
merchandise that you would send into France a million of French
merchandise would be exported;[107] in other words, you would be
subject to an open or concealed continental blockade, which would
cause you as much distress in peace as if you were at war." My eyes
are nevertheless fixed on Egypt; "six thousand Frenchmen would now
suffice to re-conquer it";[108] forcibly, or otherwise, I shall return
there; opportunities will not be lacking, and I shall be on the watch
for them; "sooner or later she will belong to France, either through
the dissolution of the Ottoman empire, or through some arrangement
with the Porte."[109] Evacuate Malta so that the Mediterranean may
become a French lake; I must rule on sea as on land, and dispose of
the Orient as of the Occident. In sum, "with my France, England must
naturally end in becoming simply an appendix: nature has made her one
of our islands, the same as Oleron or Corsica."[110] Naturally, with
such a perspective before them, the English keep Malta and recommence
the war. He has anticipated such an occurrence, and his resolution is
taken; at a glance, he perceives and measures the path this will open
to him; with his usual clear-sightedness he has comprehended, and he
announces that the English resistance "forces him to conquer Europe. .
. ."[111] - "The First Consul is only thirty-three and has thus far
destroyed only the second-class governments. Who knows how much time
he will require to again change the face of Europe and resurrect the
Western Roman Empire?"
To subjugate the Continent in order to form a coalition against
England, such, henceforth, are his means, which are as violent as the
end in view, while the means, like the end, are given by his
character. Too imperious and too impatient to wait or to manage
others, he is incapable of yielding to their will except through
constraint, and his collaborators are to him nothing more than
subjects under the name of allies. - Later, at St. Helena, with his
indestructible imaginative energy and power of illusion, he plays on
the public with his humanitarian illusions.[112] But, as he himself
avows, the accomplishment of his retrospective dream required
beforehand the entire submission of all Europe; a liberal sovereign
and pacificator, "a crowned Washington, yes," he used to say, "but I
could not reasonably attain this point, except through a universal
dictatorship, which I aimed at."[113] In vain does common sense
demonstrate to him that such an enterprise inevitably rallies the
Continent to the side of England, and that his means divert him from
the end. In vain is it repeatedly represented to him that he needs
one sure great ally on the Continent;[114] that to obtain this he must
conciliate Austria; that he must not drive her to despair, but rather
win her over and compensate her on the side of the Orient; place her
in permanent conflict with Russia, and attach her to the new French
Empire by a community of vital interests. In vain does he, after
Tilsit, make a bargain of this kind with Russia. This bargain cannot
hold, because in this arrangement Napoleon, as usual with him, always
encroaching, threatening, and attacking, wants to reduce Alexander to
the role of a subordinate and a dupe.[115] No clear-sighted witness
can doubt this. In 1809, a diplomat writes: "The French system, which
is now triumphant, is directed against the whole body of great
states,"[116] not alone against England, Prussia, and Austria, but
against Russia, against every power capable of maintaining its
independence; for, if she remains independent, she may become hostile,
and as a precautionary step Napoleon crushes in her a probable enemy.
All the more so because this course once entered upon he cannot stop;
at the same time his character and the situation in which he has
placed himself impels him on while his past hurries him along to his
future.[117] At the moment of the rupture of the treaty of Amiens he
is already so strong and so aggressive that his neighbors are obliged,
for their own security, to form an alliance with England; this leads
him to break down all the old monarchies that are still intact, to
conquer Naples, to mutilate Austria the first time, to dismember and
cut up Prussia, to mutilate Austria the second time, to manufacture
kingdoms for his brothers at Naples, in Holland and in Westphalia. --
At this same date, all the ports of his empire are closed against the
English, which leads him to close against them all the ports of the
Continent, to organize against them the continental blockade, to
proclaim against them an European crusade, to prevent the neutrality
of sovereigns like the Pope, of lukewarm subalterns like his brother
Louis, of doubtful collaborators or inadequate, like the Braganzas of
Portugal and the Bourbons of Spain, and therefore to get hold of
Portugal, Spain, the Pontifical States, and Holland, and next of the
Hanseatic towns and the duchy of Oldenburg, to extending along the
entire coast, from the mouths of the Cattaro and Trieste to Hamburg
and Dantzic, his cordon of military chiefs, prefects, and custom-
houses, a sort of net of which he draws the meshes tighter and tighter
every day, even stifling not alone his home consumer, but the producer
and the merchant.[118] - And all this sometimes by a simple decree,
with no other alleged motive than his interest, his convenience, or
his pleasure,[119] brusquely and arbitrarily, in violation of
international law, humanity, and hospitality. It would take volumes
to describe his abuses of power, the tissue of brutalities and
knaveries,[120] the oppression of the ally and despoiling of the
vanquished, the military brigandage exercised over populations in time
of war, and by the systematic exactions practiced on them in times of
peace.[121]
Accordingly, after 1808, these populations rise against him. He has so
deeply injured them in their interests, and hurt their feelings to
such an extent,[122] he has so trodden them down, ransomed, and forced
them into his service. He has destroyed, apart from French lives, so
many Spanish, Italian, Austrian, Prussian, Swiss, Bavarian, Saxon, and
Dutch lives, he has slain so many men as enemies, he has enlisted such
numbers at home, and slain so many under his own banners as
auxiliaries, that nations are still more hostile to him than
sovereigns. Unquestionably, nobody can live together with such a
character; his genius is too vast, too baneful, and all the more
because it is so vast. War will last as long as he reigns; it is in
vain to reduce him, to confine him at home, to drive him back within
the ancient frontiers of France; no barrier will restrain him; no
treaty will bind him; peace with him will never be other than a truce;
he will use it simply to recover himself, and, as soon as he has done
this, he will begin again;[123] he is in his very essence anti-social.
The mind of Europe in this respect is made up definitely and
unshakably. One petty detail alone shows how unanimous and profound
this conviction was. On the 7th of March the news reached Vienna that
he had escaped from the island of Elba, without its being yet known
where he would land. M. de Metternich[124] brings the news to the
Emperor of Austria before eight o'clock in the morning, who says to
him, "Lose no time in finding the King of Prussia and the Emperor of
Russia, and tell them that I am ready to order my army to march at
once for France." At a quarter past eight M. de Metternich is with the
Czar, and at half-past eight, with the King of Prussia; both of them
reply instantly in the same manner. "At nine o'clock," says M. de
Metternich, "I was back. At ten o'clock aids flew in every direction
countermanding army orders. . . . Thus was war declared in less than
an hour."
VI. Fundamental Defaults of his System.
Inward principle of his outward deportment. - He subordinates the
State to him instead of subordinating himself to the State. - Effect
of this.- His work merely a life-interest. - It is ephemeral. -
Injurious. - The number of lives it cost. - The mutilation of France.
- Vice of construction in his European edifice. - Analogous vice in
his French edifice.
Other heads of states have similarly passed their lives in doing
violence to mankind; but it was for something that was likely to last,
and for a national interest. What they deemed the public good was not
a phantom of the brain, a chimerical poem due to a caprice of the
imagination, to personal passions, to their own peculiar ambition and
pride. Outside of themselves and the coinage of their brain a real
and substantial object of prime importance existed, namely, the State,
the great body of society, the vast organism which lasts indefinitely
through the long series of interlinked and responsible generations.
If they drew blood from the passing generation it was for the benefit
of coming generations, to preserve them from civil war or from foreign
domination.[125] They have acted generally like able surgeons, if not
through virtue, at least through dynastic sentiment and family
traditions; having practiced from father to son, they had acquired the
professional conscience; their first and only aim was the safety and
health of their patient. It is for this reason that they have not
recklessly undertaken extravagant, bloody, and over-risky operations;
rarely have they given way to temptation through a desire to display
their skill, through the need of dazzling and astonishing the world,
through the novelty, keenness, and success of their saws and scalpels.
They felt that a longer and superior existence to their own was
imposed upon them; they looked beyond them-selves as far as their
sight would reach, and so took measures that the State after them
might do without them, live on intact, remain independent, vigorous,
and respected athwart the vicissitudes of European conflict and the
uncertain problems of coming history. Such, under the ancient régime,
was what were called reasons of state; these had prevailed in the
councils of princes for eight hundred years; along with unavoidable
failures and after temporary deviations, these had become for the time
being and remained the preponderating motive. Undoubtedly they
excused or authorized many breaches of faith, many outrages, and, to
come to the word, many crimes; but, in the political order of things,
especially in the management of external affairs, they furnished a
governing and a salutary principle. Under its constant influence
thirty monarchs had labored, and it is thus that, province after
province, they had solidly and enduringly built up France, by ways and
means beyond the reach of individuals but available to the heads of
States.
Now, this principle is lacking with their improvised successor. On
the throne as in the camp, whether general, consul, or emperor, he
remains the military adventurer, and cares only for his own
advancement. Owing to the great defect in the education of both
conscience and sentiments, instead of subordinating himself to the
State, he subordinates the State to him; he does not look beyond his
own brief physical existence to the nation which is to survive him.
Consequently, he sacrifices the future to the present, and his work is
not to be enduring. After him the deluge! Little does he care who
utters this terrible phrase; and worse still, he earnestly wishes,
from the bottom of his heart that everybody should utter it.
"My brother," said Joseph, in 1803,[126] "desires that the necessity
of his existence should be so strongly felt, and the benefit of this
considered so great, that nobody could look beyond it without
shuddering. He knows, and be feels it, that he reigns through this
idea rather than through force or gratitude. If to-morrow, or on any
day, it could be said, 'Here is a tranquil, established order of
things, here is a known successor; Bonaparte might die without fear of
change or disturbance,' my brother would no longer think himself
secure. . . . Such is the principle which governs him."
In vain do years glide by, never does he think of putting France in a
way to subsist without him; on the contrary, he jeopardizes lasting
acquisitions by exaggerated annexations, and it is evident from the
very first day that the Empire will end with the Emperor. In 1805,
the five per cents being at eighty francs, his Minister of the
Finances, Gaudin, observes to him that this is a reasonable rate.[127]
"No complaint can now be made, since these funds are an annuity on
Your Majesty's life." - "What do you mean by that?" - "I mean that the
Empire has become so great as to be ungovernable without you." - "If
my successor is a fool so much the worse for him!" - "Yes, but so much
the worse for France!" Two years later, M. de Metternich, by way of a
political summing up, expresses his general opinion: "It is remarkable
that Napoleon, constantly disturbing and modifying the relations of
all Europe, has not yet taken a single step toward ensuring the
maintenance of his successors."[128] In 1809, adds the same
diplomat:[129] "His death will be the signal for a new and frightful
upheaval; so many divided elements all tend to combine. Deposed
sovereigns will be recalled by former subjects; new princes will have
new crowns to defend. A veritable civil war will rage for half a
century over the vast empire of the continent the day when the arms of
iron which held the reins are turned into dust." In 1811, "everybody
is convinced[130] that on the disappearance of Napoleon, the master in
whose hands all power is concentrated, the first inevitable
consequence will be a revolution." At home, in France, at this same
date, his own servitors begin to comprehend that his empire is not
merely a life-interest and will not last after he is gone, but that
the Empire is ephemeral and will not last during his life; for he is
constantly raising his edifice higher and higher, while all that his
building gains in elevation it loses in stability. "The Emperor is
crazy," said Decrees to Marmont,[131]"completely crazy. He will ruin
us all, numerous as we are, and all will end in some frightful
catastrophe." In effect, he is pushing France on to the abyss,
forcibly and by deceiving her, through a breach of trust which
willfully, and by his fault, grows worse and worse just as his own
interests, as he comprehends these, diverge from those of the public
from year to year.
At the treaty of Luneville and before the rupture of the peace of
Amiens,[132] this variance was already considerable. It becomes
manifest at the treaty of Presbourg and still more evident at the
treaty of Tilsit. It is glaring in 1808, after the deposition of the
Spanish Bourbons; it becomes scandalous and monstrous in 1812, when
the war with Russia took place. Napoleon himself admits that this war
is against the interests of France and yet he undertakes it.[133]
Later, at St. Helena, he falls into a melting mood over "the French
people whom he loved so dearly."[134] The truth is, he loves it as a
rider loves his horse; as he makes it rear and prance and show off its
paces, when he flatters and caresses it; it is not for the advantage
of the animal but for his own purposes, on account of its usefulness
to him; to be spurred on until exhausted, to jump ditches growing
wider and wider, and leap fences growing higher and higher; one ditch
more, and still another fence, the last obstacle which seems to be the
last, succeeded by others, while, in any event, the horse remains
forcibly and for ever, what it already is, namely, a beast of burden
and broken down. - For, on this Russian expedition, instead of
frightful disasters, let us imagine a brilliant success, a victory at
Smolensk equal to that of Friedland, a treaty of Moscow more
advantageous than that of Tilsit, and the Czar brought to heel. As a
result the Czar is probably strangled or dethroned, a patriotic
insurrection will take place in Russia as in Spain, two lasting wars,
at the two extremities of the Continent, against religious fanaticism,
more irreconcilable than positive interests, and against a scattered
barbarism more indomitable than a concentrated civilization. At best,
a European empire secretly mined by European resistance; an exterior
France forcibly superposed on the enslaved Continent;[135] French
residents and commanders at St. Petersburg and Riga as at Dantzic,
Hamburg, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Barcelona, and Trieste. Every able-bodied
Frenchman that can be employed from Cadiz to Moscow in maintaining and
administering the conquest. All the able-bodied youth annually seized
by the conscription, and, if they have escaped this, seized again by
decrees.[136] The entire male population thus devoted to works of
constraint, nothing else in prospect for either the cultivated or the
uncultivated, no military or civil career other than a prolonged guard
duty, threatened and threatening, as soldier, customs-inspector, or
gendarme, as prefect, sub-prefect, or commissioner of police, that is
to say, as subaltern henchman and bully restraining subjects and
raising contributions, confiscating and burning merchandise, seizing
grumblers, and making the refractory toe the mark.[137] In 1810, one
hundred and sixty thousand of the refractory were already condemned by
name, and, moreover, penalties were imposed on their families to the
amount of one hundred and seventy millions of francs In 1811 and 1812
the roving columns which tracked fugitives gathered sixty thousand of
them, and drove them along the coast from the Adour to the Niemen; on
reaching the frontier, they were en-rolled in the grand army; but they
desert the very first month, they and their chained companions, at the
rate of four or five thousand a day.[138] Should England be conquered,
garrisons would have to be maintained there, and of soldiers equally
zealous. Such is the dark future which this system opens to the
French, even with the best of good luck. It turns out that the luck
is bad, and at the end of 1812 the grand army is freezing in the snow;
Napoleon's horse has let him tumble. Fortunately, the animal has
simply foundered; "His Majesty's health was never better";[139]
nothing has happened to the rider; he gets up on his legs, and what
concerns him at this moment is not the sufferings of his broken-down
steed, but his own mishap; his reputation as a horseman is
compromised; the effect on the public, the hooting of the audience, is
what troubles him, the comedy of a perilous leap, announced with such
a flourish of trumpets and ending in such a disgraceful fall. On
reaching Warsaw[140] he says to himself, ten times over:
"There is only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous."
The following year, at Dresden, he exposes still more foolishly,
openly, and nakedly his master passion, the motives which determine
him, the immensity and ferocity of his pitiless pride.
"What do they want of me?" said he to M. de Metternich.[141] " Do
they want me to dishonor myself? Never! I can die, but never will I
yield an inch of territory! Your sovereigns, born to the throne, may
be beaten twenty times over and yet return to their capitals: I cannot
do this, because I am a parvenu soldier. My domination will not
survive the day when I shall have ceased to be strong, and,
consequently, feared."
In effect, his despotism in France is founded on his European
omnipotence; if he does not remain master of the Continent," he must
settle with the corps législatif.[142] Rather than descend to an
inferior position, rather than be a constitutional monarch, controlled
by parliamentary chambers, he plays double or quits, and will risk
losing everything.
"I have seen your soldiers," says Metternich to him, "they are
children. When this army of boys is gone, what will you do then?"
At these words, which touch his heart, he grows pale, his features
contract, and his rage overcomes him; like a wounded man who has made
a false step and exposes himself, he says violently to Metternich:
"You are not a soldier You do not know the impulses of a soldier's
breast! I have grown up on the battle-field, and a man like me does
not give a damn for the lives of a million men! "[143]
His imperial pipe-dreams has devoured many more. Between 1804 and
1815 he has had slaughtered 1,700,000 Frenchmen, born within the
boundaries of ancient France,[144] to which must be added, probably,
2,000,000 men born outside of these limits, and slain for him, under
the title of allies, or slain by him under the title of enemies. All
that the poor, enthusiastic, and credulous Gauls have gained by
entrusting their public welfare to him is two invasions; all that he
bequeaths to them as a reward for their devotion, after this
prodigious waste of their blood and the blood of others, is a France
shorn of fifteen departments acquired by the republic, deprived of
Savoy, of the left bank of the Rhine and of Belgium, despoiled of the
northeast angle by which it completed its boundaries, fortified its
most vulnerable point, and, using the words of Vauban, "made its field
square," separated from 4,000,000 new Frenchmen which it had
assimilated after twenty years of life in common, and, worse still,
thrown back within the frontiers of 1789, alone, diminished in the
midst of its aggrandized neighbors, suspected by all Europe, and
lastingly surrounded by a threatening circle of distrust and rancor.
Such is the political work of Napoleon, the work of egoism served by
genius. In his European structure as in his French structure this
sovereign egoism has introduced a vice of construction. This
fundamental vice is manifest at the outset in the European edifice,
and, at the expiration of fifteen years, it brings about a sudden
downfall: in the French edifice it is equally serious but not so
apparent; only at the end of half a century, or even a whole century,
is it to be made clearly visible; but its gradual and slow effects
will be equally pernicious and they are no less sure.
______________________________________________________________________
Notes:
[1] See my "Philosophy of Art" for texts and facts, Part II., ch. VI.
- Other analogies, which are too long for development here, may be
found, especially in all that concerns the imagination and love. "He
was disposed to accept the marvelous, presentiments, and even certain
mysterious communications between beings. . . . I have seen him
excited by the rustling of the wind, speak enthusiastically of the
roar of the sea, and sometimes inclined to believe in nocturnal
apparitions; in short, leaning to certain superstitions." (Madame de
Rémusat, I., 102, and III., 164.) - Meneval (III., 114) notes his
"crossing himself involuntarily on the occurrence of some great
danger, on the discovery of some important fact." During the
consulate, in the evening, in a circle of ladies, he sometimes
improvised and declaimed tragic "tales," Italian fashion, quite worthy
of the story-tellers of the XVth and XVIth centuries. (Bourrienne,
VI., 387, gives one of his improvisations. Cf. Madame de Rémusat, I.,
102.) - As to love, his letters to Josephine during the Italian
campaign form one of the best examples of Italian passion and "in most
piquant contrast with the temperate and graceful elegance of his
predecessor M. de Beauharnais." (Madame de Rémusat, I., 143). - His
other amours, simply physical, are too difficult to deal with; I have
gathered some details orally on this subject which are almost from
first hands and perfectly authentic. It is sufficient to cite one
text already published: "According to Josephine, he had no moral
principle whatever; did he not seduce his sisters one after the other?
" - "I am not a man like other men, he said of himself, "and moral
laws and those of propriety do not apply to me." (Madame de Rémusat,
I., 204, 206.) - Note again (II., 350) his proposals to Corvisart. -
Such are everywhere the sentiments, customs, and morality of the great
Italian personages of about the year 1500.
[2] De Pradt, "Histoire de l'ambassade dans le grand-duché de
Varsovie," p.96. "with the Emperor, desire springs out of his
imagination; his idea becomes passion the moment it comes into his
head."
[3] Bourrienne, II., 298. - De Ségur, I., 426.
[4] Bodin, "Recherches sur l'Anjou," II., 325. - " Souvenirs d'un
nonagénaire," by Besnard. - Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries du Lundi,"
article on Volney. - Miot de Melito, I., 297. He wanted to adopt
Louis's son, and make him King of Italy. Louis refused, alleging that
this marked favor would give new life to the reports spread about at
one time in relation to this child." Thereupon, Napoleon, exasperated,
"seized Prince Louis by the waist and pushed him violently out of the
room." - " Mémorial," Oct.10, 1816. Napoleon relates that at the last
conference of Campo-Fermio, to put an end to the resistance of the
Austrian plenipotentiary, he suddenly arose, seized a set of porcelain
on a stand near him and dashed it to the floor, exclaiming, "Thus will
I shatter your monarchy before a month is over!" (Bourrienne questions
this story.)
[5] Varnhagen von Ense, "Ausgewahlte Schriften," III., 77 (Public
reception of July 22, 1810). Napoleon first speaks to the Austrian
Ambassador and next to the Russian Ambassador with a constrained air,
forcing himself to be polite, in which he cannot persist. "Treating
with I do not know what unknown personage, he interrogated him,
reprimanded him, threatened him, and kept him for a sufficiently long
time in a state of painful dismay. Those who stood near by and who
could not help feeling a dismayed, stated later that there had been
nothing to provoke such fury, that the Emperor had only sought an
opportunity to vent his ill-humor; that he did it purposely on some
poor devil so as to inspire fear in others and to put down in advance
any tendency to opposition. Cf. Beugnot, "Mémoires," I., 380, 386,
387. - This mixture of anger and calculation likewise explains his
conduct at Sainte Helena with Sir Hudson Lowe, his unbridled diatribes
and insults bestowed on the governor like so many slaps in the face.
(W. Forsyth, "History of the Captivity of Napoleon at Saint Helena,
from the letters and journals of Sir Hudson Lowe," III., 306.)
[6] Madame de Rémusat, II., 46.
[7] "Les Cahiers de Coignat." 191. "At Posen, already, I saw him
mount his horse in such a fury as to land on the other side and then
give his groom a cut of the whip."
[8] Madame de Rémusat, I., 222.
[9] Especially the letters addressed to Cardinal Consalvi and to the
Préfet of Montenotte (I am indebted to M. d'Haussonville for this
information). - Besides, he is lavish of the same expressions in
conversation. On a tour through Normandy, he sends for the bishop of
Séez and thus publicly addresses him: "Instead of merging the parties,
you distinguish between constitutionalists and non-constitutionalists.
Miserable fool! You are a poor subject, - hand in your resignation at
once!" - To the grand-vicars he says, "Which of you governs your
bishop - who is at best a fool? " - As M. Legallois is pointed out to
him, who had of late been absent. "Fuck, where were you then?" "With
my family." "With a bishop who is merely a damned fool, why are you so
often away, etc.?" (D'Haussonville,VI., 176, and Roederer, vol. III.)
[10] Madame de Rémusat - I., 101; II., 338.
[11] Ibid., I., 224. - M. de Meneval, I., 112, 347; III., 120: " On
account of the extraordinary event of his marriage, he sent a
handwritten letter to his future father-in-law (the Emperor of
Austria). It was a grand affair for him. Finally, after a great
effort, he succeeded in penning a letter that was readable." -
Meneval, nevertheless, was obliged "to correct the defective letters
without letting the corrections be too plainly seen."
[12] For example, at Bayonne and at Warsaw (De Pradt); the outrageous
and never-to-be forgotten scene which, on his return from Spain,
occurred with Talleyrand - ("Souvenirs", by PASQUIER Etienne-Dennis,
duc, Chancelier de France. Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. I., 357); -
The gratuitous insult of M. de Metternich, in 1813, the last word of
their interview ("Souvenirs du feu duc de Broglie," I., 230) . - Cf.
his not less gratuitous and hazardous confidential communications to
Miot de Melito, in 1797, and his five conversations with Sir Hudson
Lowe, immediately recorded by a witness, Major Gorrequer. (W. Forsyth,
I.,147, 161, 200.)
[13] De Pradt, preface X
[14] Pelet de la Lozére, p. 7. - Mollien, "Mémoires," II., 222. -
"Souvenirs du feu duc de Broglie," I., 66, 69.
[15] "Madame de Rémusat," I., 121: I have it from Corvisart that the
pulsations of his arteries are fewer than is usual with men. He never
experienced what is commonly called giddiness." With him, the nervous
apparatus is perfect in all its functions, incomparable for receiving,
recording, registering, combining, and reflecting, but other organs
suffer a reaction and are very sensitive." (De Ségur, VI., 15 and 16,
note of Drs. Yvan and Mestivier, his physicians.) "To preserve the
equilibrium it was necessary with him that the skin should always
fulfill its functions; as soon as the tissues were affected by any
moral or atmospheric cause . . . . irritation, cough, ischuria." Hence
his need of frequent prolonged and very hot baths. "The spasm was
generally shared by the stomach and the bladder. If in the stomach,
he had a nervous cough which exhausted his moral and physical
energies." Such was the case between the eve of the battle of Moscow
and the morning after his entry into Moscow: "a constant dry cough,
difficult and intermittent breathing; the pulse sluggish, weak, and
irregular; the urine thick and sedimentary, drop by drop and painful;
the lower part of the legs and the feet extremely oedematous."
Already, in 1806, at Warsaw, "after violent convulsions in the
stomach," he declared to the Count de Loban, "that he bore within him
the germs of a premature death, and that he would die of the same
disease as his father's." (De Ségur,VI., 82.) After the victory of
Dresden, having eaten a ragout containing garlic, he is seized with
such violent gripings as to make him think he was poisoned, and he
makes a retrograde movement, which causes the loss of Vandamme's
division, and, consequently, the ruin of 1813. "Souvenirs", by
Pasquier, Etienne-Dennis, duc, chancelier de France. Librarie Plon,
Paris 1893, (narrative of Daru, an eye-witness.) - This susceptibility
of the nerves and stomach is hereditary with him and shows itself in
early youth. "One day, at Brienne, obliged to drop on his knees, as a
punishment, on the sill of the refectory, he is seized with sudden
vomiting and a violent nervous attack." De Segur, I., 71. - It is
well known that he died of a cancer in the stomach, like his father
Charles Bonaparte. His grandfather Joseph Bonaparte, his uncle Fesch,
his brother Lucien, and his sister Caroline died of the same, or of an
analogous disease.
[16] Meneval, I., 269. Constant, "Mémoires," V., 62. De Ségur, VI.,
114, 117.
[17] Marshal Marmont, "Mémoires," I., 306. Bourrienne, II., 119:
"When off the political field he was sensitive, kind, open to pity."
[18] Pelet de la Lozére, p.7. De Champagny, " Souvenirs," p.103. At
first, the emotion was much stronger. "He had the fatal news for
nearly three hours; he had given vent to his despair alone by himself.
He summoned me . . . . plaintive cries involuntarily escaped him."
[19] Madame de Rémusat, I., 121, 342 ; II., 50 ; III., 61, 294, 312.
[20] De Ségur, V., 348.
[21] Yung, II., 329, 331. (Narrated by Lucien, and report to Louis
XVIII.)
[22] "Nouvelle relation de l'Itinéraire de Napoléon, de Fontainebleau
à l'Ile de l'Elbe," by Count Waldberg-Truchsees, Prussian commissioner
(1885), pp.22, 24, 25, 26, 30, 32, 34, 37. - The violent scenes,
probably, of the abdication and the attempt at Fontainebleau to poison
himself had already disturbed his balance. On reaching Elba, he says
to the Austrian commissioner, Koller, "As to you, my dear general, I
have let you see my bare rump." - Cf. in "Madame de Rémusat," I., 108,
one of his confessions to Talleyrand: he crudely points out in himself
the distance between natural instinct and studied courage. - Here and
elsewhere, we obtain a glimpse of the actor and even of the Italian
buffoon; M. de Pradt called him "Jupiter Scapin." Read his
reflections before M. de Pradt, on his return from Russia, in which he
appears in the light of a comedian who, having played badly and failed
in his part, retires behind the scenes, runs down the piece, and
criticize the imperfections of the audience. (De Pradt, p.219.)
[23] The reader may find his comprehension of the author's meaning
strengthened by the following translation of a passage from his essay
on Jouffroy (Philosophes classiques du XIXth Siécle," 3rd ed.):
"What is a man, master of himself? He is one who, dying with thirst,
refrains from swallowing a cooling draft, merely moistening his lips:
who insulted in public, remains calm in calculating his most
appropriate revenge; who in battle, his nerves excited by a charge,
plans a difficult maneuver, thinks it out, and writes it down with a
lead-pencil while balls are whistling around him, and sends it to his
colonels. In other words, it is a man in whom the deliberate and
abstract idea of the greatest good is stronger than all other ideas
and sensations. The conception of the greatest good once attained,
every dislike, every species of indolence, every fear, every
seduction, every agitation, are found weak. The tendency which arise
from the idea of the greatest good constantly dominates all others and
determines all actions." TR.
[24] Bourrienne, I. 21.
[25] Yung, 1., 125.
[26] Madame de Rémusat, I., 267. - Yung, II., 109. On his return to
Corsica he takes upon himself the government of the whole family.
"Nobody could discuss with him, says his brother Lucien; he took
offence at the slightest observation and got in a passion at the
slightest resistance. Joseph (the eldest) dared not even reply to his
brother."
[27] Mémorial, August 27-31, 1815.
[28] "Madame de Rémusat," I., 105. - Never was there an abler and more
persevering sophist, more persuasive, more eloquent, in order to make
it appear that he was right. Hence his dictations at St. Helena; his
proclamations, messages, and diplomatic correspondence; his ascendancy
in talking as great as through his arms, over his subject and over his
adversaries; also his posthumous ascendancy over posterity. He is as
great a lawyer as he is a captain and administrator. The peculiarity
of this disposition is never submitting to truth, but always to speak
or write with reference to an audience, to plead a cause. Through
this talent one creates phantoms which dupe the audience; on the other
hand, as the author himself forms part of the audience, he ends in not
along leading others into error but likewise himself, which is the
case with Napoleon.
[29] Yung, II., 111. (Report by Volney, Corsican commissioner, 1791.
- II., 287. (Mémorial, giving a true account of the political and
military state of Corsica in December, 1790.) - II., 270. (Dispatch of
the representative Lacombe Saint-Michel, Sept. 10, 1793.) - Miot de
Melito I.,131, and following pages. (He is peace commissioner in
Corsica in 1797 and 1801.)
[30] Miot de Melito, II., 2. "The partisans of the First consul's
family . . . regarded me simply as the instrument of their passions,
of use only to rid them of their enemies, so as to center all favors
on their protégés."
[31] Yung., I., 220. (Manifest of October -31, 1789.) - I., 265.
(Loan on the seminary funds obtained by force, June 23, 1790.) - I.,
267, 269. (Arrest of M. de la Jaille and other officers; plan for
taking the citadel of Ajaccio.) - II., 115. (letter to Paoli, February
17, 1792.) "Laws are like the statues of certain divinities - veiled
on certain occasions." - II., 125. (Election of Bonaparte as
lieutenant-colonel of a battalion of volunteers, April1, 1792.) The
evening before he had Murati, one of the three departmental
commissioners, carried off by an armed band from the house of the
Peraldi, his adversaries, where he lodged. Murati, seized unawares,
is brought back by force and locked up in Bonaparte's house, who
gravely says to him "I wanted you to be free, entirely at liberty;
you were not so with the Peraldi." - His Corsican biographer (Nasica,
"Mémoires sur la jeunesse et l'enfance de Napoléon,") considers this a
very praiseworthy action
[32] Cf. on this point, the Memoirs of Marshal Marmont, I., 180, 196;
the Memoirs of Stendhal, on Napoleon; the Report of d'Antraigues
(Yung, III., 170, 171); the "Mercure Britannique" of Mallet-Dupan, and
the first chapter of "La Chartreuse de Parme," by Stendhal.
[33] "Correspondance de Napoléon," I. (Letter of Napoleon to the
Directory, April 26, 1796.) - Proclamation of the same date: "You have
made forced marches barefoot, bivouacked without brandy, and often
without bread."
[34] Stendhal, "Vie de Napoléon," p. 151. "The commonest officers were
crazy with delight at having white linen and fine new boots. All were
fond of music; many walked a league in the rain to secure a seat in
the La Scala Theatre. . . . In the sad plight in which the army found
itself before Castiglione and Arcole, everybody, except the knowing
officers, was disposed to attempt the impossible so as not to quit
Italy." - " Marmont," I., 296: "We were all of us very young, . . .
all aglow with strength and health, and enthusiastic for glory. . . .
This variety of our occupations and pleasures, this excessive
employment of body and mind gave value to existence, and made time
pass with extraordinary rapidity."
[35] "Correspondance de Napoléon," I. Proclamation of March 27, 1796:
' Soldiers, you are naked and poorly fed. The government is vastly
indebted to you; it has nothing to give you. . . . I am going to lead
you to the most fertile plains in the world; rich provinces, large
cities will be in your power; you will then obtain honor, glory, and
wealth." - Proclamation of April 26, 1796: - "Friends, I guarantee
that conquest to you!" - Cf. in Marmont's memoirs the way in which
Bonaparte plays the part of tempter in offering Marmont, who refuses,
an opportunity to rob a treasury chest.
[36] Miot de Melito, I., 154. (June, 1797, in the gardens of
Montebello.) "Such are substantially the most remarkable expressions
in this long discourse which I have recorded and preserved."
[37] Miot de Melito, I. 184. (Conversation with Bonaparte, November
18, 1797, at Turin.) "I remained an hour with the general tête-à-tête.
I shall relate the conversation exactly as it occurred, according to
my notes, made at the time."
[38] Mathieu Dumas, " Mémoires," III., 156. "It is certain that he
thought of it from this moment and seriously studied the obstacles,
means, and chances of success." (Mathieu Dumas cites the testimony of
Desaix, who was engaged in the enterprise): "It seems that all was
ready, when Bonaparte judged that things were not yet ripe, nor the
means sufficient." - Hence his departure. "He wanted to get out of
the way of the rule and caprices of these contemptible dictators,
while the latter wanted to get rid of him because his military fame
and influence in the army were obnoxious to them.
[39] Larevellière-Lepaux (one of the five directors on duty),
"Mémoires," II., 340. "All that is truly grand in this enterprise, as
well as all that is bold and extravagant, either in its conception or
execution, belongs wholly to Bonaparte. The idea of it never occurred
to the Directory nor to any of its members. . . . His ambition and his
pride could not endure the alternative of no longer being prominent or
of accepting a post which, however eminent, would have always
subjected him to the orders of the Directory."
[40] Madame de Rémusat, I., 142. "Josephine laid great stress on the
Egyptian expedition as the cause of his change of temper and of the
daily despotism which made her suffer so much."- "Mes souvenirs sur
Napoleon," 325 by the count Chaptal. (Bonaparte's own words to the
poet Lemercier who might have accompanied him to the Middle East and
there would have learned many things about human nature): "You would
have seen a country where the sovereign takes no account of the lives
of his subjects, and where the subject himself takes no account of his
own life. You would have got rid of your philanthropic 'notions."
[41] Roederer, III., 461 (Jan. 12, 1803)
[42] Cf. "The Revolution," Vol. p. 773. (Note I., on the situation, in
1806, of the Conventionalists who had survived the revolution.) For
instance, Fouché is minister; Jeanbon-Saint-André, prefect; Drouet (de
Varennes), sub-prefect; Chépy (of Grenoble), commissary-general of the
police at Brest; 131 regicides are functionaries, among whom we find
twenty one prefects and forty-two magistrates. - Occasionally, a
chance document that has been preserved allows one to catch "the man
in the act." ("Bulletins hebdomadaires de la censure, 1810 and 1814,"
published by M. Thurot, in the Revue Critique, 1871): "Seizure of 240
copies of an indecent work printed for account of M. Palloy, the
author. This Palloy enjoyed some celebrity during the Revolution,
being one of the famous patriots of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. The
constituent Assembly had conceded to him the ownership of the site of
the Bastille, of which he distributed its stones among all the
communes. He is a bon vivant, who took it into his head to write out
in a very bad style the filthy story of his amours with a prostitute
of the Palais-Royal. He was quite willing that the book should be
seized on condition that he might retain a few copies of his jovial
production. He professes high admiration for, and strong attachment
to His Majesty's person, and expresses his sentiments piquantly, in
the style of 1789."
[43] Mémorial," June 12, 1816.
[44] Mathieu Dumas, III., 363 (July 4, 1809, a few days before
Wagram). - Madame de Rémusat," I., 105: "I have never heard him
express any admiration or comprehension of a noble action." - I., 179:
On Augustus's clemency and his saying, "Let us be friends, Cinna," the
following is his interpretation of it: "I understand this action
simply as the feint of a tyrant, and approve as calculation what I
find puerile as sentiment."- "Notes par le Comte Chaptal": "He
believed neither in virtue nor in probity, often calling these two
words nothing but abstractions; this is what rendered him so
distrustful and so immoral. . . . He never experienced a generous
sentiment; this is why he was so cold in company, and why he never had
a friend. He regarded men as so much counterfeit coin or as mere
instruments."
[45] M. de Metternich, "Mémoires," I., 241. - "Madame de Rémusat," I.,
93: "That man has been so harmful (si assommateur de toute vertu...)
to all virtue." - Madame de Staël, "Considerations sur la Revolution
Française, " 4th part, ch. 18. (Napoleon's conduct with M. de Melzi,
to destroy him in public opinion in Milan, in 1805.)
[46] Madame de Rémusat, I., 106; II., 247, 336: "His means for
governing man were all derived from those which tend to debase him. .
. . He tolerated virtue only when he could cover it with ridicule."
[47] Nearly all his false calculations are due to this defect,
combined with an excess of constructive imagination. - Cf. De Pradt,
p.94: "The Emperor is all system, all illusion, as one cannot fail to
be when one is all imagination. Whoever has watched his course has
noticed his creating for himself an imaginary Spain, an imaginary
Catholicism, an imaginary England, an imaginary financial state, an
imaginary noblesse, and still more an imaginary France, and, in late
times, an imaginary congress."
[48] Roederer, III., 495. (March 8, 1804.)
[49] Ibid., III., 537 (February 11, 1809.)
[50] Roederer, III., 514. (November 4, 1804.)
[51] Marmont, II., 242.
[52] Correspondance de Napoléon," I. (Letter to Prince Eugéne, April
14, 1806.)
[53] M. de Metternich, I., 284.
[54] Mollien, III., 427.
[55] "Notes par le Comte Chaptal": During the Consulate, "his opinion
not being yet formed on many points, he allowed discussion and it was
then possible to enlighten him and enforce an opinion once expressed
in his presence. But, from the moment that he possessed ideas of his
own, either true or false, on administrative subjects, he consulted no
one; . . . he treated everybody who differed from him in opinion
contemptuously, tried to make them appear ridiculous, and often
exclaimed, giving his forehead a slap, that here was an instrument far
more useful than the counsels of men who were commonly supposed to be
instructed and experienced. . . For four years, he sought to gather
around him the able men of both parties. After this, the choice of
his agents began to be indifferent to him. Regarding himself as strong
enough to rule and carry on the administration himself, the talents
and character of those who stood in his way were discarded. What he
wanted was valets and not councillors. . . The ministers were simply
head-clerks of the bureaus. The Council of State served only to give
form to the decrees emanating from him; he ruled even in petty
details. Everybody around him was timid and passive; his will was
regarded as that of an oracle and executed without reflection. . . .
Self-isolated from other men, having concentrated in his own hands all
powers and all action, thoroughly convinced that another's light and
experience could be of no use to him, he thought that arms and hands
were all that he required."
[56] "Souvenirs", by Pasquier (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de
France. In VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. Vol I. chap. IX.
and X. pp. 225-268. (Admirable portraiture of his principal agents,
Cambacérès, Talleyrand, Maret, Cretet, Real, etc.) Lacuée, director of
the conscription, is a perfect type of the imperial functionary.
Having received the broad ribbon of the Legion d'Honneur, he
exclaimed, at the height of his enthusiasm: "what will not France
become under such a man? To what degree of happiness and glory will it
not ascend, always provided the conscription furnishes him with
200,000 men a year! And, indeed, that will not be difficult,
considering the extent of the empire." - And likewise with Merlin de
Douai: "I never knew a man less endowed with the sentiment of the just
and the unjust; everything seems to him right and good, as the
consequences of a legal text. He was even endowed with a kind of
satanic smile which involuntarily rose to his lips . . . every time
the opportunity occurred, when, in applying his odious science, he
reached the conclusion that severity is necessary or some
condemnation." The same with Defermon, in fiscal matters
[57] Madame de Rémusat, II., 278; II., 175.
[58] Ibid., III., 275, II., 45. (Apropos of Savary, his most intimate
agent.): "He is a man who must be constantly corrupted."
[59] Ibid., I., 109; II., 247; III., 366.
[60] "Madame de Rémusat," II., 142, 167, 245. (Napoleon's own words.)
"If I ordered Savary to rid himself of his wife and children, I am
sure he would not hesitate." - Marmont, II., 194: "We were at Vienna
in 1809. Davoust said, speaking of his own and Maret's devotion: "If
the Emperor should say to us both, 'My political interests require the
destruction of Paris without any one escaping,' Maret would keep the
secret, I am sure; but nevertheless he could not help letting it be
known by getting his own family out. I, rather than reveal it1 would
leave my wife and children there." (These are bravado expressions,
wordy exaggerations, but significant.)
[61] Madame de Rémusat, II., 379.
[62] Souvenirs du feu duc de Broglie," I., 230. (Words of Maret, at
Dresden, in 1813; he probably repeats one of Napoleon's figures.)
[63] Mollien, II., 9.
[64] D'Haussonville, "L'Église Romaine et le premier Empire,"VI., 190,
and passim.
[65] Ibid., III., 460-473. - Cf. on the same scene, "Souvenirs", by
Pasquier (Etienne-Dennis, duc), Chancelier de France. (He was both
witness and actor.)
[66] An expression of Cambacérès. M. de Lavalette, II., 154.
[67] Madame de Rémusat, III. 184
[68] "Souvenirs", by Pasquier, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.-, I., 521.
Details of the manufacture of counterfeit money, by order of Savary,
in an isolated building on the plain of Montrouge. - Metternich, II.,
358. (Words of Napoleon to M. de Metternich): "I had 300 millions of
banknotes of the Bank of Vienna all ready and was going to flood you
with them." Ibid., Correspondence of M. de Metternich with M. de
Champagny on this subject (June, 1810).
[69] "Souvenirs", by Pasquier, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. - Vol. II.
p. 196.
[70] Madame de Rémusat, II., 335.
[71] Madame de Rémusat, I., 231.
[72] Ibid., 335.
[73] M. de Metternich, I., 284. "One of those to whom he seemed the
most attached was Duroc. 'He loves me the same as a dog loves his
master,' is the phrase he made use of in speaking of him to me. He
compared Berthier's sentiment for his person to that of a child's
nurse. Far from being opposed to his theory of the motives
influencing men these sentiments were its natural consequence whenever
he came across sentiments to which he could not apply the theory of
calculation based on cold interest, he sought the cause of it in a
kind of instinct."
[74] Beugnot, "Mémoires," II., 59.
[75] "Mémorial." "If I had returned victorious from Moscow, I would
have brought the Pope not to regret temporal power: I would have
converted him into an idol. . . I would have directed the religious
world as well as the political world. . . My councils would have
represented Christianity, and the Pope would have only been president
of them."
[76] De Ségur, III., 312. (In Spain, 1809.)
[77] "Mémoires du Prince Eugène." (Letters of Napoleon, August, 1806.)
[78] Letter of Napoleon to Fouché, March 3, 1810. (Left out in the
"Correspondance de Napoléon I.," and published by M. Thiers in
"Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire, XII., p. 115.
[79] De Ségur, III., 459.
[80] Words of Napoleon to Marmont, who, after three months in the
hospital, returns to him in Spain with a broken arm and his hand in a
black sling: "You hold on to that rag then?" Sainte-Beuve, who loves
the truth as it really is, quotes the words as they came, which
Marmont dared not reproduce. (Causeries du Lundi, VI., 16.) -
"Souvenirs", by Pasquier, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893: "M. de Champagny
having been dismissed and replaced, a courageous friend defended him
and insisted on his merit: "You are right," said the Emperor, "he had
some when I took him; but by cramming him too full, I have made him
stupid."
[81] Beugnot, I., 456, 464
[82] Mme. de Rémusat, II., 272.
[83] M. de Champagny, "Souvenirs," 117.
[84] Madame de Rémusat, I., 125.
[85] De Ségur, III., 456.
[86] "The Ancient Regime," p. 125. - "Œuvres de Louis XIV.," 191:
"If there is any peculiar characteristic of this monarchy, it is the
free and easy access of the subjects to the king; it an egalité de
justice between both, and which, so to say, maintains both in a genial
and honest companionship, in spite of the almost infinite distance in
birth, rank, and power. This agreeable society, which enables persons
of the Court to associate familiarly with us, impresses them and
charms them more than one can tell."
[87] Madame de Rémusat, II., 32, 39.
[88] Madame de Rémusat, III., 169.
[89] Ibid., II., 32, 223, 240, 259; III., 169.
[90] Ibid., I., 112, II., 77.
[91] M. de Metternich, I., 286. - "It would be difficult to imagine
any greater awkwardness than that of Napoleon in a drawing-room. -
Varnhagen von Ense, "Ausgewählte Schriften," III., 177. (Audience of
July 10, 1810): "I never heard a harsher voice, one so inflexible.
When he smiled, it was only with the mouth and a portion of the
cheeks; the brow and eyes remained immovably sombre, . . . This
compound of a smile with seriousness had in it something terrible and
frightful." - On one occasion, at St. Cloud, Varnhagen heard him
exclaim over and over again, twenty times, before a group of ladies,
"How hot!"
[92] Mme. de Rémusat, II., 77, 169. - Thibaudeau, " Mémoires sur le
Consulat," p. 18: "He sometimes pays them left-handed compliments on
their toilet or adventures, which was his way of censuring morals." -
"Mes souvenirs sur Napoléon," 322 by le Comte Chaptal: "At a fête, in
the Hôtel de Ville, he exclaimed to Madame ----, who had just given
her name to him: 'Good God, they told me you were pretty!' To some old
persons: 'You haven't long to live! To another lady: 'It is a fine
time for you, now your husband is on his campaigns!' In general, the
tone of Bonaparte was that of an ill-bred lieutenant. He often
invited a dozen or fifteen persons to dinner and rose from the table
before the soup was finished... The court was a regular galley where
each rowed according to command."
[93] Madame de Rémusat, I., 114, 122, 206; II., 110, 112.
[94] Ibid., I., 277.
[95] "Hansard's Parliamentary History," vol. XXXVI., .3I0. Lord
Whitworth's dispatch to Lord Hawkesbury, March 14, 1803, and account
of the scene with Napoleon. "All this took place loud enough for the
two hundred persons present to hear it."- Lord Whitworth (dispatch of
March 17) complains of this to Talleyrand and informs him that he
shall discontinue his visits to the Tuileries unless he is assured
that similar scenes shall not occur again. - Lord Hawkesbury approves
of this (dispatch of March 27), and declares that the proceeding is
improper and offensive to the King of England. - Similar scenes, the
same conceit and intemperate language, with M. de Metternich, at
Paris, in 1809, also at Dresden, in 1813: again with Prince Korsakof,
at Paris, in 1812; with M. de Balachof, at Wilna, in 1812, and with
Prince Cardito, at Milan, in 1805.
[96] Before the rupture of the peace of Amiens ("Moniteur," Aug. 8,
1802): The French government is now more firmly established than the
English government." - ("Moniteur" Sept.10, 1802): "What a difference
between a people which conquers for love of glory and a people of
traders who happen to become conquerors!" - ("Moniteur," Feb. 20,
1803): "The government declares with a just pride that England cannot
now contend against France." - Campaign of 1805, 9th bulletin, words
of Napoleon in the presence of Mack's staff: "I recommend my brother
the Emperor of Germany to make peace as quick as he can! Now is the
time to remember that all empires come to an end; the idea that an end
might come to the house of Lorraine ought to alarm him." - Letter to
the Queen of Naples, January 2, 1805: "Let your Majesty listen to what
I predict. On the first war breaking out, of which she might be the
cause, she and her children will have ceased to reign; her children
would go wandering about among the different countries of Europe
begging help from their relations."
[97] 37th bulletin, announcing the march of an army on Naples "to
punish the Queen's treachery and cast from the throne that criminal
woman, who, with such shamelessness, has violated all that men hold
sacred." - Proclamation of May 13, 1809: "Vienna, which the princes of
the house of Lorraine have abandoned, not as honorable soldiers
yielding to circumstances and the chances of war, but as perjurers
pursued by remorse. . . . In flying from Vienna their adieus to its
inhabitants consisted of murder and fire. Like Medea, they have
sacrificed their children with their own hands." - 13th bulletin: "The
rage of the house of Lorraine against the city of Vienna,"
[98] Letter to the King of Spain, Sept. 18, 1803, and a note to the
Spanish minister of foreign affairs, on the Prince de la Paix: "This
favorite, who has succeeded by the most criminal ways to a degree
unheard of in the annals of history. . . . Let Your Majesty put away a
man who, maintaining in his rank the low passions of his character,
has lived wholly on his vices." - After the battle of Jéna, 9th, 17th,
18th, and 19th bulletins, comparison of the Queen of Prussia with Lady
Hamilton, open and repeated insinuations, imputing to her an intrigue
with the Emperor Alexander. "Everybody admits that the Queen of
Prussia is the author of the evils the Prussian nation suffers. This
is heard everywhere. How changed she is since that fatal interview
with the Emperor Alexander! . . . The portrait of the Emperor
Alexander, presented to her by the Prince, was found in the apartment
of the Queen at Potsdam."
[99] "La Guerre patriotique" (1812-1815), according to the letters of
contemporaries, by Doubravine (in Russian). The Report of the Russian
envoy, M. de Balachof, is in French,
[100] An allusion to the murder of Paul I.
[101] Stanislas de Girardin, "Mémoires," III., 249. (Reception of
Nivôse 12, year X.) The First consul addresses the Senate: "Citizens,
I warn you that I regard the nomination of Daunou to the senate as a
personal insult, and you know that I have never put up with one." -
"Correspondance de Napoleon I." (Letter of Sept.23, 1809, to M. de
Champagny): "The Emperor Francis insulted me in writing to me that I
cede nothing to him, when, out of consideration for him, I have
reduced my demands nearly one-half." (Instead of 2,750,000 Austrian
subjects he demanded only 1,600,000.) - Roederer, III., 377 (Jan.24,
1801): "The French people must put up with my defects if they find I
am of service to them; it is my fault that I cannot endure insults."
[102] M. de Metternich, II., 378. (Letter to the Emperor of Austria,
July 28, 1810.)
[103] Note presented by the French ambassador, Otto, Aug. 17, 1802.
[104] Stanislas Girardin, III., 296. (Words of the First consul,
Floreal 24, year XI.): "I had proposed to the British minister, for
several months, to make an arrangement by which a law should be passed
in France and in England prohibiting newspapers and the members of the
government from expressing either good or ill of foreign governments.
He never would consent to it." - St. Girardin: "He could not." -
Bonaparte: "Why? " - St. Girardin: "Because an agreement of that sort
would have been opposed to the fundamental law of the country."
Bonaparte: "I have a poor opinion," etc.
[105] Hansard, vol. XXXVI., p.1298. (Dispatch of Lord Whitworth,
Feb.21, 1803, conversation with the First consul at the Tuileries.) -
Seeley, 'A Short History of Napoleon the First." "Trifles is a
softened expression, Lord Whitworth adds in a parenthesis which has
never been printed; "the expression he made use of is too
insignificant and too low to have a place in a dispatch or anywhere
else, save in the mouth of a hack-driver."
[106] Lanfrey, "Histoire de Napoléon," II., 482. (Words of the First
consul to the Swiss delegates, conference of January 29, 1803.)
[107] Sir Neil Campbell, "Napoleon at Fontainebleau and Elba," p.201.
(The words of Napoleon to Sir Neil Campbell and to the other
commissioners.) - The Mémorial de Sainte Helene mentions the same plan
in almost identical terms. - Pelet de la Lozère, "Opinions de Napoléon
au conseil d'état," p.238 (session of March 4, 1806): "Within forty-
eight hours after peace with England, I shall interdict foreign
commodities and promulgate a navigation act forbidding any other than
French vessels entering our ports, built of French timber, and with
the crews two-thirds French. Even coal and English 'milords' shall
land only under the French flag." - Ibid., 32.
[108] Moniteur, January 30, 1803 (Sebastiani).
[109] Hansard, vol. XXXVI., p.1298. (Lord Whitworth's dispatch,
Feb.21, 1803, the First Consul's words to Lord Whitworth.)
[110] "Memorial." (Napoleon's own words, March 24, 1806.)
[111] Lanfrey, II., 476. (Note to Otto, October 23, 1802.) -
Thiers,VI., 249.
[112] Letter to Clarke, Minister of War, Jan. 18, 1814. " If, at
Leipsic, I had had 30,000 cannon balls to fire off on the evening of
the 18th, I should to-day be master of the world."
[113] "Memorial," Nov. 30, 1815.
[114] Lanfrey, III., - 399. Letters of Talleyrand, October 11 and
27, 1805, and memorandum addressed to Napoleon.
[115] At the council held in relation to the future marriage of
Napoleon, Cambacérès vainly supported an alliance with the Russians.
The following week, he says to M. Pasquier: "When one has only one
good reason to give and it cannot possibly be given, it is natural
that one should be beaten. . . , You will see that it is so good that
one phrase suffices to make its force fully understood. I am deeply
convinced that in two years we shall have a war with that of two
powers whose daughter the Emperor does not marry. Now a war with
Austria does not cause me any uneasiness, and I tremble at a war with
Russia. The consequences are incalculable." "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER
(Etienne-Dennis, duc), Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. Vol I., p 293, p
378.).
[116] M. de Metternich, II., 305. (Letter to the Emperor of Austria,
Aug.10, 1809.) - Ibid. 403.. (Letter of Jan.11, 1811.) "My
appreciation of Napoleon's plans and projects, at bottom, has never
varied. The monstrous purpose of the complete subjection of the
continent under one head was, and is still, his object."
[117] "Correspondance de Napoleon I." (Letter to the King of
Wurtemberg, April 2, 1814): "The war will take place in spite of him
(the Emperor Alexander), in spite of me, in spite of the interests of
France and those of Russia. Having already seen this so often, it is
my past experience which enables me to unveil the future,"
[118] Mollien, III., 135, 190. - In 1810 "prices have increased 400%
on sugar, and 100 % on cotton and dye stuffs." - " More than 20,000
custom-house officers were employed on the frontier against more than
100,000 smugglers, in constant activity and favored by the
population." - "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc),
Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.-, I., 387. - There were licenses for
importing colonial products, but on condition of exporting a
proportionate quantity of French manufactures; now, England refused to
receive them. Consequently, "not being allowed to bring these articles
back to France, they were thrown overboard." - "They began at first by
devoting the refuse of manufactures to this trade, and then ended by
manufacturing articles without other destination; for example, at
Lyons, taffetas and satins."
[119] Proclamation of Dec.27, 1805: "The Naples dynasty has ceased to
reign. Its existence is incompatible with the repose of Europe and
the honor of my crown." - Message to the Senate, Dec. 10, 1810: "Fresh
guarantees having become necessary, the annexation to the Empire of
the mouths of the Escaut, the Meuse, the Rhine, the Ems, the Weser,
and the Elbe, seemed to me to be the first and most important. . . .
The annexation of the Valais is an anticipated result of the vast
works I have undertaken for the past ten years in that section of the
Alps."
[120] We are familiar with the Spanish affair. His treatment of
Portugal is anterior and of same order.-" Correspondance." (Letter to
Junot, Oct.31, 1807): - 'I have already informed you, that in
authorizing you to enter as an auxiliary, it was to enable you to
possess yourself of the (Portuguese) fleet, but my mind was made up to
take Portugal." - (Letter to Junot, Dec. 23, 1807): "Disarm the
country. Send all the Portuguese troops to France. . . . I want them
out of the country. Have all princes, ministers, and other men who
serve as rallying points, sent to France." - (Decree of Dec. 23,
1807): " An extra contribution of 100 million francs shall be imposed
on the kingdom of Portugal, to redeem all property, of whatever
denomination, belonging to private parties. . . All property
belonging to the Queen of Portugal, to the prince-regent, and to
princes in appanage; . . . . all the possessions of the nobles who
have followed the king, on his abandoning the country, and who had not
returned to the kingdom before February 1, shall be put under
sequestration." - Cf. M. d'Haussonville, "L'Église Romaine et le
premier Empire," 5 vols. (especially the last volume). No other work
enables one to see into Napoleon's object and proceedings better nor
more closely.
[121] "Souvenirs du feu duc de Broglie," p.143. (As a specimen of
steps taken in time of war, see the register of Marshal Bessières'
orders, commandant at Valladolid from April 11 to July 15, 1811.) -
"Correspondance du Roi Jérome," letter of Jerome to Napoleon, Dec. 5,
1811. (Showing the situation of a vanquished people in times of
peace): "If war should break out, all countries between the Rhine and
the Oder will become the center of a vast and active insurrection.
The mighty cause of this dangerous movement is not merely hatred of
the French, and impatience of a foreign yoke, but rather in the
misfortunes of the day, in the total ruin of all classes, in over-
taxation, consisting of war levies, the maintenance of troops,
soldiers traversing the country, and every sort of constantly renewed
vexation. . . . At Hanover, Magdebourg, and in the principal towns of
my kingdom, owners of property are abandoning their dwellings and
vainly trying to dispose of them at the lowest prices. . . . Misery
everywhere presses on families; capital is exhausted; the noble, the
peasant, the bourgeois, are crushed with debt and want. . . . The
despair of populations no longer having anything to lose, because all
has been taken away, is to be feared." - De Pradt, p.73. (Specimen
of military proceedings in allied countries.) At Wolburch, in the
Bishop of Cujavie's chateau, "I found his secretary, canon of Cujavie,
decorated with the ribbon and cross of his order, who showed me his
jaw, broken by the vigorous blows administered to him the previous
evening by General Count Vandamme, because he had refused to serve
Tokay wine, imperiously demanded by the general; he was told that the
King of Westphalia had lodged in the castle the day before, and had
carted away all this wine."
[122] Fievée, "Correspondance et relations avec Bonaparte, de 1802 à
1813," III., 82. (Dec. 1811), (On the populations annexed or
conquered): "There is no hesitation in depriving them of their
patrimony, their language, their legislatures, in disturbing all their
habits, and that without any warrant but throwing a bulletin des lois
at their heads (inapplicable). . . . How could they be expected to
recognize this, or even become resigned to it? . . . Is it possible
not to feel that one no longer has a country, that one is under
constraint, wounded in feeling and humiliated? . . . Prussia, and a
large part of Germany, has been so impoverished that there is more to
gain by taking a pitchfork to kill a man than to stir up a pile of
manure."
[123] "Correspondance," letter to King Joseph, Feb. 18, 1814. "If I
had signed the treaty reducing France to its ancient limits, I should
have gone to war two years after - Marmont, V., 133 (1813): "Napoleon,
in the last years of his reign, always preferred to lose all rather
than to yield anything."
[124] M. de Metternich, II., 205.
[125] Words of Richelieu on his death-bed: "Behold my judge," said he,
pointing to the Host, "the judge who will soon pronounce his verdict.
I pray that he will condemn me, if, during my ministry, I have
proposed to myself aught else than the good of religion and of the
State."
[126] Miot de Melito, "Mémoires,"II., 48, 152.
[127] "Souvenirs," by Gaudin, duc de Gaëte (3rd vol. of the
"Mémoires," p.67).
[128] M. de Metternich, II., 120. (Letter to Stadion, July 26, 1807.)
[129] Ibid., II., 291. (Letter of April 11, 1809.)
[130] Ibid., II., 400. (Letter of Jan.17, 1811.) In lucid moments,
Napoleon takes the same view. Cf. Pelet de la Lozère, "Opinions de
Napoleon au conseil d'etat," p. 15 : "That will last as long as I do.
After me, however, my son will deem himself fortunate if he has 40,000
francs a year." - (De Ségur, "Histoire et Mémoires," III., 155.) :
"How often at this time (1811) was he heard to foretell that the
weight of his empire would crush his heir!" "Poor child," said he,
regarding the King of Rome, "what an entanglement I shall leave to
you!" From the beginning he frequently passed judgment on himself and
foresaw the effect of his action in history." On reaching the isle of
Poplars, the First Consul stopped at Rousseau's grave, and said: 'It
would have, been better for the repose of France, if that man had
never existed.' 'And why, citizen Consul?' 'He is the man who made the
French revolution.' 'It seems to me that you need not complain of the
French revolution!' 'well, the future must decide whether it would not
have been better for the repose of the whole world if neither myself
nor Rousseau had ever lived.' He then resumed his promenade in a
revery." - Stanislas Girardin; "Journal et Mémoires," III., Visit of
the French Consul to Ermenonville.
[131] Marmont, "Mémoires," III., 337. (On returning from Wagram.)
[132] On this initial discord, cf. Armand Lefèvre, "Histoire des
Cabinets de l'Europe," vol.VI.
[133] "Correspondance de Napoléon I." (Letter to the King of
Wurtemberg, April 2, 1811.)
[134] Testament of April 25, 1821 "It is my desire that my remains
rest on the banks of the Seine, amidst that French people I have so
dearly loved."
[135] "Correspondance de Napoleon I., XXII., 119. (Note by Napoleon,
April, 1811.) "There will always be at Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck
from 8000 to 10,000 Frenchmen, either as employees or as gendarmes, in
the custom-houses and warehouses."
[136] "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), Librarie Plon,
Paris 1893.-, II., 88, and following pages: "During the year 1813,
from Jan. 1 to Oct. 7, 840,000 men had already been drafted from
imperial France and they had to be furnished." - Other decrees in
December, placing at the disposition of the government 300,000
conscripts for the years 1806 to 1814 inclusive. - Another decree in
November organizing 140,000 men of the national guard in cohorts,
intended for the defense of strongholds. - In all, 1,300,000 men
summoned in one year. "Never has any nation been thus asked to let
itself be voluntarily led in a mass to the slaughterhouse. - Ibid.,
II., 59. Senatus-consulte, and order of council for raising 10,000
young men, exempt or redeemed from conscription, as the prefects might
choose, arbitrarily, from amongst the highest classes in society. The
purpose was plainly " to secure hostages in every family of doubtful
loyalty. No measure created for Napoleon more irreconcilable
enemies."
- Cf. De Ségur, II., 34. (He was charged with organizing and
commanding a division of young men.) Many were sons of Vendéans or of
Conventionalists, some torn from their wives the day after their
marriage, or from the bedside of a wife in her confinement, of a dying
father, or of a sick son; "some looked so feeble that they seemed
dying." One half perished in the campaign of 1814. - "
Correspondance," letter to Clarke, Minister of War, Oct.23, 1813 (in
relation to the new levies): "I rely on 100,000 refractory
conscripts."
[137] "Archives nationales," A F.,VI., 1297. (Documents 206 to 210.)
(Report to the Emperor by Count Dumas, April 10, 1810.) Besides the
170 millions of penalties 1,675,457 francs of penalty were inflicted
on 2335 individuals, " abettors or accomplices." - Ibid., A F.,VI.,
1051. (Report of Gen. Lacoste on the department of Haute-Loire, Oct.
13, 1808.) "He always calculated in this department on the desertion
of one-half of the conscripts. In most of the cantons the gendarmes
traffic with the conscription shamefully; certain conscripts pension
them to show them favors." - Ibid., A F.,VI., 1052. (Report by
Pelet, Jan. 12, 1812.) "The operation of the conscription has
improved (in the Herault); the contingents of 1811 have been
furnished. There remained 1800 refractory, or deserters of the
previous classes; 1600 have been arrested or made to surrender by the
flying column; 200 have still to be pursued." Faber, - "Notice
(1807) sur l'intérieur de la France," p. 141: "Desertion, especially
on the frontiers, is occasionally frightful; 80 deserters out of 160
have sometimes been arrested." - Ibid., p.149: It has been stated in
the public journals that in 1801 the court in session at Lille had
condemned 135 refractory out of the annual conscription, and that
which holds its sittings at Ghent had condemned 70. Now, 200
conscripts form the maximum of what an arrondissement in a department
could furnish." -Ibid, p.145. "France resembles a vast house of
detention where everybody is suspicious of his neighbor, where each
avoids the other. . . One often sees a young man with a gendarme at
his heels oftentimes, on looking closely, this young man's hands are
found tied, or he is handcuffed." - Mathieu Dumas, III., 507 (After
the battle of Dresden, in the Dresden hospitals): "I observed, with
sorrow, that many of these men were slightly wounded: most of them,
young conscripts just arrived in the army, had not been wounded by the
enemy's fire, but they had mutilated each other's feet and hands.
Antecedents of this kind, of equally bad augury, had already been
remarked in the campaign of 1809."
[138] De Ségur, III., 474. - Thiers, XIV., 159. (One month after
crossing the Niemen one hundred and fifty thousand men had dropped out
of the ranks.)
[139] Bulletin 29 (December 3, 1812).
[140] De Pradt, Histoire de l'Ambassade de Varsovie," p.219.
[141] M. de Metternich, I., 147. - Fain, "Manuscript," of 1813, II.,
26. (Napoleon's address to his generals.) "What we want is a complete
triumph. To abandon this or that province is not the question; our
political superiority and our existence depend on it. " - II., 41, 42.
(Words of Napoleon to Metternich.) "And it is my father-in-law who
favors such a project! And he sends you! In what attitude does he wish
to place me before the French people? He is strangely deluded if he
thinks that a mutilated throne can offer an asylum to his daughter and
grandson. . . . Ah, Metternich, how much has England given you to make
you play this part against me?" (This last phrase, omitted in
Metternich's narrative, is a characteristic trait; Napoleon at this
decisive moment, remains insulting and aggressive, gratuitously and
even to his own destruction.)
[142] "Souvenirs du feu duc de Broglie," I., 235.
[143] Ibid., I., 230. Some days before Napoleon had said to M. de
Narbonne, who told me that very evening: "After all, what has this
(the Russian campaign) cost me? 300,000 men, among whom, again, were
a good many Germans." - "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc,
Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. II. 110. (Apropos of the Frankfurt basis,
and accepted by Napoleon when too late.) "What characterizes this
mistake is that it was committed much more against the interests of
France than against his own. . . . He sacrificed her to the
perplexities of his personal situation, to the mauvaise honte of his
own ambition, to the difficulty he finds in standing alone to a
certain extent before a nation which had done everything for him and
which could justly reproach him with having sacrificed so much
treasure and spilled so much blood on enterprises proved to have been
foolish and impracticable."
[144] Leonce de Lavergne, "Economie rurale de la France," P.40.
(According to the former director of the conscription under the
Empire.)
BOOK SECOND. FORMATION AND CHARACTER OF THE NEW STATE.
CHAPTER I.
I. The Institution of Government.
Conditions on which the public power can act. - Two points forgotten
by the authors of the preceding constitutions. - Difficulty of the
undertaking and poor quality of the available materials.
Every human society requires government, that is to say an authority.
No other machinery is more useful. But a machinery is useful only if
it is adapted to its purpose; if not it will not work, or may even
work contrary to its purpose. Hence, during its construction, one must
first of all consider the magnitude of the work it has to do as well
as the quality of the materials one has at one's disposal. It is very
important to know beforehand whether it will lift 100 or of 100,000
kilograms, whether the pieces fitted together will be of iron or of
steel, of sound or of unsound timber. - But the legislators had not
taken that into consideration during the last ten years. They had set
themselves up as theoreticians, and likewise as optimists, without
looking at the things, or else imagining the them as they wished to
have them. In the national assemblies, as well as with the public, the
task was deemed easy and simple, whereas it was extraordinary and
immense; for the matter in hand consisted in effecting a social
revolution and in carrying on an European war. The materials were
supposed to be excellent, as manageable as they were substantial,
while, in fact, they were very poor, being both refractory and
brittle, for these human materials consisted of the Frenchmen of 1789
and of the following years; that is to say, of exceedingly sensitive
men doing each other all possible harm, inexperienced in political
business, Utopians, impatient, intractable, and overexcited.
Calculations had been made on these prodigiously false data;
consequently, although the calculations were very exact, the results
obtained were found absurd. Relying on these data, the machine had
been planned, and all its parts been adjusted, assembled, and
balanced. That is why the machine, irreproachable in theory, remained
unsuccessful in practice: the better it appeared on paper the quicker
it broke down when set up on the ground.
II. Default of previous government.
The consequences of the years 1789 to 1799. - Insubordination of the
local powers, conflict of the central powers, suppression of liberal
institutions, and the establishment of an unstable despotism. - Evil-
doing of the government thus formed.
A capital defect at once declared itself in the two principal
compositions, in the working gear of the superposed powers and in the
balance of the motor powers. - In the first place, the hold given to
the central government on its local subordinates was evidently too
feeble; with no right to appoint these, it could not select them as it
pleased, according to the requirements of the service. Department,
district, canton, and commune administrators, civil and criminal
judges, assessors, appraisers, and collectors of taxes, officers of
the national-guard and even of the gendarmerie, police-commissioners,
and other agents who had to enforce laws on the spot, were nearly all
recruited elsewhere: either in popular assemblies or provided ready-
made by elected bodies.[1] They were for it merely borrowed
instruments; thus originating, they escaped its control; it could not
make them work as it wanted them to work. On most occasions they would
shirk their duties; at other times, on receiving orders, they would
stand inert; or, again, they would act outside of or beyond their
special function, either going too far or acting in a contrary sense;
never did they act with moderation and precision, with coherence and
consequence. For this reason any desire of the government to do its
job proved unsuccessful. Its legal subordinates - incapable, timid,
lukewarm, unmanageable, or even hostile - obeyed badly, did not obey
at all, or willfully disobeyed. The blade of the executive instrument,
loose in the handle, glanced or broke off when the thrust had to be
made.
In the second place, never could the two or three motor forces
thrusting the handle act in harmony, owing to the clashing of so many
of them; one always ended in breaking down the other. The Constituent
Assembly had set aside the King, the Legislative Assembly had deposed
him, the Convention had decapitated him. Afterward each fraction of
the sovereign body in the Convention had proscribed the other; the
Montagnards had guillotined the Girondists, and the Thermidorians had
guillotined the Montagnards. Later, under the Constitution of the year
III, the Fructidorians had banished the Constitutionalists, the
Directory had purged the Councils, and the Councils had purged the
Directory. - Not only did the democratic and parliamentary institution
fail in its work and break down on trial, but, again, through its own
action, it became transformed into its opposite. In a year or two a
coup d'état in Paris took place; a faction seized the central power
and converted it into an absolute power in the hands of five or six
ringleaders. The new government at once re-forged the executive
instrument for its own advantage and refastened the blade firmly on
the handle; in the provinces it dismissed those elected by the people
and deprived the governed of the right to choose their own rulers;
henceforth, through its proconsuls on mission, or through its resident
commissioners, it alone appointed, superintended, and regulated on the
spot all local authorities.[2]
Thus the liberal constitution, at its close, gave birth to a
centralized despotism, and this was the worst of its species, at once
formless and monstrous; for it was born out of a civil crime, while
the government which used it had no support but a band of bigoted
fanatics or political adventurers; without any legal authority over
the nation, or any moral hold on the army, detested, threatened,
discordant, exposed to the resistance of its own upholders, to the
treachery of its own members, and living only from day to day, it
could maintain itself only through a brutal absolutism and permanent
terror, while the public power of which the first care is the
protection of property, consciences, and lives, became in its hands
the worst of persecutors, robbers, and murderers.
III.
In 1799, the undertaking is more difficult and the materials worse.
Twice in succession had the experiment been tried, the monarchical
constitution of 1791, and the republican constitution of 1795; twice
in succession had the same events followed the same course to attain
the same end; twice in succession had the theoretical, cunningly-
devised machine for universal protection changed into an efficient and
brutal machine for universal oppression. It is evident that if the
same machine were started the third time under analogous conditions,
one might expect to see it work in the same manner; that is to say,
contrary to its purpose.
Now, in 1799, the conditions were analogous, and even worse, for the
work which the machine had to do was not less, while the human
materials available for its construction were not so good. -
Externally, the country was constantly at war with Europe; peace could
not be secured except by great military effort, and peace was as
difficult to preserve as to win. The European equilibrium had been too
greatly disturbed; neighboring or rival States had suffered too much;
the rancor and distrust provoked by the invading revolutionary
republic were too active; these would have lasted a long time against
pacified France even after she had concluded reasonable treaties. Even
should she abandon a policy of propaganda and interference, return
brilliant acquisitions, cease the domination of protectorates, and
abandon the disguised annexation of Italy, Holland, and Switzerland,
the nation was still bound to keep watch under arms. A government able
to concentrate all its forces - that is to say, placed above and
beyond all dispute and promptly obeyed-was indispensable, if only to
remain intact and complete, to keep Belgium and the frontier of the
Rhine. - Likewise internally, and for no other purpose than to restore
civil order; for here, too, the outrages of the Revolution had been
too great. There had been too much spoliation, too many imprisonments,
exiles, and murders, too many violations of every kind, too many
invasions of the rights of property and of persons, public and
private. It was so much more difficult
* To insure respect for persons and all private and public
possessions;
* to restrain at once both Royalists and Jacobins;
* to restore 140,000 émigrés to their country and yet satisfy
1,200,000 possessors of national property;
* to give back to 25,000,000 of orthodox Catholics the right, faculty,
and means for worshipping, and yet not allow the schismatic clergy to
be maltreated;
* to bring face to face in the same commune the dispossessed seigneur
and the peasant holders of his domain;
* to compel the delegates of the Committee of Public Safety and their
victims, the shooters and the shot of Vendémiaire, the Fructidorians
and the Fructidorized, the Whites and the Blues of La Vendée and
Brittany, to live in peace side by side,
because the future laborers in this immense work, from the village
mayor to the state-senator and state-councilor, had borne a part in
the Revolution, either in effecting it or under subjection to it -
Monarchists, Feuillantists, Girondists, Montagnards, Thermidorians,
moderate Jacobins or desperate Jacobins, all oppressed in turn and
disappointed in their calculations. Their passions, under this régime,
had become embittered; each brought personal bias and resentment into
the performance of his duties; to prevent him from being unjust and
mischievous demanded a tightened curb.[3] All sense of conviction,
under this régime, had died out; no body would serve gratis as in
1789;[4] nobody would work without pay; disinterestedness had lost all
charm; ostentatious zeal seemed hypocrisy; genuine zeal seemed self-
dupery; each looked out for himself and not for the community; public
spirit had yielded to indifference, to egotism, and to the need of
security, of enjoyment, and of self-advancement. Human materials,
deteriorated by the Revolution, were less than ever suited to
providing citizens - they simply furnished functionaries. With such
wheels combined together according to formula current between 1791 and
1795, the requisite work could not possibly be done. As a consequence,
definitely and for a long time, any use of the two great liberal
mechanisms were doomed. So long as the wheels remained of such poor
quality and the task so hard, both the election of local powers and
the division of the central power had to be abandoned.
IV.
Motives for suppressing the election of local powers. - The Electors.
- Their egoism and partiality. - The Elected. - Their inertia,
corruption, and disobedience.
All were agreed on the first point. If any still doubted, they had
only to open their eyes, fix them on the local authorities, watch them
as soon as born, and follow them throughout the exercise of their
functions. - Naturally, in filling each office, the electors had
chosen a man of their own species and caliber; their fixed and
dominant disposition was accordingly well known; they were indifferent
to public matters and therefore their candidate was as indifferent as
themselves. Had they shown too great a concern for the nation this
would have prevented their election; the State to them was a
troublesome moralist and remote creditor. Their candidate must choose
between them and this intruder, side with them against it, and not act
as a pedagogue in its name or as bailiff on its behalf. When power is
born on the spot and conferred to-day by constituents who are to
submit to it to-morrow as subordinates, they do not put the whip in
the hands of one who will flog them; they demand sentiments of him in
conformity with their inclinations; in any event they will not
tolerate in him the opposite ones. From the beginning, this
resemblance between them and him is great, and it goes on increasing
from day to day because the creature is always in the hands of his
creators; subject to their daily pressure, he at last becomes as they
are; after a certain period they have shaped him in their image. -
Thus the candidate-elect, from the start or very soon after, became a
confederate with his electors. At one time, and this occurred
frequently, especially in the towns, he had been elected by a violent
sectarian minority; he then subordinated general interests to the
interests of a clique. At another, and especially in the rural
districts, he had been elected by an ignorant and brutal majority,
when he accordingly subordinated general interests to those of a
village. - If he chanced to be conscientious and somewhat intelligent
and was anxious to do his duty, he could not; he felt himself weak and
was felt to be weak;[5] both authority and the means for exercising it
were wanting in him. He had not the force which a power above
communicates to its delegates below; nobody saw behind him the
government and the army; his only resource was a national-guard, which
either shirked or refused to do its duty, and which often did not
exist at all. - On the contrary, he could prevaricate, pillage, and
persecute for his own advantage and that of his clique with impunity;
for there was no restraint on him from above; the Paris Jacobins would
not be disposed to alienate the Jacobins of the province; they were
partisans and allies, and the government had few others; it was bound
to retain them, to let them intrigue and embezzle at will.
Suppose an extensive domain of which the steward is appointed, not by
the absent owner, but by his tenants, debtors, farmers, and
dependents: the reader may imagine whether rents will be paid and
debts collected, whether road-taxes will be worked out, what care will
be taken of the property, what its annual income will be to the owner,
how abuses of commission and omission will be multiplied indefinitely,
how great the disorder will be, the neglect, the waste, the fraud, the
injustice, and the license. - The same in France,[6] and for the same
reason:
* every public service disorganized, destroyed, or perverted;
* no justice, no police;
* authorities abstaining from prosecution, magistrates not daring to
condemn, a gendarmerie which receives no orders or which stands still;
* rural marauding become a habit;
* roving bands of brigands in forty-five departments;
* mail wagons and coaches stopped and pillaged even up to the environs
of Paris;
* highways broken up and rendered impassable;
* open smuggling, customs yielding nothing, national forests
devastated, the public treasury empty,[7] its revenues intercepted
and expended before being deposited, taxes decreed and not collected;
* everywhere arbitrary assessments of real and personal estate, no
less wicked exemptions than overcharges;
* in many places no list prepared for tax assessments,
* communes which here and there, under pretext of defending the
republic against neighboring consumers, exempt themselves from both
tax and conscription;
* conscripts to whom their mayor gives false certificates of infirmity
and marriage, who do not turn out when ordered out, who desert by
hundreds on the way to headquarters, who form mobs and use guns in
defending themselves against the troops,-
such were the fruits of the system.
The government could not constrain rural majorities with the officials
chosen by the selfish and inept rural majorities. Neither could it
repress the urban minorities with agents elected by the same partial
and corrupt urban minorities. Hands are necessary, and hands as firm
as tenacious, to seize conscripts by the collar, to rummage the
pockets of taxpayers, and the State did not have such hands. They were
required right away, if only to prepare and provide for urgent needs.
If the western departments had to be subdued and tranquilized, relief
furnished to Massena besieged in Genoa, Mélas prevented from invading
Provence, Moreau's army transported over the Rhine, the first thing
was to restore to the central government the appointment of local
authorities.
V. Reasons for centralization.
Reasons for placing the executive central power in one hand. - Sieyès'
chimerical combinations. - Bonaparte's objections.
On this second point, the evidence was scarcely less. - And clearly,
the moment the local powers owed their appointment to the central
powers, it is plain that the central executive power, on which they
depend, should be unique. For, this great team of functionaries,
driven from aloft, could not have aloft several distinct drivers;
being several and distinct, the drivers would each pull his own way,
while the horses, pulling in opposite directions, would do nothing but
prance. In this respect the combinations of Sieyès do not bear
examination. A mere theorist and charged with preparing the plan of a
new constitution, he had reasoned as if the drivers on the box were
not men, but robots: perched above all, a grand-elector, a show
sovereign, with two places to dispose of and always passive, except to
appoint or revoke two active sovereigns, the two governing consuls.
One, a peace-consul, appointing all civil officers, and the other a
war-consul, making all military and diplomatic appointments; each with
his own ministers, his own council of state, his own court of
judicature. All these functionaries, ministers, consuls, and the
grand-elector himself, were revocable at the will of a senate which
from day to day could absorb them, that is to say, make them senators
with a salary of 30,000 francs and an embroidered dress-coat.[8]
Sieyès evidently had not taken into account either the work to be done
or the men who would have to do it, while Bonaparte, who was doing the
work at this very time, who understood men and who understood himself,
at once put his finger on the weak spot of this complex mechanism, so
badly adjusted and so frail. Two consuls,[9] "one controlling the
ministers of justice, of the interior, of the police, of the treasury,
and the other the ministers of war, of the navy, and of foreign
affairs." The conflict between them is certain; look at them facing
each other, subject to contrary influences and suggestions: around the
former "only judges, administrators, financiers, and men in long
robes," and round the latter "only epaulets and men of the sword."
Certainly "one will need money and recruits for his army which the
other will not grant." - And it is not your grand-elector who will
make them agree. "If he conforms strictly to the functions which you
assign to him he will be the mere ghost, the fleshless phantom of a
roi fainéant. Do you know any man vile enough to take part in such
contrivances? How can you imagine any man of talent or at all
honorable contentedly playing the part of a hog fattening himself on a
few millions?" - And all the more because if he wants to abandon his
part the door stands open. "Were I the grand-elector I would say to
the war-consul and to the peace-consul on appointing them, If you put
in a minister or sign a bill I don't like I'll put you out." Thus does
the grand-elector become an active, absolute monarch.
"But," you may say, "the senate in its turn will absorb the grand-
elector." - " The remedy is worse than the disease; nobody, according
to this plan, has any guarantees," and each, therefore, will try to
secure them to himself, the grand-elector against the senate, the
consuls against the grand-elector, and the senate against the grand-
elector and consuls combined, each uneasy, alarmed, threatened,
threatening, and usurping to protect himself; these are the wheels
which work the wrong way, in a machine constantly getting out of
order, stopping, and finally breaking down entirely.
Thereupon, and as Bonaparte, moreover, was already master, all the
executive powers were reduced to one, and this power was vested in
him.[10] In reality, "to humor republican opinion"[11] they gave him
two associates with the same title as his own; but they were appointed
only for show, simply as consulting, inferior, and docile registrars,
with no rights save that of signing their names after his and putting
their signatures to the procès verbal declaring his orders; he alone
commanded, "he alone had the say, he alone appointed to all offices,"
so that they were already subjects as he alone was already the
sovereign.
VI. Irreconcilable divisions.
Difficulty of organizing a legislative power. - Fraudulent and violent
elections for ten years. - Spirit and diffusion of hatred against the
men and dogmas of the Revolution. - Probable composition of a freely
elected Assembly. - Its two irreconcilable divisions. - Sentiments of
the army. - Proximity and probable meaning of a new coup d'État.
It remained to frame a legislative power as a counterpoise to this
executive power, so concentrated and so strong. - In organized and
tolerably sound communities this point is reached through an elective
parliament which represents the public will; it represents this
because it is a copy, a faithful reduction of that will on a small
scale; it is so organized as to present a loyal and proportionate
expression of diverse controlling opinions. In this case, the
electoral selection has worked well; one superior right, that of
election, has been respected, or, in other words, the passions excited
have not proved too strong, which is owing to the most important
interests not having proved too divergent. - Unfortunately, in France,
rent asunder and discordant, all the most important interests were in
sharp antagonism; the passions brought into play, consequently, were
furious; no right was respected, and least of all that of election;
hence the electoral test worked badly, and no elected parliament was
or could be a veritable expression of the public will. Since 1791, the
elections, violated and deserted, had brought intruders only to the
legislative benches, under the name of mandatories. These were endured
for lack of better; but nobody had any confidence in them, and nobody
showed them any deference. People knew how they had been elected and
how little their title was worth. Through inertness, fear, or disgust,
the great majority of electors had not voted, while the voters at the
polls fought among themselves, the strongest or least scrupulous
expelling or constraining the rest. During the last three years of the
Directory the electoral assembly was often divided; each faction
elected its own deputy and protested against the election of the
other. The government then chose between the two candidates elected,
arbitrarily and always with barefaced partiality; and again, if but
one candidate was elected, and that one an adversary, his election was
invalidated. In sum, for nine years, the legislative body, imposed on
the nation by a faction, was scarcely more legitimate than the
executive power, another usurper, and which, later on, filled up or
purged its ranks. Any remedy for this defect in the electoral machine
was impossible; it was due to its internal structure, to the very
quality of its materials. At this date, even under an impartial and
strong government, the machine could not have answered its purpose,
that of deriving from the nation a body of sober-minded and respected
delegates, providing France with a parliament capable of playing its
own part, or any part whatever, in the conduct of public business.
For, suppose
* that the new governors show uncommon loyalty, energy, and vigilance,
remarkable political abnegation and administrative omnipresence,
* that the factions are contained without suppression of free speech,
* the central powers neutral yet active,
* no official candidature,
* no pressure from above,
* no constraint from below,
* the police-commissioners respectful and gendarmes protecting the
entrance to every electoral assembly,
* all proceedings regular, no disturbance inside, voting perfectly
free, the electors numerous, five or six millions of Frenchmen
gathered at the polls,
and guess what choice they will make.
After Fructidor, there is a renewal of religious persecution and of
excessive civil oppression; the brutality and unworthiness of the
rulers have doubled and diffused hatred against the men and the ideas
of the Revolution. - In Belgium, recently annexed, the regular and
secular clergy had just been proscribed in a mass,[12] and a great
rural insurrection had broken out. The uprising had spread from the
Waes country and the ancient seignory of Malines, around Louvain as
far as Tirlemont, and afterward to Brussels, to Campine, to South
Brabant, to Flanders, to Luxembourg, in the Ardennes, and even to the
frontiers of Liège; many villages had to be burned, and many of their
inhabitants killed, and the survivors keep this in mind. In the twelve
western departments,[13] at the beginning of the year 1800, the
royalists were masters of nearly the whole country and had control of
forty thousand armed men in regimental order; undoubtedly these were
to be overcome and disarmed, but they were not to be deprived of their
opinions, as of their guns. - In the month of August, 1799,[14]
sixteen thousand insurgents in Haute Garonne and the six neighboring
departments, led by Count de Paulo, had unfurled the royal white flag;
one of the cantons, Cadours, "had risen almost entirely;" a certain
town, Muret, sent all its able-bodied men. They had penetrated even to
the outskirts of Toulouse, and several engagements, including a
pitched battle, were necessary to subdue them. On one occasion, at
Montréjean, 2000 were slain or drowned. The peasants fought with fury,
" a fury that bordered on frenzy;" "some were heard to exclaim with
their last breath, 'Vive le Roi!' and others were cut to pieces rather
than shout, 'Vive la République!'" - From Marseilles to Lyons the
revolt lasted five years on both banks of the Rhône, under the form of
brigandage; the royalist bands, increased by refractory conscripts and
favored by the inhabitants whom they spared, killed or pillaged the
agents of the republic and the buyers of national possessions.[15]
There were thus, in more than thirty departments, intermittent and
scattered Vendées. In all the Catholic departments there was a latent
Vendée. Had the elections been free during this state of exasperation
it is probable that one-half of France would have voted for men of the
ancient régime - Catholics, Royalists, or, at least, the Monarchists
of 1790.
Let the reader imagine facing this party, in the same chamber, about
an equal number of representatives elected by the other party; the
only ones it could select, its notables, that is to say, the survivors
of preceding assemblies, probably Constitutionalists of the year IV
and the year V, Conventionalists of the Plain and of the Feuillants of
1792, from Lafayette and Dumolard to Daunou, Thibaudeau and Grégoire,
among them Girondists and a few Montagnards, Barère,[16] with others,
all of them wedded to the theory the same as their adversaries to
traditions. To one who is familiar with the two groups, behold two
inimical doctrines confronting each other; two irreconcilable systems
of opinions and passions, two contradictory modes of conceiving
sovereignty, law, society, the State, property, religion, the Church,
the ancient régime, the Revolution, the present and the past; it is
civil war transferred from the nation to the parliament. Certainly the
Right would like to see the First Consul a Monck, which would lead to
his becoming a Cromwell; for his power depends entirely on his credit
with the army, then the sovereign force; at this date the army is
still republican, at least in feeling if not intelligently, imbued
with Jacobin prejudices, attached to revolutionary interests, and
hence blindly hostile to aristocrats, kings, and priests.[17] At the
first threat of a monarchical and Catholic restoration it will demand
of him an eighteenth Fructidor[18]; otherwise, some Jacobin general,
Jourdan, Bernadotte, or Augereau, will make one without him, against
him, and they fall back into the rut from which they wished to escape,
into the fatal circle of revolutions and coups d'état.
VII. Establishment of a new Dictatorship.
The electoral and legislative combinations of Sieyès. - Bonaparte's
use of them. - Paralysis and submission of the three legislative
bodies. - The Senate as the ruler's tool. -Senatus-consultes and
Plebiscites. - Final establishment of the Dictatorship. - Its dangers
and necessity. - Public power now able to do its work.
Sieyès comprehended this: he detects on the horizon the two specters
which, for ten years, have haunted all the governments of France,
legal anarchy and unstable despotism; he has found a magic formula
with which to exorcise these two phantoms; henceforth "power is to
come from above and confidence from below."[19] - Consequently, the
new constitutional act withdraws from the nation the right to elect
its deputies; it will simply elect candidates to the deputation and
through three degrees of election, one above the other; thus, it is to
take part in the choice of its candidates only through "an illusory
and metaphysical participation."[20] The right of the electors of the
first degree is wholly reduced to designating one-tenth among
themselves; the right of those of the second degree is also reduced to
designating one-tenth among themselves; the right of those of the
third degree is finally reduced to designating one-tenth of their
number, about six thousand candidates. On this list, the government
itself, by right and by way of increasing the number, inscribes its
own high functionaries; evidently, on such a long list, it will have
no difficulty in finding men who, as simple tools, will be devoted to
it. Through another excess of precaution, the government, on its sole
authority, in the absence of any list, alone names the first
legislature. Last of all, it is careful to attach handsome salaries to
these legislative offices, 10,000 f., 15,000 f., and 30,000 f. a year;
parties canvass with it for these places the very first day, the
future depositaries of legislative power being, to begin with,
solicitors of the antechamber. - To render their docility complete,
there is a dismemberment of this legislative power in advance; it is
divided among three bodies, born feeble and passive by institution.
Neither of these has any initiative; their deliberations are confined
to laws proposed by the government. Each possesses only a fragment of
function; the "Tribunat" discusses without passing laws, the "Corps
Législatif" decrees without discussion, the conservative" Sénat" is to
maintain this general paralysis. "What do you want?" said Bonaparte to
Lafayette.[21] "Sieyès everywhere put nothing but ghosts, the ghost of
a legislative power, the ghost of a judiciary, the ghost of a
government. Something substantial had to be put in their place. Ma
foi, I put it there," in the executive power.
There it is, completely in his hands; other authorities to him are
merely for show or as instruments.[22] The mutes of the Corps
Législatif come annually to Paris to keep silent for four months; one
day he will forget to convoke them, and nobody will remark their
absence. - As to the Tribunat, which talks too much, he will at first
reduce its words to a minimum "by putting it on the diet of laws;"
afterward, through the interposition of the senate, which designates
retiring members, he gets rid of troublesome babblers; finally, and
always through the interposition of the senate, titular interpreter,
guardian, and reformer of the constitution, he ventilates and then
suppresses the Tribunat itself. - The senate is the grand instrument
by which he reigns; he commands it to furnish the senatus-consultes of
which he has need. Through this comedy played by him above, and
through another complementary comedy which he plays below, the
plebiscite, he transforms his ten-year consulate into a consulate for
life, and then into an empire, that is to say, into a permanent,
legal, full, and perfect dictatorship. In this way the nation is
handed over to the absolutism of a man who, being a man, cannot fail
to think of his own interest before all others. It remains to be seen
how far and for how long a time this interest, as he comprehends it,
or imagines it, will accord with the interest of the public. All the
better for France should this accord prove complete and permanent; all
the worse for France should it prove partial and temporary. It is a
terrible risk, but inevitable. There is no escape from anarchy except
through despotism, with the chance of encountering in one man, at
first a savior and then a destroyer, with the certainty of henceforth
belonging to an unknown will fashioned by genius and good sense, or by
imagination and egoism, in a soul fiery and disturbed by the
temptations of absolute power, by success and universal adulation, in
a despot responsible to no one but himself, in a conqueror condemned
by the impulses of conquest to regard himself and the world under a
light growing falser and falser.
Such are the bitter fruits of social dissolution: the authority of the
state will either perish or become perverted; each uses it for his own
purposes, and nobody is disposed to entrust it to an external
arbitrator, and the usurpers who seize it only remain trustee on
condition that they abuse it; when it works in their hands it is only
to work against its office. It must be accepted when, for want of
better or fear of worse, through a final usurpation, it falls into the
only hands able to restore it, organize it, and apply it at last to
the service of the public.
____________________________________________________________________
Notes:
[1] "The Revolution," P.193 and following pages, also p.224 and
following pages. The provisions of the constitution of the year III,
somewhat less anarchical, are analogous; those of the "Mountain"
constitution (year II) are so anarchical that nobody thought of
enforcing them.
[2] "The Revolution," vol. III., pp.446, 450, 476.
[3] Sauzay, "Histoire de la persecution révolutionnaire dans le
département du Doubs," X., 472 (Speech of Briot to the five-hundred,
Aug.29, 1799): "The country seeks in vain for its children; it finds
the chouans, the Jacobins, the moderates, and the constitutionalists
of '91 and '93, clubbists, the amnestied, fanatics, scissionists and
antiscissionists; in vain does it call for republicans."
[4] "The Revolution," III., 427, 474. - Rocquain, "L'état de la France
au 18 Brumaire," 360, 362: "Inertia or absence of the national agents.
. . It would be painful to think that a lack of salary was one of the
causes of the difficulty in establishing municipal administrations. In
1790, 1791, and 1792, we found our fellow-citizens emulously striving
after these gratuitous offices and even proud of the disinterestedness
which the law prescribed." (Report of the Directory, end of 1795.)
After this date public spirit is extinguished, stifled by the Reign of
Terror. - Ibid., 368, 369: "Deplorable indifference for public
offices. . . . Out of seven town officials appointed in the commune of
Laval, only one accepted, and that one the least capable. It is the
same in the other communes." - Ibid., 380 (Report of the year VII):
"General decline of public spirit." - Ibid., 287 (Report by Lacuée, on
the 1st military division, Aisne, Eure-et-Loire, Loiret, Oise, Seine,
Seine-et-Marne, (year IX): "Public spirit is dying out and is even
gone."
[5] Rocquain, Ibid., p.27 (Report of François de Nantes, on the 8th
military division ,Vaucluse, Bouches-du-Rhône, Var, Basses-Alpes, and
Alpes-Maratimes, year IX): "Witnesses, in some communes, did not dare
furnish testimony, and, in all, the justices of the peace were afraid
of making enemies and of not being re-elected. It was the same with
the town officials charged with prosecutions and whom their quality as
elected and temporary officials always rendered timid." - Ibid., 48:
"All the customs-directors complained of the partiality of the courts.
I have myself examined several cases in which the courts of Marseilles
and Toulon decided against the plain text the law and with criminal
partiality. - Archives nationales, series F7, Reports "on the
situation, on the spirit of the public," in many hundreds of towns,
cantons, and departments, from the year III to the year VIII and
after.
[6] Cf. "The Revolution," III., book IX., ch. I. - Rocquain, passim. -
Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Révolution française," III., parts 9 and 10.
- Archives nationales, F7, 3250 (Letter of the commissioner of the
executive directory, Fructidor 23, year VII): "Armed mobs on the road
between Saint-Omer and Arras have dared fire on the diligences and
rescue from the gendarmerie the drawn conscripts." - Ibid., F7, 6565.
Only on Seine-inferiure, of which the following are some of the
reports of the gendarmerie for one year. - Messidor, year VII,
seditious mobs of conscripts and others in the cantons of Motteville
and Doudeville. "What shows the perverted spirit of the communes of
Gremonville and of Héronville is that none of the inhabitants will
make any declaration, while it is impossible that they should not have
been in the rebels' secrets." - Similar mobs in the communes of
Guerville, Mi1lebose,and in the forest of Eu: "It is stated that they
have leaders, and that drilling goes on under their orders. -
Vendémiarie 27, year VIII.) "Twenty-five armed brigands or drafted men
in the cantons of Réauté and Bolbec have put farmers to ransom." -
(Nivôse 12~ year VIII.) In the canton of Cuny another band of brigands
do the same thing. - (Germinal 14, year VIII.) Twelve brigands stop
the diligence between Neufchatel and Rouen; a few days after, the
diligence between Rouen and Paris is stopped and three of the escort
are killed. - Analogous scenes and mobs in the other departments.
[7] "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), Librarie Plon,
Paris 1893. I., 260. Under the Directory," one day, in order to
dispatch a special courier, the receipts of the Opera had to be taken
because they were in coin. Another day, it was on the point of sending
every gold piece in the musée of medals to be melted down (worth in
the crucible from 5000 to 6000 francs)."
[8] "Théorie constitutionnelle de Sieyès." (Extract from unpublished
memoirs by Boulay de la Meurthe.) Paris, 1866, Renouard.
[9] "Correspondance de Napoleon 1er," XXX.. 345. ("Mémoires.") -
"Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène
[10] "Extrait des Mémoires" de Boulay de la Meurthe, p.50. (Words of
Bonaparte to Roederer about Sieyès, who raised objections and wanted
to retire.) "If Sieyès goes into the country, draw up for me at once
the plan of a constitution. I will summon the primary assemblies in a
week and make them accept it after discharging the (Constituant)
committees."
[11] "Correspondance de Napoléon ler" XXX., 345, 346. ("Mémoires.")
"Circumstances were such as to still make it necessary to disguise the
unique magistracy of the president."
[12] The Revolution," III., 458, 417. - " Mercure britannique," nos.
for November 1798 and January 1799. (Letters from Belgium.) - " More
than 300 millions have been seized by force in these desolated
provinces; there is not a landowner whose fortune has not been ruined,
or sequestrated, or fatally sapped by forced levies and the flood of
taxes which followed these, by robberies of movable property and the
bankruptcy due to France having discredited claims on the emperor and
on the governments, in short through confiscation." - The insurrection
breaks out, as in Vendée, on account of the conscription; the war-cry
of the insurgents is, "Better die here than elsewhere."
[13] De Martel, "Les Historiens fantaisistes," part 2 (on the
Pacification of the West, according to reports of the royalist leaders
and of the republican generals).
[14] Archives nationales, F7, 3218. (Summary of dispatches arranged
according to dates.-Letters of Adjutant-General Vicose, Fructidor 3,
year VII. - Letters of Lamagdelaine, commissioner of the executive
Directory, Thermidor 26 and Fructidor 3, year VII.) - " The rascals
who led the people astray had promised them, in the King's name, that
they should not be called on for further taxes, that the conscripts
and requisitionnaires should not leave, and, finally, that they should
have the priests they wanted." - Near Montréjean "the carnage was
frightful, nearly 2000 men slain or drowned and 1000 prisoners." -
(Letter of M. Alquier to the first consul, Pluviôse 18, year VIII.)
"The insurrection of Thermidor caused the loss of 3000 cultivators. -
(Letters of the department administrators and of the government
commissioners, Nivôse 25 and 27, Pluviôse 13, 15, 25, 27, and 30, year
VIII.) - The insurrection is prolonged through a vast number of
isolated outrages, with sabers or guns, against republican
functionaries and partisans, justices of the peace, mayors, etc. In
the commune of Balbèze, fifty conscripts, armed deserters with their
knapsacks, impose requisitions ,give balls on Sunday, and make
patriots give up their arms. Elsewhere, this or that known patriot is
assaulted in his house by a band of ten or a dozen young folks who
make him pay a ransom, shout "Vive le Roi!" etc. - Cf. "Histoire de I'
insurrection royaliste de l'an VII," by B. Lavigne, 1887.
[15] Archives nationales, F7, 3273 (Letter of the commissioner of the
executive Directory, Vaucluse, Fructidor 6, year VII.): "Eighty armed
royalists have carried off, near the forest of Suze, the cash-box of
the collector, Bouchet, in the name of Louis XVIII. These rascals, it
must be noted, did not take any of the money belonging to the
collector himself." - (Ibid., Thermidor 3, year VII.) "On looking
around among our communes I find all of them under the control of
royalist or town-councillors. That is the spirit of the peasants
generally. . . . Public spirit it so perverted, so opposed to the
constitutional regime, that a miracle only will bring them within the
pale of freedom." - Ibid., F7, 3199. (Similar documents on the
department of Bouches-du-Rhône.) Outrages continue here far down into
the consulate, in spite of the vigor and multitude of military
executions. - (Letter of the sub-prefect of Tarascon, Germinal 15,
year IX.) "In the commune of Eyragues, yesterday, at eight o'clock, a
band of masked brigands surrounded the mayor's house, while some of
them entered it and shot this public functionary without anybody
daring to render him any assistance. .. . Three-quarters of the
inhabitants of Eyragues are royalists."- In series F7, 7152 and those
following may be found an enumeration of political crimes classified
by department and by the month, especially for Messidor, year VII.
[16] Barère, representative of Hautes Pyrénées, had preserved a good
deal of credit in this remote department, especially in the district
of Argeles, with populations which knew nothing about the "Mountain."
In 1805, the electors presented him as a candidate for the legislative
body and the senate; in 1815, they elected him deputy.
[17] "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de
France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. I., 158. At the
time the concordat was under consideration the aversion to " priest
rule" was very great in the army; there were secret meetings held
against it. Many of the superior officers took part in them, and even
some of the leading generals. Moreau was aware of them although he did
not attend them. In one of these gatherings, things were carried far
enough to resolve upon the assassination of the first consul. A
certain Donnadieu, then of a low rank in the army, offered to strike
the blow. General Oudinot, who was present, informed Davoust, and
Donnadieu, imprisoned in the Temple, made revelations. Measures were
at once taken to scatter the conspirators, who were all sent away more
or less farther off; some were arrested and others exiled, among them
General Mounier, who had commanded one of Desaix's brigades at
Marengo. General Lecourbe was also one of the conspirators.
[18] On the 18th Fructidor Napoléon used grape-shot and artillery to
sweep the royalists off the streets of Paris. (SR.)
[19] "Extrait des Mémoires de Boulay de la Meurthe," p.10.
[20] Napoleon's words. ("Correspondance," XXX., 343, memoirs dictated
at Saint Helena.)
[21] Lafayette, " Mémoires,"II., 192.
[22] Pelet de la Lozère, " Opinions de Napoléon au conseil d'état," p.
63 "The senate is mistaken if it thinks it possesses a national and
representative chamber. It is merely a constituted authority emanating
from the government like the others." - Ibid., P.147: " It must not be
in the power of a legislative body to impede government by refusing
taxes; once the taxes are established they should be levied by simple
decrees. The court of cassation regards my decrees as laws; otherwise,
there would be no government." (January 9, 1808.) - Ibid., p. 147: "
If I ever had any fear of the senate I had only to put fifty young
state-councillors into it." (December 1, 1803.) - Ibid., p.150: "If
an opposition should spring up in the legislative corps I would fall
back on the senate to prorogue, change it, or break it up." (March 29,
1806.) - Ibid., p.151: "Sixty legislators go out every year which one
does not know what to do with; those who do not get places go and
grumble in the departments. I should like to have old land-owners
married, in a certain sense, to the state through their family or
profession, attached by some tie to the commonwealth. Such men would
come to Paris annually, converse with the emperor in his own circle,
and be contented with this little bit of vanity relieving the monotony
of their existence." (Same date.) - Cf. Thibaudeau, "Mémoires sur le
Consulat," ch. XIII., and M. de Metternich, "Mémoires," I., 120 (Words
of Napoleon at Dresden, in the spring of 1812): "I shall give the
senate and the council of state a new organization. The former will
take the place of the upper chamber, the latter that of the chamber of
deputies. I shall continue to appoint the senators; I shall have the
state councillors elected one-third at a time on triple lists ; the
rest I will appoint. Here will the budget be prepared and the laws
elaborated." - We see the corps législatif, docile as it is, still
worrying him, and very justly; he foresaw the session of 1813.
CHAPTER II.
I.
Principal service rendered by the public power. - It is an
instrumentality. - A common law for every instrumentality. -
Mechanical instruments. - Physiological instruments. - Social
instruments. - The perfection of an instrument increases with the
convergence of its effects.
What is the service which the public power renders to the public? -
The principal one is the protection of the community against the
foreigner, and of private individuals against each other. - Evidently,
to do this, it must in all cases be provided with indispensable means,
namely: diplomats, an army, a fleet, arsenals, civil and criminal
courts, prisons, a police, taxation and tax-collectors, a hierarchy of
agents and local supervisors, who, each in his place and attending to
his special duty, will co-operate in securing the desired effect. -
Evidently, again, to apply all these instruments, the public power
must have, according to the case, this or that form or constitution,
this or that degree of impulse and energy: according to the nature and
gravity of external or internal danger, it is proper that it should be
concentrated or divided, emancipated from control or under control,
authoritative or liberal. No indignation need be cherished beforehand
against its mechanism. Strictly speaking, it is a vast piece appliance
in the human community, such as a machine in a factory or such as
organ in the human body. If this organ is the only on that can carry
out the task, let us accept it and its structure: whoever wants the
end wants the means. All we can ask is that the means shall be adapted
to the end; in other terms, that the myriad of large or small local or
central pieces shall be determined, adjusted, and coordinated in view
of the final and total effect to which they co-operate nearly or
remotely.
But, whether simple or compound, every engine which does any work is
subject to one condition; the better it is suited to any distinct
purpose the less it is suited to other purposes; as its perfection
increases, so does its application become limited. - Accordingly, if
there are two distinct instruments applied to two distinct objects,
the more perfect they are, each of its kind, the more do their domains
become circumscribed and opposed to each other; as one of them becomes
more capable of doing its own work it becomes more incapable of doing
the work of the other; finally, neither can take the place of the
other, and this is true whatever the instrument may be, mechanical,
physiological, or social.
At the very lowest grade of human industry the savage possesses but
one tool; with his cutting or pointed bit of stone he kills, breaks,
splits, bores, saws, and carves; the instrument suffices, in the main,
for all sorts of services. After this come the lance, the hatchet, the
hammer, the punch, the saw, the knife, each adapted to a distinct
purpose and less efficacious outside of that purpose: one cannot saw
well with a knife, and one cuts badly with a saw. Later, highly-
perfected engines appear, and, wholly special, the sewing-machine and
the typewriter: it is impossible to sew with the typewriter or write
with the sewing-machine. - In like manner, when at the lowest round of
the organic ladder the animal is simply a shapeless jelly, homogeneous
and viscous, all parts of it are equally suited to all functions; the
amoebae, indifferently and by all the cells of its body, can walk,
seize, swallow, digest, breathe, and circulate all its fluids, expel
its waste, and propagate its species. A little higher up, in fresh-
water polyp, the internal sac which digests and the outer skin which
serves to envelop it can, if absolutely necessary, change their
functions; if you turn the animal inside out like a glove it continues
to live; its skin, become internal, fulfills the office of a stomach;
its stomach, become external, fulfills the office of an envelope. But,
the higher we ascend, the more do the organs, complicated by the
division and subdivision of labor, diverge, each to its own side, and
refuse to take each other's place. The heart, with the mammal, is only
good for impelling the blood, while the lungs only furnish the blood
with oxygen; one cannot possibly do the work of the other; between the
two domains the special structure of the former and the special
structure of the latter interpose an impassable barrier. - In like
manner, finally, at the very bottom of the social scale - lower down
than the Andamans and the Fuegians - we find a primitive stage of
humanity in which society consists wholly of a herd. In this herd
there is no distinct association in view of a distinct purpose; there
is not even a family - no permanent tie between male and female; there
is simply a contact of the sexes. Gradually, in this herd of
individuals, all equal and all alike, particular groups define
themselves, take shape, and separate: we see appearing more and more
precise relationships, more and more distinct habitations, more and
more hereditary homesteads, fishing, hunting, and war groups, and
small workshops; if the people is a conquering people, castes
establish themselves. At length, we find in this expanded and solidly-
organized social body provinces, communes, churches, hospitals,
schools, corporate bodies and associations of every species and
dimension, temporary or permanent, voluntary or involuntary, in brief,
a multitude of social engines constructed out of human beings who, on
account of personal interest, habit, and constraint, or through
inclination, conscience, and generosity, co-operate according to a
public or tacit statute in effecting in the material or spiritual
order of things this or that determinate undertaking. In France, to-
day, there are, besides the State, eighty-six departments, thirty-six
thousand communes, four church bodies, forty thousand parishes, seven
or eight millions of families, millions of agricultural, industrial,
and commercial establishments, hundreds of institutions of science and
art, thousands of educational and charitable institutions, benevolent
and mutual-aid societies, and others for business or for pleasure by
tens and hundreds and thousands, in short, innumerable associations of
every kind, each with a purpose of its own, and, like a tool or a
special organ, carrying out a distinct work.
Now, each of these associations so far as it is a tool or an organ is
subject to the same law; the better it is in one direction, the more
mediocre it is in other directions; its special competency constitutes
its general incompetence. This is why, among developed nations, no
specialized organization can replace another in a satisfactory manner.
"An academy of painting which should also be a bank would, in all
probability, exhibit very bad pictures and discount very bad bills. A
gas company which should also be a kindergarten would, we expect,
light the streets poorly and teach the children badly." [1] And the
reason is that an instrument, whatever it may be, a mechanical tool,
or physiological organ, or human association, is always a system of
pieces whose effects converge to a given end; it matters little
whether the pieces are bits of wood and metal, as in the tool, cells
and fibers, as in the organ, souls and understandings, as in the
association; the essential thing is the convergence of their effects;
for the more convergent these effects, the more efficient is the
instrument in the realization of its end. But, through this
convergence, it takes one direction exclusively and cannot take any
other; it cannot operate at once in two different senses; it cannot
possibly turn to the right and at the same time turn to the left. If
any social instrument devised for a special service is made to act
additionally for another, it will perform its own office badly as well
the one it usurps. Of the two works executed by it, the first injures
the second and the second injures the first one. The end, ordinarily,
is the sacrifice of one to the other, and, most frequently, the
failure of both.
II. Abusive Government Intervention.
Application of this law to the public power. - General effect of its
intervention.
Let us follow out the effects of this law when it is the public power
which, beyond its principal and peculiar task, undertakes a different
task and puts itself in the place of corporate bodies to do their
work; when the State, not content with protecting the community and
individuals against external or internal oppression, takes upon itself
additionally the government of churches, education, or charity, the
direction of art, science, and of commercial, agricultural, municipal,
or domestic affairs. - Undoubtedly, it can intervene in all corporate
bodies other than itself; it has both the right and the duty to
interfere; it is bound to do this through its very office as defender
of persons and property, to repress in these bodies spoliation and
oppression, to compel in them the observance of the primordial
statute, charter, or contract, to maintain in the them rights of each
member fixed by this statute, to decide according to this statute all
conflicts which may arise between administrators and the
administrated, between directors and stockholders, between pastors and
parishioners, between deceased founders and their living successors.
In doing this, it affords them its tribunals, its constables, and its
gendarmes, and it affords these to them only with full consent after
having looking into and accepted the statute. This, too, is one of the
obligations of its office: its mandate hinders it from placing the
public power at the service of despoiling and oppressive enterprises;
it is interdicted from authorizing a contract for prostitution or
slavery, and above all, for the best of reasons, a society for
brigandage and insurrections, an armed league, or ready to arm itself,
against the community, or a part of the community, or against itself.
- But, between this legitimate intervention which enables it to
maintain rights, and the abusive interference by which it usurps
rights, the limit is visible and it oversteps this limit when, to its
function of justiciary, it adds a second, that of governing or
supporting another corporation. In this case two series of abuses
unfold themselves; on the one side, the State acts contrary to its
primary office, and, on the other, it discharges the duties of its
superadded office badly.[2]
III. The State attacks persons and property.
It acts against its function. Its encroachments are attacks on persons
and property.
For, in the first place, to govern another corporate body, for example
the Church, the State at one time appoints its ecclesiastical heads,
as under the old monarchy after the abolition of the Pragmatic
Sanction by the Concordat of 1516; at another, as with the Constituent
Assembly in 1791, without appointing its heads, it invents a new mode
of appointment by imposing on the Church a discipline contrary to its
spirit and even to its dogmas. Sometimes it goes further still and
reduces a special body into a mere administrative branch, transforming
its heads into revocable functionaries whose acts it orders and
directs; such under the Empire as well as under the Restoration, were
the mayor and common-councilors in a commune, and the professors and
head-masters of the University. One step more and the invasion is
complete: naturally, either through ambition or precaution, or through
theory or prejudice, on undertaking a new service it is tempted to
reserve to itself or delegate its monopoly. Before 1789 there existed
one of these monopolies to the advantage of the Catholic Church,
through the interdiction of other cults, also another to the advantage
of each corporation of "Arts et Métiers," through the interdiction of
free labor; after 1800, there existed one for the benefit of the
University through all sorts of shackles and constraints imposed on
the establishment and maintenance of private schools. - Now, through
each of these constraints the State encroaches on the domain of the
individual; the more extended its encroachments the more does it prey
upon and reduce the circle of spontaneous initiation and of
independent action, which constitute the true life of the individual;
if, in conformity with the Jacobin program, it pushes its interference
to the end, it absorbs in itself all other lives;[3] henceforth, the
community consists only of automata maneuvered from above, infinitely
small residues of men, passive, mutilated, and, so to say, dead souls;
the State, instituted to preserve persons, has reduced them to
nonentities.
The effect is the same with property when the State supports other
organizations than its own. For, to maintain these, it has no other
funds than those of the taxpayers; consequently, using its collectors,
it takes the money out of their pockets; all, indiscriminately,
willingly or not, pay supplementary taxes for supplementary services,
whether this service benefits them or is repugnant to them. If I am a
Protestant in a Catholic State, or a Catholic in a Protestant State, I
pay for religion which seems wrong to me and for a Church which seems
to me mischievous. If I am a skeptic, a free-thinker, indifferent or
hostile to positive religions in France, I pay to-day for the support
of four cults which I regard as useless or pernicious. If I am a
provincial or a peasant, I pay for maintaining an "Opéra" which I
never attend and for a "Sèvres" and "Gobelins" of which I never see a
vase or a piece of tapestry. - In times of tranquility the extortion
is covered up, but in troubled times it is nakedly apparent. Under the
revolutionary government, bands of collectors armed with pikes made
raids on villages as in conquered countries;[4] the farmer, collared
and kept down by blows from the butt end of a musket, sees his grain
taken from his barn and his cattle from their stable; "all scampered
off on the road to the town;" while around Paris, within a radius of
forty leagues, the departments fasted in order that the capital might
be fed. With gentler formalities, under a regular government, a
similar extortion occurs when the State, employing a respectable
collector in uniform, takes from our purse a crown too much for an
office outside of its competency. If, as with the Jacobin State, it
claims all offices, it empties the purse entirely; instituted for the
conservation of property, it confiscates the whole of it. - Thus, with
property, as with persons, when the state proposes to itself another
purpose than the preservation of these, not only does it overstep its
mandate but it acts contrary to its mandate.
IV. Abuse of State powers.
It badly fills the office of the bodies it supplant. - Cases in which
it usurps their powers and refuses to be their substitute. - Cases in
which it violates or profits by their mechanism. - In all cases it is
bad or mediocre substitute. - Reasons derived from its structure
compared with that of other bodies.
Let us consider the other series of abuses, and the way in which the
State performs the service of the corporate bodies it supplants.
In the first place there is a chance that, sooner or later, it will
shirk this work, for this new service is more or less costly, and,
sooner or later, it seems too costly. - Undoubtedly the State has
promised to defray expenses; sometimes even, like the Constituent and
Legislative assemblies, the revenues for this having been confiscated,
it has to furnish an equivalent; it is bound by contract to make good
the local or special sources of revenue which it has appropriated or
dried up, to furnish in exchange a supply of water from the grand
central reservoir, the public treasury. - But if water becomes low in
this reservoir, if the taxes in arrears stop the regular supply, if a
war happens to open a large breach in it, if the prodigality and
incapacity of the rulers, multiply its fissures and leaks, then there
is no money on hand for accessory and secondary services. The State,
which has adopted this service drops it: we have seen under the
Convention and the Directory how, having taken the property of all
corporations, provinces, and communes, of institutions of education,
art, and science, of churches, hospitals, and asylums, it performed
their functions; how, after having been a despoiler and a robber, it
became insolvent and bankrupt; how its usurpation and bankruptcy
ruined and then destroyed all other services; how, through the double
effect of its intervention and desertion, it annihilated in France
education, worship, and charity; why the streets in the towns were no
longer lighted nor swept; why, in the provinces, roads went to decay,
and dikes crumbled; why schools and churches stood empty or were
closed ; why, in the asylum and in the hospital, foundlings died for
lack of milk, the infirm for lack of clothing and food, and the sick
for lack of broth, medicines, and beds.[5]
In the second place, even when the State respects a service or
provides the means for it, there is a chance that it will pervert this
simply because it comes under its direction. - When rulers lay their
hands on an institution it is almost always for the purpose of making
something out of it for their own advantage and to its detriment: they
render everything subordinate to their interests or theories, they put
some essential piece or wheel out of shape or place; they derange its
action and put the mechanism out of order; they make use of it as a
fiscal, electoral, or doctrinal engine, as a reigning or sectarian
instrument. - Such, in the eighteenth century, was the ecclesiastical
staff with which we are familiar,[6] court bishops, drawing-room abbés
imposed from above on their diocese or their abbey, non-residents,
charged with functions which they do not fulfill, largely-paid idlers,
parasites of the Church, and, besides all this, worldly, gallant,
often unbelievers, strange leaders of a Christian clergy and which,
one would say, were expressly selected to undermine Catholic faith in
the minds of their flocks, or monastic discipline in their convents. -
Such, in 1791,[7] is the new constitutional clergy, schismatic,
excommunicated, interlopers, imposed on the orthodox majority to say
masses which they deem sacrilegious and to administer sacraments which
they refuse to accept.
In the last place, even when the rulers do not subordinate the
interests of the institution to their passions, to their theories, or
to their own interests, even when they avoid mutilating it and
changing its nature, even when they loyally fulfill, as well as they
know how, the supererogatory (distributive) mandate which they have
adjudged to themselves, they infallibly fulfill it badly, at least
worse than the special and spontaneous bodies for which they
substitute themselves, for the structure of these bodies and the
structure of the state are different. - Unique of its kind, alone
wielding the sword, acting from above and afar by authority and
constraints, the State acts over the entire territory through uniform
laws, through imperative and minute regulations, by a hierarchy of
obedient functionaries, which it maintains under strict instructions.
Hence, it is not adapted to business which, to be well done, needs
springs and processes of another species. Its springs, wholly
exterior, are insufficient, too weak to support and push undertakings
which require an internal motor like private interest, local
patriotism, family affections, scientific curiosity, charitable
instincts, and religious faith. Its wholly mechanical processes, too
rigid and too limited, cannot urge on enterprises which demand of
whoever undertakes them delicate and safe handling, supple
manipulation, appreciation of circumstances, ready adaptation of means
to ends, constant contrivance, the initiative, and perfect
independence. On this account the State is a poor head of a family, a
poor commercial or agricultural leader, a bad distributor of labor and
of subsistence, a bad regulator of production, exchanges, and
consumption, a mediocre administrator of the province and the commune,
an undiscerning philanthropist, an incompetent director of the fine
arts, of science, of instruction, and of worship.[8] In all these
offices its action is either dilatory or bungling, according to
routine or oppressive, always expensive, of little effect and feeble
in returns, and always beyond or apart from the real wants it pretends
to satisfy. The reason is that it starts from too high a point
therefore extending over too vast a field. Transmitted by hierarchical
procedures, it lags along in formalism, and loses itself in "red-
tape." On attaining its end and object it applies the same program to
all territories alike a program devised beforehand in the Cabinet, all
of a piece, without experimental groping and the necessary
corrections;
* a program which, calculated approximately according to the average
and the customary, is not exactly suited to any particular case;
* a program which imposes its fixed uniformity on things instead of
adjusting itself to its diversity and change;
* a sort of model coat, obligatory in pattern and stuff, which the
government dispatches by thousands from the center to the provinces,
to be worn, willingly or not, by figures of all sizes and at all
seasons.
V. Final Results of Abusive Government Intervention
Other consequences. - Suppressed or stunted bodies cease to grow. -
Individuals become socially and politically incapable. - The hands
into which public power then falls. - Impoverishment and degradation
of the social body.
And much worse. Not only does the State do the work badly on a domain
not its own, roughly, at greater cost, and with smaller yield than
spontaneous organizations, but, again, through the legal monopoly
which it deems its prerogative, or through its unfair competition, it
kills and paralyzes these natural organizations or prevents their
birth; and hence so many precious organs, which, absorbed, curbed or
abandoned, are lost to the great social body. - And still worse, if
this system lasts, and continues to crush them out, the human
community loses the faculty of reproducing them; entirely extirpated,
they do not grow again; even their germ has perished. Individuals no
longer know how to form associations, how to co-operate under their
own impulses, through their own initiative, free of outside and
superior constraint, all together and for a long time in view of a
definite purpose, according to regular forms under freely-chosen
chiefs, frankly accepted and faithfully followed. Mutual confidence,
respect for the law, loyalty, voluntary subordination, foresight,
moderation, patience, perseverance, practical good sense, every
disposition of head and heart, with which no association of any kind
is efficacious or even viable, have died out for lack of exercise.
Henceforth spontaneous, pacific, and fruitful co-operation, as
practiced by a free people, is unattainable; men have arrived at
social incapacity and, consequently, at political incapacity. - In
fact they no longer choose their own constitution or their own rulers;
they put with these, willingly or not, according as accident or
usurpation furnishes them: now the public power belongs to the man,
the faction, or the party sufficiently unscrupulous, sufficiently
daring, sufficiently violent, to seize and hold on to it by force, to
make the most of it as an egotist or charlatan, aided by parades and
prestige, along with bravura songs and the usual din of ready-made
phrases on the rights of Man and the public salvation. - This central
power itself has in its hands no body who might give it an impetus and
inspiration, it rules only over an impoverished, inert, or languid
social body, solely capable of intermittent spasms or of artificial
rigidity according to order, an organism deprived of its secondary
organs, simplified to excess, of an inferior or degraded kind, a
people no longer anything but an arithmetical sum of separate,
unconnected units, in brief, human dust or mud. - This is what the
interference of the State leads to.
There are laws in the social and moral world as in the physiological
and physical world; we may misunderstand them, but we cannot elude
them; they operate now against us, now for us, as we please, but
always alike and without heeding us; it is for us to heed them; for
the two conditions they couple together are inseparable; the moment
the first appears the second inevitably follows.
_____________________________________________________________________
Notes:
[1] Macaulay, "Essays: Gladstone on Church and State." - This
principle, of capital importance and of remarkable fecundity, may be
called the principle of specialties. Adam Smith fist applied it to
machines and to workmen. Macaulay extended it to human associations.
Milne-Edwards applied it to the entire series of animal organs.
Herbert Spencer largely develops it in connection with physiological
organs and human societies in his "Principles of Biology" and
"Principles of Sociology." I have attempted here to show the three
parallel branches of its consequences, and, again, their common root,
a constitutive and primordial property inherent in every
instrumentality.
[2] Cf. "The Revolution," III., book VI., ch. 2 The encroachments of
the State and their effect on individuals is there treated. Here, the
question is their effects on corporations. Read, on the same subject,
"Gladstone on Church and State," by Macaulay, and "The Man versus the
State," by Herbert Spencer, two essays in which the close reasoning
and abundance of illustrations are admirable.
[3] "The Revolution," III, 346. (Laffont II. p 258.)
[4] Ibid., III. 284 Laff. 213.
[5] "The Revolution," III., 353, 416. (Laffont II. notes pp 262 and
305 to 308.)
[6] "The Ancient Régime," 64, 65, 76, 77, 120, 121, 292. (Laffont I.
pp. 52-53, 60-61, 92 to 94, 218 to 219.)
[7] "The Revolution," I., 177 and following pages. (Laffont I, pp. 438
to 445.)
[8] The essays of Herbert Spencer furnish examples for England under
the title of "Over-legislation and Representative government."
Examples for France may be found in "Liberté du Travail," by Charles
Dunoyer (1845). This work anticipates most of the ideas of Herbert
Spencer, lacking only the physiological "illustrations."
CHAPTER III. The New Government Organization.
I.
Precedents of the new organization. - In practical operation. -
Anterior usurpations of the public power. - Spontaneous bodies under
the Ancient Regime and during the Revolution. - Ruin and discredit of
their supports. - The central power their sole surviving dependence. -
Unfortunately, in France at the end of the eighteenth century the bent
was taken and the wrong bent. For three centuries and more the public
power had increasingly violated and discredited spontaneous bodies:
Sometimes it had mutilated them and decapitated them; for example, it
had suppressed provincial governments (états) over three-quarters of
the territory, in all the electoral districts; nothing remained of the
old province but its name and an administrative circumscription.
Sometimes, without mutilating the corporate body it had upset and
deformed it, or dislocated and disjointed it. - So that in the towns,
through changes made in old democratic constitutions, through
restrictions put upon electoral rights and repeated sales of municipal
offices,[1] it had handed over municipal authority to a narrow
oligarchy of bourgeois families, privileged at the expense of the
taxpayer, half separated from the main body of the public, disliked by
the lower classes, and no longer supported by the confidence or
deference of the community. And in the parish and in the rural canton,
it had taken away from the noble his office of resident protector and
hereditary patron, reducing him to the odious position of a mere
creditor, and, if he were a man of the court, to the yet worse
position of an absentee creditor.[2] - So that in the parish and in
the rural canton, it had taken away from the noble his office of
resident protector and hereditary patron, reducing him to the odious
position of a mere creditor, and, if he were a man of the court, to
the yet worse position of an absentee creditor.[3] Thus, as to the
clergy, it had almost separated the head from the trunk by superposing
(through the concordat) a staff of gentleman prelates, rich,
ostentatious, unemployed, and skeptical, upon an army of plain, poor,
laborious, and believing curates.[4]
Finally, it had, through a protection as untimely as it was
aggressive, sometimes conferred on the corporation oppressive
privileges which rendered it offensive and mischievous, or else
fossilized in an obsolete form which paralyzed its action or corrupted
its service. Such was the case with the corporations of crafts and
industries to which, in consideration of financial aid, it had
conceded monopolies onerous to the consumer and a clog on industrial
enterprises. Such was the case with the Catholic Church to which,
every five years, it granted, in exchange for its voluntary gift (of
money), cruel favors or obnoxious prerogatives, the prolonged
persecution of Protestants, the censorship of intellectual
speculation, and the right of controlling schools and education.[5]
Such was the case with the universities benumbed by routine; with
latest provincial "Ètats," constituted in 1789, as in 1489. Such was
the case with noble families subjected by law to the antique system of
substitutions and of primogeniture, that is to say, to social
constraint which, devised long ago for private as well as for public
interest in order to secure the transmission of local patronage and
political power. This system, however, became useless and corrupting,
fecund in pernicious vanities,[6] in detestable calculations, domestic
tyrannies, forced vocations, and private bickering, from the time when
the nobles, become frequenters of the court, had lost political power
and renounced local patronage.
Thus deprived of, or diverted from, their purpose, the corporate
bodies had become unrecognizable under the crust of the abuses which
disfigured them. Nobody, except a Montesquieu, could comprehend why
they should exist; on the approach of the Revolution, they seemed, not
organs, but outgrowths, deformities, and, so to say, superannuated
monstrosities. Their historical and natural roots, their living germs
far below the surface, their social necessity, their fundamental
utility, their possible usefulness, were no longer visible. Only their
present inconvenience was felt; people suffered by their friction and
burden; their lack of harmony and incoherence created dissatisfaction;
annoyance due to their degeneracy were attributed to radical defects;
they were judged to be naturally unsound and were condemned, in
principle, because of the deviations and laws which the public power
had imposed on their development.
Suddenly, the public power, which had produced the evil by its
intervention, pretended to remove it by a still greater intervention:
in 1789 it again intruded itself on corporate bodies, not to reform
them, not restore each to its proper channel, not to confine each with
proper limits, but to destroy them outright. Through a radical,
universal, and extraordinary amputation, the like of which is not
mentioned in history, with the rashness of the theorist and the
brutality of the butcher, the legislator extirpated them all, as far
as he could, even including the family, while his fury extended beyond
the present into the future. To legal abolition and total
confiscation, he added the systematic hostility of his preventive
laws, together with a fresh obstacle in the shape of his new
constructions; during three successive legislatures[7] he provided
against their future regeneration, against the permanent instincts and
necessities which might one day resuscitate stable families, distinct
provinces, and an orthodox church, against artistic, industrial,
financial, charitable, and educational corporations, against every
spontaneous and organized group, and against every collective, local,
or special enterprise. In place of these he installed synthetic bodies
or institutions:
* a Church without believers,
* schools without pupils,
* hospitals without incomes,
* a geometrical hierarchy of improvised powers in the commune,
district, and department,
all badly organized, badly adjusted, out of gear at the start,
overwhelmed with political functions, as incapable of performing their
proper duties as their supplementary duties, and, from the very
beginning, either powerless or mischievous.[8] Changes repeatedly
marred by arbitrariness from above or from below, set aside or
perverted now by the mob and again by the government, inert in the
country, oppressive in the towns, we have seen the state into which
they had fallen at the end of the Directory; how, instead of a refuge
for liberty, they had become haunts of tyranny or sinks of egoism;
why, in 1800, they were as much decried as their predecessors in 1788,
why their two successive props, the old one and the most recent,
historic custom and popular election, were now discredited and no
longer resorted to. - After the disastrous experience of the monarchy
and the still worse experience of the republic, another prop had to be
sought for; but only one remained, that of the central power, the only
one visible and which seemed substantial; in default of others they
had recourse to this.[9] In any event, no protestation, even secret
and moral, any longer prevented the State from attaching other
corporate bodies to itself, in order to use them for its own purposes
as instruments or appendages.
II. Doctrines of Government.
The theory. - Agreement of speculative ideas with practical
necessities. - Public rights under the Ancient Regime. - The King's
three original rights. - Labors of the jurists in extending royal
prerogatives. - Historical impediments. - The primitive or ulterior
limits of royal power. - The philosophic and revolutionary principle
of popular sovereignty. - Unlimited extension of State power. -
Application to spontaneous bodies. - Convergence of ancient and new
doctrines. - Corporations considered as creations of the public power.
- Centralization through the universal intervention of the State.
The theory here agreed with the need, and not alone the recent theory,
but again the ancient theory. Long before 1789, public right had
elevated the prerogative of centralized power into a dogma and
exaggerated it beyond measure.
There are three titles under which this power was conferred. - Feudal
seignior, and suzerain, that is to say, commander-in-chief of the
great resident army whose willing forces had served to reconstruct
society in the ninth century, the King, through the remotest of his
origins - that is to say, through the immemorial confusion of
sovereignty with property - was the owner of France, the same as an
individual owns his private domain.[10] - Married, moreover, to the
Church since the first Capets, consecrated and crowned at Rheims,
anointed by God like a second David,[11] not only was he believed to
be authorized from on high, like other monarchs, but, from Louis le
Gros, and especially after the time of saint Louis, he appeared as the
delegate from on high, invested with a laic sacerdotalism, clothed
with moral power, minister of eternal justice, redresser of wrongs,
protector of the weak, benefactor of the humble - in short, "His Most
Christian Majesty." - At length, after the thirteenth century, the
recent discovery and diligent study of the ancient codes of Justinian
had shown in his person the successor of the Caesars of Rome and of
the Emperors of Constantinople. According to these codes the people in
a body had transferred its rights to the prince; now, in antique
cities, all rights were vested in the community, and the individual
had none;[12] accordingly, through this transfer, all rights, public
or private, passed into the hands of the prince; henceforth he could
exercise them as he pleased, under no restriction and no control. He
was above the law, since he made it; his powers were illimitable and
his decision absolute.[13]
On this triple frame the jurists, like State spiders, had, from
Philippe le Bel down, spun their web, and the instinctive concordance
of their hereditary efforts had attached all its threads to the
omnipotence of the King. - Being jurisconsults - that is to say,
logicians - they were obliged to deduce, and their minds naturally
recurred to the unique and rigid principle to which they might attach
their arguments. - As advocates and councilors of the crown they
espoused the case of their client and, through professional zeal,
derived or forced precedents and texts to his advantage. - By virtue
of being administrators and judges the grandeur of their master
constituted their grandeur, and personal interest counseled them to
expand a prerogative in which, through delegation, they took part. -
Hence, during four centuries, they had spun the tissue of "regalian
rights," the great net in the meshes of which, since Louis XIV., all
lives found themselves caught.[14]
Nevertheless, however tightly spun was the web, there were openings in
it, or, at least, very weak spots. - And first, of the consequences
flowing from these three principles in their hands, two of them had
hindered the third from unwinding its skein to the end: owing to the
fact that the King was formerly Count de Paris and Abbot of St. Denis,
he could not become a veritable Augustus, an authentic Diocletian: his
two French titles limited his Roman title. Without regard to the laws,
so-called fundamental, which imposed his heir on him beforehand, also
the entire line of his successive heirs, the tutor, male or female, of
his minor heir, and which, if he derogated from immemorial usage,
annulled his will like that of a private individual, his quality of
suzerain and that of Most Christian, were for him a double impediment.
As hereditary general of the feudal army he was bound to consider and
respect the hereditary officers of the same army, his old peers and
companions in arms - that is to say, the nobles. As outside bishop, he
owed to the Church not alone his spiritual orthodoxy, but, again, his
temporal esteem, his active zeal, and the aid furnished him by his
secular arm. Hence, in applied right, the numerous privileges of the
nobles and the Church, so many immunities and even liberties, so many
remains of antique local independence, and even of antique local
sovereignty,[15] so many prerogatives, honorific or serviceable,
maintained by the law and by the tribunals. On this side, the meshes
of the monarchical netting had not been well knit or remained loose;
and the same elsewhere, with openings more or less wide, in the five
provincial governments (états), in the Pyrenees districts, in Alsace,
at Strasbourg, but especially in Languedoc and in Brittany, where the
pact of incorporation, through a sort of bilateral contract,
associated together on the same parchment and under the same seal the
franchises of the province and the sovereignty of the King.
Add to these original lacunae the hole made by the Prince himself in
his net already woven: he had with his own hand torn away its meshes,
and by thousands. Extravagant to excess and always needy, he converted
everything into money, even his own rights, and, in the military
order, in the civil order, in commerce and in industry, in the
administration, in the judicature, and in the finances. From one end
of the territory to the other, he had sold innumerable offices,
imposts, dignities, honors, monopolies, exemptions, survivorships,
expectancies - in brief, privileges which, once conferred for a money
consideration, became legal property,[16] often hereditary and
transmissible by the individual or the corporation which had paid for
them. In this way the King alienated a portion of his royalty for the
benefit of the buyer. Now, in 1789, he had alienated a great many of
these portions; accordingly, his present authority was everywhere
restricted by the use he had previously made of it. - Sovereignty,
thus, in his hands had suffered from the double effect of its historic
origins and its historic exercise; the public power had not become, or
had ceased to be, omnipotence. On the one hand it had not reached its
plenitude, and on the other hand it had deprived itself of a portion
of its own completeness.
The philosophers wished to find a solution for this double weakness,
innate and acquired They had therefore transported sovereignty out of
history into the ideal and abstract world, with an imaginary city of
mankind reduced to the minimum of a human being Here men, infinitely
simplified, all alike, equal, separate from their surroundings and
from their past, veritable puppets, were all lifting their hands in
common rectangular motion to vote unanimously for the contrat social.
In this contract "all classes are reduced to one,[17] the complete
surrender of each associate, with all his rights, to the community,
each giving himself up entirely, just as he actually is, himself and
all his forces, of which whatever he possesses forms a part," each
becoming with respect to himself and every act of his private life a
delegate of the State, a responsible clerk, in short, a functionary, a
functionary of the people, henceforth the unique, the absolute, and
the universal sovereign. A terrible principle, proclaimed and applied
for ten years, below by the mob and above by the government! Popular
opinion had adopted it; accordingly the passage from the sovereignty
of the King to the sovereignty of the people was easy, smooth,[18] and
to the novice in reasoning, the old-fashioned taxable and workable
subject, to whom the principle conferred a portion of the sovereignty,
the temptation was too great.
At once, according to their custom, the jurists put themselves at the
service of the new reign. And no dogma was better suited their to
authoritative instinct; no axiom furnished them so convenient a
fulcrum on which to set up and turn their logical wheel. This wheel,
which they had latterly managed with care and caution under the
ancient Régime, had suddenly in their hands turned with frightful
speed and effect in order to convert the rigid, universal, and applied
laws, the intermittent processes, the theoretical pretensions, and the
worst precedents of the monarchy into practice. This meant
* the use of extraordinary commissions,
* accusations of lésé majesté,
* the suppression of legal formalities,
* the persecution of religious beliefs and of personal opinions,
* the right of condemning publications and of coercing thought,
* the right of instruction and education,
* the rights of pre-emption, of requisition, of confiscation, and of
proscription,
in short, pure and perfect arbitrariness. The result is visible in the
deeds of Treilhard, of Berlier, of Merlin de Douai, of Cambacérès, in
those of the Constituant and Legislative Assemblies, in the
Convention, under the Directory, in their Jacobin zeal or hypocrisy,
in their talent for combining despotic tradition with tyrannical
innovation, in their professional skill in fabricating on all
occasions a snare of plausible arguments with which to properly
strangle the individual, their adversary, to the profit of the State,
their eternal master.
In effect, not only had they almost strangled their adversary, but
likewise, through an aftereffect, their master: France which, after
fourteen months of suffocation, was approaching physical suicide.[19]
Such success, too great, had obliged them to stop; they had abandoned
one-half of their destructive creed, retaining only the other half,
the effect of which, less imminent, was less apparent. If they no
longer dared paralyze individual acts in the man, they persisted in
paralyzing in the individual all collective acts. - There must be no
special associations in general society; no corporations within the
State, especially no spontaneous bodies endowed with the initiative,
proprietary and permanent: such is Article II. of the Revolutionary
Creed, and the direct consequence of the previous one which posits
axiomatically the sovereignty of the people and the omnipotence of the
State. Rousseau,[20] inventor of the first, had like-wise enunciated
the second; the constituent assembly had solemnly decreed it and
applied it on a grand scale,[21] and successive assemblies had applied
it on a still grander scale;[22] it was a faith with the Jacobins,
and, besides, in conformity with the spirit of Roman imperial right
and with the leading maxim of French monarchical right. On this point
the three known jurisprudential systems were in accord, while their
convergence brought together around the same table the jurists of the
three doctrines in a common task, ex-parliamentarians and ex-members
of the Committee of Public Safety, former pro-scribers and the
proscribed, the purveyors of Sinamari with Treilhard and Merlin de
Douai, returned from Guiana, alongside of Simeon, Portalis, and Barbé-
Marbois. There was nobody in this conclave to maintain the rights of
spontaneous bodies; the theory, on all three sides, no matter from
whom it proceeded, refused to recognize them for what they are
originally and essentially, that is to say, distinct organisms equally
natural with the State, equally indispensable in their way, and,
therefore, as legitimate as itself; it allowed them only a life on
trust, derived from above and from the center. But, since the State
created them, it might and ought to treat them as its creatures, keep
them indefinitely under its thumb, use them for its purposes, act
through them as through other agencies, and transform their chiefs
into functionaries of the central power.
III. Brilliant Statesman and Administrator.
The Organizer. - Influence of Napoleon's character and mind on his
internal and French system. - Exigencies of his external and European
rôle. - Suppression of all centers of combination and concord. -
Extension of the public domain and what it embraces. - Reasons for
maintaining the private domain. - The part of the individual. - His
reserved enclosure. - Outlets for him beyond that. - His talents are
enlisted in the service of public power. - Special aptitude and
temporary vigor, lack of balance, and doubtful future of the social
body thus formed.
A new France, not the chimerical, communistic, equalized, and Spartan
France of Robespierre and Saint-Just, but a possible real, durable,
and yet leveled and uniform France, logically struck out at one blow,
all of a piece, according to one general principle, a France,
centralized, administrative, and, save the petty egoistic play of
individuals, managed in one entire body from top to bottom, - in
short, the France which Richelieu and Louis XIV. had longed for, which
Mirabeau after 1790 had foreseen,[23] is now the work which the
theories of the monarchy and of the Revolution had prepared, and
toward which the final concurrence of events, that is to say, "the
alliance of philosophy and the saber," led the sovereign hands of the
First Consul.
Accordingly, considering his well-known character, the promptitude,
the activity, the reach, the universality, and the cast of his
intellect, he could not have proposed to himself a different work nor
reduced himself to a lower standard. His need of governing and of
administrating was too great; his capacity for governing and
administrating was too great: his was an exacting genius. - Moreover,
for the outward task that he undertook he required internally, not
only undisputed possession of all executive and legislative powers,
not only perfect obedience from all legal authorities, but, again, the
annihilation of all moral authority but his own, that is to say, the
silence of public opinion and the isolation of each individual, and
therefore the abolition, preventive and systematic, of any religious,
ecclesiastic, pedagogic, charitable, literary, departmental, or
communal initiative that might, now or in the future gather men
against him or alongside of him. Like a good general he secures his
rear. At strife with all Europe, he so arranges it as not to allow in
the France he drags along after him refractory souls or bodies which
might form platoons in his rear. Consequently, and through precaution,
he suppresses in advance all eventual rallying points or centers of
combination Henceforth, every wire which can stir up and bring a
company of men together for the same object terminates in his hands;
he holds in his firm grasp all these combined wires, guards them with
jealous care, in order to strain them to the utmost. Let no one
attempt to loosen them, and, above all, let no one entertain a thought
of getting hold of them; they belong to him and to him alone, and
compose the public domain, which is his domain proper.
But, alongside of his proper domain, he recognizes another in which he
himself assigns a limit to the complete absorption of all wills by his
own; he does not admit, of course in his own interest, that the public
power, at least in the civil order of things and in common practice,
should be illimitable nor, especially, arbitrary.[24] - This is due to
his not being an utopian or a theorist, like his predecessors of the
Convention, but a perspicacious statesman, who is in the habit of
using his own eyes. He sees things directly, in themselves; he does
not imagine them through book formulae or party phrases, by a process
of verbal reasoning, employing the gratuitous suppositions of
humanitarian optimism or the dogmatic prejudices of Jacobin nonsense.
He sees Man just as he is, not Man in himself, an abstract citizen,
the philosophic puppet of the Contrat Social, but the real individual,
the entire living man, with his profound instincts, his tenacious
necessities, which, whether tolerated or not by legislation, still
subsist and operate infallibly, and which the legislator must take
into consideration if he wants to turn them to account. - This
individual, a civilized European and a modern Frenchman, constituted
as he is by several centuries of tolerable police discipline, of
respected rights and hereditary property, must have a private domain,
an enclosed area, large or small, which belongs and is reserved to him
personally, to which the public power interdicts access and before
which it mounts guard to prevent other individuals from intruding on
it. Otherwise his condition seems intolerable to him; he is no longer
disposed to exert himself, to set his wits to work, or to enter upon
any enterprise. Let us be careful not to snap or loosen this powerful
and precious spring of action; let him continue to work, to produce,
to economize, if only that he may be in a condition to pay taxes; let
him continue to marry, to bring forth and raise up sons, if only to
serve the conscription. Let us ease his mind with regard to his
enclosure;[25] let him exercise full proprietorship over it and enjoy
it exclusively; let him feel himself at home in his own house in
perpetuity, safe from any intrusion, protected by the code and by the
courts, not alone against his enemies, but against the administration
itself. Let him in this well-defined, circumscribed abode be free to
turn round and range as he pleases, free to browse at will, and, if he
chooses, to consume all his hay himself. It is not essential that his
meadows should be very extensive: most men live with their nose to the
ground; very few look beyond a very narrow circle; men are not much
troubled by being penned up; the egoism and urgent needs of daily life
are already for them ready-made limits: within these natural barriers
they ask for nothing but to be allowed to graze in security. Let us
give them this assurance and leave them free to consult their own
welfare. - As to the rest, in very small number, more or less
imaginative, energetic, and ardent, there is, outside the enclosure,
an issue expressly provided for them: the new administrative and
military professions offer an outlet to their ambition and to their
vanity which, from the start, keeps on expanding until, suddenly, the
first Consul points to an infinite perspective on the horizon.[26]
According to an expression attributed to him, henceforth,
"the field is open to all talents,"
and hence all talents, gathered into the central current and
precipitated headlong through competition, swell with their inflow the
immensity of the public power.
This done, the principal features of modern France are traced; a tool
of a new and strange type arises, defines itself, and issues forth,
its structure determining its destiny. It consists of a social body
organized by a despot and for a despot, calculated for the use of one
man, excellent for action under the impulsion of a unique will, with a
superior intelligence, admirable so long as this intelligence remains
lucid and this will remains healthy. It is adapted to a military life
and not to civil life, and therefore badly balanced, hampered (géné)
in its development, exposed to periodical crises, condemned to
precocious debility, but viable for a long time, and, for the present
robust, alone able to bear the weight of the new reign and to furnish
for fifteen successive years the crushing labor, the conquering
obedience, the superhuman, murderous, insensate effort which its
master exacts.
IV. Napoleon's barracks.
General aspect and characteristics of the new State. - Contrast
between its structure and that of other contemporary or pre-existing
States. - The plurality, complexity, and irregularity of ancient
France. - The unity, simplicity, and regularity of modern France. - To
what class of works it belongs. - It is the modern masterpiece of the
classic spirit in the political and social order of things.
Let us take a nearer view of the master's idea and of the way in
which, at this moment, he figures to himself the society which is
assuming new shape in his hands. All the leading features of the plan
are fixed beforehand in his mind: they are already deeply graven on it
through his education and through his instinct. By virtue of this
instinct, which is despotic, by virtue of this education, which is
classic and Latin, he conceives human associations not in the modern
fashion, Germanic and Christian, as a concert of initiations starting
from below, but in the antique fashion, pagan and Roman, as a
hierarchy of authorities imposed from above. He puts his own spirit
into his civil institutions, the military spirit; consequently, he
constructs a huge barracks wherein, to begin with, he lodges thirty
million, men, women, and children, and, later on, forty-two million,
all the way from Hamburg to Rome.
The edifice is, of course, superb and of a new style. On comparing it
with other societies in surrounding Europe, and particularly France as
she was previous to 1789, the contrast is striking. - Everywhere else
the social edifice is a composition of many distinct structures -
provinces, cities, seignories, churches, universities, and
corporations. Each has begun by being a more or less isolated block of
buildings where, on an enclosed area, a population has lived apart.
Little by little the barriers have given way; either they have been
broken in or have tumbled down of their own accord; passages have been
made between one and the other and new additions have been put up; at
last, these scattered buildings have all become connected and soldered
on as annexes to the central pile. But they combine with it only
through a visible and clumsy juxtaposition, through incomplete and
bizarre communications: the vestiges of their former independence are
still apparent athwart their actual dependence. Each still rests on
its own primitive and appropriate foundations; its grand lines
subsist; its main work is often almost intact. In France, on the eve
of 1789, it is easily recognized what she formerly was; for example,
it is clear that Languedoc and Brittany were once sovereign States,
Strasbourg a sovereign town, the Bishop of Mende and the Abbess of
Remiremont, sovereign princes;[27] every seignior, laic, or
ecclesiastic, was so in his own domain, and he still possessed some
remnants of public power. In brief, we see thousands of states within
the State, absorbed, but not assimilated, each with its own statutes,
its own legal customs, its own civil law, its own weights and
measures; several with special privileges and immunities; some with
their own jurisdiction and their own peculiar administration, with
their own imposts and tariffs like so many more or less dismantled
fortresses, but whose old feudal, municipal, or provincial walls still
rose lofty and thick on the soil comprehended within the national
enclosure.
Nothing could be more irregular than this total aggregate thus formed;
it is not really an entire whole, but an agglomeration. No plan, good
or bad, has been followed out ; the architecture is of ten different
styles and of ten different epochs. That of the dioceses is Roman and
of the fourth century; that of the seignories is Gothic and of the
ninth century; one structure dates from the Capetians, another from
the Valois, and each bears the character of its date. Because each has
been built for itself and with no regard to the others, adapted to an
urgent service according to the exigencies or requirements of time,
place, and circumstance ; afterward, when circumstances changed, it
had to adapt itself to other services, and this constantly from
century to century, under Philippe le Bel, under Louis XI., under
Francis I., under Richelieu, under Louis XIV., through constant
revision which never consists of entire destruction, through a series
of partial demolitions and of partial reconstructions, in such a way
as to maintain itself, during the transformation, in conciliating,
well or ill, new demands and rooted habits, in reconciling the work of
the passing generation with the works of generations gone before. -
The central seignory itself is merely a donjon of the tenth century, a
military tower of which the enclosure has extended so as to embrace
the entire territory, and of which the other buildings, more or less
incorporated with it, have become prolongations. - A similar medley of
constructions - disfigured by such mutilations, adjuncts, and patches,
a pell-mell so complicated with such incongruous bits and fragments -
can be comprehended only by antiquaries and historians; ordinary
spectators- - the public - pronounce it absurd; it finds no favor with
that class of reasoners who, in social architecture as in physical
architecture, repudiate disorder, posit theories, deduce consequences,
and require that every work shall proceed from the application of a
simple idea.
And worse still, not only is good taste offended but, again, good
sense often murmurs. Practically, the edifice fails in its object,
for, erected for men to dwell in, it is in many places scarcely
habitable. Because it endures it is found superannuated, ill-adapted
to prevailing customs ; it formerly suited, and still suits, the
feudal, scattered, and militant way of living; hence it no longer
suits the unity and repose of modern life. New-born rights obtain no
place in it alongside of established rights; it is either not
sufficiently transformed or it has been transformed in an opposite
sense, in such a way as to be inconvenient or unhealthy, badly
accommodating people who are useful and giving good accommodations to
useless people, costing too much to keep up and causing discomfort and
discontent to nearly all its occupants. - In France, in particular,
the best apartments, especially that of the King, are for a century
past too high and too large, too sumptuous and too expensive. Since
Louis XIV. these have imperceptibly ceased to be government and
business bureaus; they have become in their disposition, decoration,
and furnishing, saloons for pomp and conversation, the occupants of
which, for lack of other employment, delight in discussing
architecture and in tracing plans on paper for an imaginary edifice in
which everybody will find himself comfortable. Now, underneath these,
everybody finds himself uncomfortable, the bourgeoisie in its small
scanty lodgings on the ground-floor and the people in their holes in
the cellar, which are low and damp, wherein light and air never
penetrate. Innumerable vagabonds and vagrants are still worse off,
for, with no shelter or fireside, they sleep under the stars, and as
they are without anything to care for, they are disposed to pull
everything down. - Under the double pressure of insurrection and
theory the demolition begins, while the fury of destruction goes on
increasing until nothing is left of the razed edifice but the soil it
stood on.
The new one rises on this cleared ground and, historically as well as
structurally, it differs from all the others. - In less than ten years
it springs up and is finished according to a plan which, from the
first day, is definite and complete. It forms one unique, vast,
monumental block, in which all branches of the service are lodged
under one roof; in addition to the national and general services
belonging to the public power, we find here others also, local and
special, which do not belong to it, such as worship, education,
charity, fine arts, literature, departmental and communal interests,
each installed in a distinct compartment. All the compartments are
ordered and arranged alike, forming a circle around the magnificent
central apartment, with which each is in communication by a bell; as
soon as the bell rings and the sound spreads from division to sub-
division, the entire service, from the chief clerk down to the lowest
employee, is instantly in motion; in this respect the arrangement, as
regards despatch, co-ordination, exactitude, and working facilities,
is admirable.[28]
On the other hand, its advantages and attractions for employees and
aspirants of every kind and degree are not mediocre. There is no
separation between the stories, no insurmountable barrier or enclosure
between large and small apartments; all, from the least to the finest,
from the outside as well as from the inside, have free access.
Spacious entrances around the exterior terminate in broad, well-
lighted staircases open to the public; everybody can clamber up that
pleases, and to mount these one must clamber; from top to bottom there
is no other communication than that which they present. There is no
concealed and privileged passage, no private stairway or false door;
glancing along the whole rectilinear, uniform flight, we behold the
innumerable body of clerks, functionaries, supernumeraries, and
postulants, an entire multitude, ranged tier beyond tier and
attentive; nobody advances except at the word and in his turn. -
Nowhere in Europe are human lives so well regulated, within lines of
demarcation so universal, so simple, and so satisfactory to the eye
and to logic: the edifice in which Frenchmen are henceforth to move
and act is regular from top to bottom, in its entirety as well as in
its details, outside as well as inside; its stories, one above the
other, are adjusted with exact symmetry; its juxtaposed masses form
pendants and counterpoise; all its lines and forms, every dimension
and proportion, all its props and buttresses combine, through their
mutual dependencies, to compose a harmony and to maintain an
equilibrium. In this respect the structure is classic, belonging to
the same family of productions which the same spirit, guided by the
same method, had produced in Europe for the previous one hundred and
fifty years.[29] Its analogues, in the physical order of things, are
the architectural productions of Mansard, Le Notre, and their
successors, from the structures and gardens of Versailles down to and
embracing the Madeleine and the Rue de Rivoli. In the intellectual
order, its analogues consist of the literary forms of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, the superb oratorical prose and correct,
eloquent poetry, especially epics and tragedies, including those still
manufactured according to rule about the year 1810. It corresponds to
these and forms their pendant in the political and social order of
things, because it emanates from the same deliberate purpose. Four
constitutions, in the same style, preceded it; but these were good
only on paper, while this one stands firm on the ground. For the first
time in modern history we see a society due to ratiocination and, at
the same time, substantial; the new France, under these two heads, is
the masterpiece of the classic spirit.
V. Modeled after Rome.
Its analogue in the antique world. - The Roman State from Diocletian
to Constantine. - Causes and bearing of this analogy. - Survival of
the Roman idea in Napoleon's mind. - The new Empire of the West.
Nevertheless, if we go back in time, beyond modern times, beyond the
Middle Ages, as far as the antique world, we encounter during the
Roman emperors Diocletian's and Constantine's era another monument
whose architecture, equally regular, is developed on a still grander
scale: back then we are in the natal atmosphere and stand on the natal
soil of the classic spirit. - At this time, the human material, more
reduced and better prepared than in France, existed similarly in the
requisite condition. At this date, we likewise see at work the
prearranging reasoning-faculty
* which simplifies in order to deduce,
* which leaves out historic customs and local diversities,
* which considers the basic human being,
* which treats individuals as units and the people as totals,
* which forcibly applies its general outlines to all special lives,
and
* which glories in constituting, legislating, and administering by
rule according to the measurements of square and compass.
At this date, in effect, the turn of mind, the talent, the ways of the
Roman architect, his object, his resources and his means of execution,
are already those of his French successor; the conditions around him
in the Roman world are equivalent; behind him in Roman history the
precedents, ancient and recent, are almost the same.
In the first place,[30] there is, since emperor Augustus, the
absolute monarchy, and, since the Antonines, administrative
centralization the result of which is that
* all the old national and municipal communities are broken up or
crushed out,
* all collective existences chilled or extinguished,
* local patriotism slowly worn away,
* an increasing diminution of individual initiative,
and, under the invasive interference, direction, and providence of the
State, one hundred millions of men become more and more passive and
separated from each other.[31]
And as a result, in full enjoyment of peace and internal prosperity
under the appearances of union, force, and health, latent feebleness,
and, as in France on the approach of 1789, a coming dissolution.
There is next, as after 1789 in France, the total collapse, not from
below and among the people, but from above and through the army, a
worse collapse than in France, prolonged for fifty years of anarchy,
civil wars, local usurpations, ephemeral tyrannies, urban seditions,
rural jacqueries, brigandage, famines, and invasions along the whole
frontier, with such a ruin of agriculture and other useful activities,
with such a diminution of public and private capital, with such a
destruction of human lives that, in twenty years, the number of the
population seems to have diminished one half.[32] There is, finally,
as after 1799, in France, the re-establishment of order brought about
more slowly, but by the same means, the army and a dictatorship, in
the rude hands of three or four great military parvenus, Pannonians or
Dalmatians, Bonapartes of Sirmium or of Scutari, they too, of a new
race or of intact energy, adventurers and children of their own deeds,
the last Diocletian, like Napoleon, a restorer and an innovator.
Around them, as around Napoleon, to aid them in their civil
undertakings, is a crowd of expert administrators and eminent
jurisconsults, all practitioners, statesmen, and businessmen, and yet
men of culture, logicians, and philosophers. They were imbued with the
double governmental and humanitarian view, which for three centuries
Greek speculation and Roman practice had introduced into minds and
imaginations. This view, at once leveling and authoritative, tending
to exaggerate the attributes of the State and the supreme power of the
prince,[33] was nevertheless inclined
* to put natural right in the place of positive law,[34]
* to preferring equity and logic to antiquity and to custom,
* to reinstate the dignity of man among the qualities of mankind,
* to enhance the condition of the slave, of the provincial, of the
debtor, of the bastard, of woman, of the child, and
* to recover for the human community all its inferior members, foreign
or degraded, which the ancient constitution of the family and of the
city had excluded from it.
Therefore Napoleon could find the outlines of his construction in the
political, legislative, and judicial organizations extending from
Diocletian to Constantine, and beyond these down to Theodosius. At the
base, popular sovereignty;[35] the powers of the people delegated
unconditionally to one man. This omnipotence conferred, theoretically
or apparently, through the free choice of citizens, but really through
the will of the army. No protection against the Prince's arbitrary
edict, except a no less arbitrary rescript from the same hand. His
successor designated, adopted, and qualified by himself. A senate for
show, a council of state for administration; all local powers
conferred from above; cities under tutelage. All subjects endowed with
the showy title of citizen, and all citizens reduced to the humble
condition of taxpayers and of people under control. An administration
of a hundred thousand officials taking all services into its hands,
comprising public instruction, public succor, and public supplies of
food, together with systems of worship. This was at first pagan cults,
and after Constantine, the Christian cult. All these services were
classified, ranked, co-coordinated, carefully defined in such a way as
not to encroach on each other, and carefully combined in such a way as
to complete each other. An immense hierarchy of transferable
functionaries was kept at work from above on one hundred and eighty
square leagues of territory; thirty populations of different race and
language-Syrians, Egyptians, Numidians, Spaniards, Gauls, Britons,
Germans, Greeks, Italians - subject to the same uniform Régime. The
territory was divided like a checker-board, on arithmetical and
geometrical principles, into one hundred or one hundred and twenty
small provinces; old nations or States dismembered and purposely cut
up so as to put an end forever to natural, spontaneous, and viable
groups. A minute and verified census taking place every fifteen years
to correctly assign land taxes. An official and universal language; a
State system of worship, and, very soon, a Church and State orthodoxy.
A systematic code of laws, full and precise, admirable for the rule of
private life, a sort of moral geometry in which the theorems,
rigorously linked together, are attached to the definitions and axioms
of abstract justice. A scale of grades, one above the other, which
everybody may ascend from the first to the last; titles of nobility
more and more advanced, suited to more and more advanced functions;
spectabiles, illustres, clarissimi, perfectissimi, analogous to
Napoleon's Barons, Counts, Dukes, and Princes. A programme of
promotion once exhibiting, and on which are still seen, common
soldiers, peasants, a shepherd, a barbarian, the son of a cultivator
(colon), the grandson of a slave, mounting gradually upward to the
highest dignities, becoming patrician, Count, Duke, commander of the
cavalry, Cœsar, Augustus, and donning the imperial purple, enthroned
amid the most sumptuous magnificence and the most elaborate ceremonial
prostrations, a being called God during his lifetime, and after death
adored as a divinity, and dead or alive, a complete divinity on
earth.[36]
So colossal an edifice, so admirably adjusted, so mathematical, could
not wholly perish; its hewn stones were too massive, too nicely
squared; too exactly fitted, and the demolisher's hammer could not
reach down to its deepest foundations. - This one, through its shaping
and its structure, through its history and its duration, resembles the
stone edifices which the same people at the same epoch elevated on the
same soil, the aqueducts, amphitheatres, and triumphal arches, the
Coliseum, the baths of Diocletian and of Caracalla.
The medieval man, using their intact foundations and their shattered
fragments, built here and there, haphazard, according to the
necessities of the moment, planting his Gothic towers between
Corinthian columns against the panels of walls still standing.[37]
But, under his incoherent masonry, he observed the beautiful forms,
the precious marbles, the architectural combinations, the symmetrical
taste of an anterior and superior art; he felt that his own work was
rude. The new world, to all thinking minds, was miserable compared
with the old one; its languages seemed a patois (crude dialect), its
literature mere stammering or driveling, its law a mass of abuses or a
mere routine, its feudality anarchy, and its social arrangements,
disorder. - In vain had the medieval man striven to escape through all
issues, by the temporal road and by the spiritual road, by the
universal and absolute monarchy of the German Cesars, and by the
universal and absolute monarchy of the Roman pontiffs. At the end of
the fifteenth century the Emperor still possessed the golden globe,
the golden crown, the scepter of Charlemagne and of Otho the Great,
but, after the death of Frederick II., he was nothing more than a
majesty for show; the Pope still wore the tiara, still held the
pastoral staff and the keys of Gregory VII. and of Innocent III., but,
after the death of Boniface VIII., he was nothing more than a majesty
of the Church. Both abortive restorations had merely added ruins to
ruins, while the phantom of the ancient empire alone remained erect
amid so many fragments. Grand in its outlines and decorations, it
stood there, august, dazzling, in a halo, the unique masterpiece of
art and of reason, as the ideal form of human society. For ten
centuries this specter haunted the medieval epoch, and nowhere to such
an extent as in Italy.[38]
It reappears the last time in 1800, starting up in and taking firm
hold of the magnificent, benighted imagination of the great
Italian,[39] to whom the opportunity afforded the means for executing
the grand Italian dream of the Middle Ages; it is according to this
retrospective vision that the Diocletian of Ajaccio, the Constantine
of the Concordat, the Justinian of the Civil Code, the Theodosius of
the Tuileries and of St. Cloud reconstructed France.
This does not mean that he copies - he restores; his conception is not
plagiarism, but a case of atavism; it comes to him through the nature
of his intellect and through racial traditions. In the way of social
and political conceptions, as in literature and in art, his
spontaneous taste is ultra-classic. We detect this in his mode of
comprehending the history of France; State historians, "encouraged by
the police," must make it to order; they must trace it "from the end
of Louis XIV. to the year VIII," and their object must be to show how
superior the new architecture is to the old one.[40] "The constant
disturbance of the finances must be noted, the chaos of the provincial
assemblies, . . . the pretensions of the parliaments, the lack of
energy and order in the administration, that parti-colored France with
no unity of laws or of administration, being rather a union of twenty
kingdoms than one single State, so that one breathes on reaching the
epoch in which people enjoy the benefits of the unity of the laws, of
the administration, and of the territory." In effect, he breathes ; in
thus passing from the former to the latter spectacle, he finds real
intellectual pleasure; his eyes, offended with Gothic disorder, turn
with relief and satisfaction to majestic simplicity and classic
regularity; his eyes are those of a Latin architect brought up in the
"École de Rome."
This is so true that, outside of this style, he admits of no other.
Societies of a different type seem to him absurd. He misconceives
their local propriety and the historical reasons for their existence.
He takes no account of their solidity. He is going to dash himself
against Spain and against Russia, and he has no comprehension whatever
of England.[41] -This is so true that, wherever he places his hand he
applies his own social system; he imposes on annexed territories and
on vassal[42] countries the same uniform arrangements, his own
administrative hierarchy, his own territorial divisions and sub-
divisions, his own conscription, his civil code, his constitutional
and ecclesiastical system, his university, his system of equality and
promotion, the entire French system, and, as far as possible, the
language, literature, drama, and even the spirit of his France, - in
brief, civilization as he conceives it, so that conquest becomes
propaganda, and, as with his predecessors, the Cesars of Rome, he
sometimes really fancies that the establishment of his universal
monarchy is a great benefit to Europe.
_____________________________________________________________________
Notes:
[1] De Tocqueville, "L'Ancien régime et la Revolution." p. 64 and
following pages, also p.354 and following pages. - "The Ancient
Régime," p. 368.
[2] "The Revolution," I., book I., especially pp. 16, 17, 55, 61, 62-
65. (Laffont I., 326, 354, 357 to 360.)
[3] "The Ancient Regime," pp.- 36-59. (Laff. I. pp. 33-48.)
[4] Ibid., pp. 72-77. (Laff. I. pp. 59 to 61.)
[5] Ibid., pp. 78-82. (Laff. I. pp. 50-52)
[6] Cf. Frédéric Masson, "Le Marquis de Grignan," vol. I.
[7] The Revolution," I., p. 161 and following pages; II., book VI.,
ch. I., especially p. 80 and following pages. (Laffont I. 428 to 444,
632 and II 67 to 69.)
[8] Ibid., I., P.193 and following pages, and p.226 and following
pages.(Ed. Laffont. I. 449 to 452, 473 to 481.)
[9] "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de
France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. I., 148 (in
relation to the institution prefects and sub-prefects): "The
perceptible good resulting from this change was the satisfaction
arising from being delivered in one day from a herd of insignificant
men, mostly without any merit or shadow of capacity and to who the
administration of department and arrondissement had been surrendered
for the past ten years. As nearly all of them sprung from the lowest
ranks in society, they were only the more disposed to make the weight
of their authority felt."
[10] Guyot, "Répertoire de jurisprudence" (1785), article King: "It is
a maxim of feudal law that the veritable ownership of lands, the
domain, directum dominium, is vested in the dominant seignior or
suzerain. The domain in use, belonging to the vassal or tenant,
affords him really no right except to its produce."
[11] Luchaire," Histoire des institutions monarchiques de la France
sous les premiers Capétiens," I., 28, 46. (Texts of Henry I., Philip
I., Louis VI., and Louis VII.) "A divine minister." - (Kings are)
"servants of the kingdom of God." - "Gird on the ecclesiastical sword
for the punishment of the wicked." - " Kings and priests alone, by
ecclesiastical ordination, are made sacred by the anointing of holy
oils."
[12] "The Revolution," III., p.94. (Laffont II, p. 75)
[13] Janssen, "L'Allemagne à la fin du moyen âge " (French
translation), I., 457. (On the introduction of Roman law into
Germany.) - Declaration of the jurists at the Diet of Roncaglia: "Quod
principi placuit, legis habet vigorem." - Edict of Frederick I., 1165:
"Vestigia praedecessorum suorum, divorum imperatorum, magni
Constantini scilicet et Justiniani et Valentini, . . . sacras eorum
leges, . . . divina oracula. . . . Quodcumque imperator constituerit,
vel cognoscens decreverit, vel edicto praeceperit, legem esse
constat." - Frederick II.: "Princeps legibus solutus est." - Louis of
Bavaria: "Nos qui sumus supra jus."
[14] Guyot, ibid., article Régales. "The great 'régales,' majora
regalia, are those which belong to the King, jure singulari et
proprio, and which are incommunicable to another, considering that
they cannot be divorced from the scepter, being the attributes of
sovereignty, such as . . . the making of laws, the interpretation or
change of these, the last appeal from the decisions of magistrates,
the creation of offices, the declaration of war or of peace, . . . the
coining of money, the augmentation of titles or of values, the
imposition of taxes on the subjects, . . . the exemption of certain
persons from these, the award of pardon for crimes, . . . the creation
of nobles, the foundation of universities, . . . the assembling of the
états-généraux or provinciaux, etc." - Bossuet, "Politique tirée de
l'Écriture sainte": The entire state exists in the person of the
prince." - Louis XIV., "Œuvres," I., 50 (to his son): "You should be
aware that kings can naturally dispose fully and freely of all
possessions belonging as well to persons of the church as to laymen,
to make use of at all times with wise economy, that is to say,
according to the general requirements of their government." - Sorel,
"L'Europe et la Révolution française," I., 231 (Letter of the
"intendant" Foucault): "It is an illusion, which cannot proceed from
anything but blind preoccupation, that of making any distinction
between obligations of conscience and the obedience which is due to
the King."
[15] "The Ancient Régime," p.9 and following pages. - "Correspondance
de Mirabeau et du Comte de le Marck," II., 74 (Note by Mirabeau, July
3, 1790): "Previous to the present revolution, royal authority was
incomplete: the king was compelled to humor his nobles, to treat with
the parliaments,, to be prodigal of favors to the court."
[16] "The Revolution," III., p.318. (Laff.II. p. 237-238). - " The
Ancient Régime," p. 10 (Laff. I. 25n.) Speech by the Chancellor
Séguier, 1775: "Our kings have themselves declared that they are
fortunately powerless to attack property."
[17] Rousseau's text in the "Contrat Social." - On the meaning and
effect of this principle cf "The Revolution," I., 217 and following
pages, and III., book VI., ch. I. Laff. 182-186 et II. 47 to 74).
[18] The opinion, or rather the resignation which confers omnipotence
on the central power, goes back to the second half of the fifteenth
century, after the Hundred Years' war, and is due to that war; the
omnipotence of the king was then the only refuge against the English
invaders, and the ravages of the Écorcheurs. - Cf. Fortescue, "In
leges Angliœ," and" "The Difference between an Absolute and a Limited
Monarchy" (end of the fifteenth century), on the difference at this
date between the English and the French government. - The same
decision is found in the dispatches of the Venetian ambassadors of
this date: "In France everything is based on the will of the king.
Nobody, whatever might be his conscientious scruples, would dare
express an opinion opposed to his. The French respect their king to
such an extent that they would not only sacrifice their property for
him, but again their souls." (Janssen, "L'Allemagne à la fin du moyen
âge. I. 484.) - As to the passage of the monarchical to the democratic
idea, we see it plainly in the following quotations from Restif de la
Bretonne: "I entertained no doubt that the king could legally oblige
any man to give me his wife or his daughter, and everybody in my
village (Sacy in Burgundy) thought so too." ("Monsieur Nicolas," I.,
443.) - In relation to the September massacres: "No, I do not pity
them, those fanatical priests. . . When a community or its majority
wants anything, it is right. The minority is always culpable, even
when right morally. Common sense is that is needed to appreciate that
truth. It is indisputable that the nation has the power to sacrifice
even an innocent person." ("Nuits de Paris," XVth, p.377.)
[19] "The Revolution," III., 393. (Laff. II. p. 291)
[20] "Contrat Social," book 1st, ch. III.: "It is accordingly
essential that, for the enunciation of the general will, no special
organization should exist in the State, and that the opinion of each
citizen should accord with that. Such was the unique and sublime law
of the great Lycurgus."
[21] "The Revolution," I., 170. (Laff. I. 433.)
[22] Ibid., II., 93; III., 78-82. (Laff. I. p. 632 and II. pp. 65-68.)
[23] "Correspondance de Mirabeau et du Comte de la Marck,"II., 74
(Letter of Mirabeau to the King, July 3, 1790): "Compare the new state
of things with the ancient régime. . . . One portion of the acts of
the national assembly (and that the largest) is evidently favorable to
monarchical government. Is it to have nothing, then, to have no
parliaments, no provincial governments, no privileged classes, no
clerical bodies, no nobility? The idea of forming one body of citizens
would have pleased Richelieu: this equalized surface facilitates the
exercise of power. Many years of absolute rule could not have done so
much for royal authority as this one year of revolution." - Sainte-
Beuve, "Port-Royal," V., 25 (M. Harlay conversing with the supérieure
of Port-Royal): "People are constantly talking about Port-Royal, about
these Port-Royal gentlemen: the King dislikes whatever excites talk.
Only lately he caused M. Arnaud to be informed that he did not approve
of the meetings at his house; that there is no objection to his seeing
all sorts of people indifferently like everybody else, but why should
certain persons always be found in his rooms and such an intimate
association among these gentlemen? . . . The King does not want any
rallying point; a headless assemblage in a State is always
dangerous."- Ibid., p.33: "The reputation of this establishment was
too great. People were anxious to put their children in it. Persons of
rank sent theirs there. Everybody expressed satisfaction with it. This
provided it with friends who joined those of the establishment and who
together formed a platoon against the State. The King would not
consent to this: he regarded such unions as dangerous in a State."
[24] "Napoleon Ire et ses lois civiles," by Honoré Pérouse, 280: Words
of Napoleon: "I have for a long time given a great deal of thought and
calculation to the re-establishment of the social edifice. I am to-day
obliged to watch over the maintenance of public liberty. I have no
idea of the French people becoming serfs." -"The prefects are wrong in
straining their authority." - "The repose and freedom of citizens
should not depend on the exaggeration or arbitrariness of a mere
administrator." - "Let authority be felt by the people as little as
possible and not bear down on them needlessly." - (Letters of January
15, 1806, March 6, 1807, January 12, 1809, to Fouché, and of March 6,
1807, to Regnault.) -Thibaudeau, "Mémoires sur le Consulat," P. 178
(Words of the first consul before the council of state): "True civil
liberty depends on the security of property. In no country can the
rate of the tax-payer be changed every year. A man with 3000 francs
income does not know how much he will have left to live on the
following year; his entire income may be absorbed by the assessment on
it. . . A mere clerk, with a dash of his pen, may overcharge you
thousands of francs... Nothing has ever been done in France in behalf
of real estate. Whoever has a good law passed on the cadastre
(official valuation of all the land in France) will deserve a statue."
[25] Honoré Pérouse, Ibid, 274 (Speech of Napoleon to the council of
state on the law on mines):" "Myself, with many armies at my
disposition, I could not take possession of any one's field, for the
violation of the right of property in one case would be violating it
in all. The secret is to have mines become actual property, and hence
sacred in fact and by law." - Ibid., 279:" "What is the right of
property? It is not only the right of using but, again, of abusing it.
. . . One must always keep in mind the advantage of owning property.
The best protection to the owner of property is the interest of the
individual; one may always rely on his activity. . . . A government
makes a great mistake in trying to be too paternal; liberty and
property are both ruined by over-solicitude." -"If the government
prescribes the way in which property shall be used it no longer
exists.". - Ibid., 284 (Letters of Aug.21 and Sept. 7, 1809, on
expropriations by public authority): "It is indispensable that the
courts should supervise, stop expropriation, receive complaints of and
guarantee property-owners against the enterprises of our prefects, our
prefecture councils and all other agents. . . . Expropriation is a
judicial proceeding.. . . I cannot conceive how France can have
proprietors if anybody can be deprived of his field simply by an
administrative decision." - In relation to the ownership of mines, to
the cadastre, to expropriation, and to the portion of property which a
man might bequeath, Napoleon was more liberal than his jurists. Madame
de Staël, "Dix années d'exil," ch. XVIII. (Napoleon conversing with
the tribune Gallois): "Liberty consists of a good civil code, while
modern nations care for nothing but property." - "Correspondance,"
letter to Fouché, Jan. 15, 1805. (This letter gives a good summary of
his ideas on government.) "In France, whatever is not forbidden is
allowed, and nothing can be forbidden except by the laws, by the
courts, or police measures in all matters relating to public order and
morality."
[26] Roederer, "Œuvres complètes," III., 339 (Speech by the First
Consul, October 21, 1800): "Rank, now, is a recompense for every
faithful service - the great advantage of equality, which has
converted 20,000 lieutenancies, formerly useless in relation to
emulation, into the legitimate ambition and honorable reward of
400,000 soldiers." - Lafayette, "Mémoires," V., 350: "Under Napoleon,
the soldiers said, he has been promoted King of Naples, of Holland, of
Sweden, or of Spain, as formerly it was said that a than had been
promoted sergeant in this or that company."
[27] "The Ancient Régime," book I., ch .2, the Structure of Society,
especially pp.19-21. (Laff. I. p. 21-22)
[28] Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène" - Napoleon, speaking of his imperial
organization, said that he had made the most compact government, one
with the quickest circulation and the most nervous energy, that ever
existed. And, he remarked, nothing but this would have answered in
overcoming the immense difficulties around us, and for effecting the
wonderful things we accomplished. The organization of prefectures,
their action, their results, were admirable and prodigious. The same
impulsion affected at the same time more than forty millions of men,
and, aided by centers of local activity, the action was as rapid at
every extremity as at the heart."
[29] "The Ancient Régime," book III., chs. 2 and 3. (Laff. I, pp. 139
to 151 and pp. 153 to 172.)
[30] Gibbon, "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," chs. I, 2, 3, and
13. - Duruy, Histoire des Romains" (illustrated edition), tenth
period, chs. 82, 83, 84, and 85; twelfth period, chs. 95 and 99;
fourteenth period, ch. 104. - (The reader will find in these two
excellent works the texts and monuments indicated to which it is
necessary to resort for a direct and satisfactory impression.)
[31] See in Plutarch (Principles of Political Government) the
situation of a Greek city under the Antonines.
[32] Gibbon, ch. 10. - Duruy, ch. 95. (Decrease of the population of
Alexandria under Gallien, according to the registers of the alimentary
institution, letter of the bishop Dionysius.)
[33] "Digest," I., 4, I.: "Quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem,
utpote, cum lege regia, quœ de imperio ejus lata est, populus ei et in
eum omne suum imperium et potestatem conferat. Quodcumque igitur
imperator per epistolam et subscriptionem statuit, vel cognoscens
decrevit, vel de plano interlocutus est, vel edicto prœcepit, legis
habet vigorem." (Extracts from Ulpian.) - Gaius, Institutes, I., 5:
"Quod imperator constituit, non dubium est quin id vicem legis
obtineat, quum ipse imperator per legem imperium obtineat."
[34] "Digest," I, 2. (Extracts from Ulpian): "Jus est a justitia
appellatum; nam, ut eleganter Celsus definit, jus est ars boni et
œqui. Cujus merito quis nos sacerdotes appellat: justitiam namque
colimus, et boni et œqui notitiam profitemur, œquum ab iniquo
separantes, licitum ab illicito discernentes, . . . veram, nisi
fallor, philosophiam, non simulatam affectantes. . . . Juris prœcepta
sunt hœc: honeste vivere, alterum non 1œdere, suum cuique tribuere." -
cf. Duruy, 12th period, ch. 87.
[35] Cf., on this immemorial principle of the entire body of Roman
public law, cf. Fustel de Coulanges, "Histoire des institutions
politiques et privées de l'ancienne France," vol. I., book II., ch. I,
p.66 and following pages.
[36] Read the "Notitia dignitatum tam civilium quam militarium in
partibus orientis et occidentis." It is the imperial almanac for the
beginning of the fifth century. There are eleven ministers at the
centre, each with his bureaux, divisions, subdivisions and squads of
superposed functionaries,
[37] Cf. Piranesi's engravings.
38 Cf., among other clues see Dante's: "De Monarchia".
[39] We can trace in Napoleon's brain and date the formation of this
leading idea. At first, it is simply a classic reminiscence, as with
his contemporaries; but suddenly it takes a turn and has an
environment in his mind which is lacking in theirs, and which prevents
the idea from remaining a purely literary phrase. From the beginning
he speaks of Rome in the fashion of a Rienzi. (Proclamation of May 20,
1796.) "We are the friends of every people, and especially of the
Brutuses, the Scipios, and of the great men whom we have chosen as
models. To re-establish the Capitol, to place there with honor the
statues of heroes who render it famous, to arouse the Roman people
benumbed by centuries of slavery, such will be the fruit of our
victories." - Fifteen months afterwards, on becoming master of Italy,
his historic meditations turn into positive ambition henceforth, the
possession of Italy and of the Mediterranean is to be with him a
central and preponderant idea. (Letter to the Directory, Aug. 16,
1797, and correspondence on the subject of Corsica, Sardinia, Naples,
and Genoa; letters to the pasha of Scutari, to the Maniotes, etc.)
"The islands of Corfu, Zante, and Cephalonia are of more interest to
us than all Italy put together. . . . The Turkish empire is daily
tottering; the possession of these islands will enable us to support
it as long as possible, or to take our portion of it. The time is not
remote when we shall feel that, for the real destruction of England,
we must get possession of Egypt." Formerly, the Mediterranean was a
Roman lake; it must become a French lake. (Cf. "Souvenirs d'un
Sexagénaire," by Arnault, vol. IV., p.102, on his dream, in 1798, of
making Paris a colossal Rome.) - At this same date, his conception of
the State is fixed and wholly Roman. (Conversations with Miot, June
1797, and letter to Talleyrand, Sep. 19, 1797.) "I do not see but one
thing in fifty years well defined, and that is the sovereignty of the
people. . . . The organization of the French nation is still only
sketched out. . . .The power of the government, with the full latitude
I give to it, should be considered as really representing the nation."
In this government, "the legislative power, without rank in the
republic, deaf and blind to all around it, would not be ambitious and
would no longer inundate us with a thousand chance laws, worthless on
account of their absurdity." It is evident that he describes in
anticipation his future senate and legislative corps. - Repeatedly,
the following year, and during the expedition into Egypt, he presents
the Romans as an example to his soldiers, and views himself as a
successor to Scipio and Cœsar. - (Proclamation of June 22, 1798.): "Be
as tolerant to the ceremonies enjoined by the Koran as you are for the
religion of Moses and Jesus. The Roman legions protected all
religions." - (Proclamation of May 10, 1798.) " The Roman legions that
you have often imitated but not yet equaled fought Carthage in turn on
this wall and in the vicinity of Zama." - Carthage at this time is
England: his hatred of this community of merchants which destroys his
fleet at Aboukir, which forces him to raise the siege of Saint-Jean
d'Acre, which holds on to Malta, which robs him of his substance, his
patrimony, his Mediterranean, is that of a Roman consul against
Carthage; it leads him to conquer all western Europe against her and
to "resuscitate the empire of the Occident." (Note to Otto, his
ambassador at London, Oct.. 23, 1802.) - Emperor of the French, king
of Italy, master of Rome, suzerain of the Pope, protector of the
confederation of the Rhine, he succeeds the German emperors, the
titularies of the Holy Roman Empire which has just ended in 1806; he
is accordingly the heir of Charlemagne and, through Charlemagne, the
heir of the ancient Cœsars. - In fact, he reproduces the work of the
ancient Cœsars by analogies of imagination, situation and character,
but in a different Europe, and where this posthumous reproduction can
be only an anachronism.
[40] "Correspondance," note for M. Cretet, minister of the interior,
April 12, 1808.
[41] Metternich, "Mémoires," I., 107 (Conversations with Napoleon,,
1810): "I was surprised to find that this man, so wonderfully endowed,
had such completely false ideas concerning England, its vital forces
and intellectual progress. He would not admit any ideas contrary to
his own, and sought to explain these by prejudices which he
condemned." - Cf. Forsyth, "History of the Captivity of Napoleon at
Saint-Helena," III., 306, (False calculations of Napoleon at Saint-
Helena based on his ignorance of the English parliamentary system,)
and Stanislas Girardin, III., 296, (Words of the First Consul, Floreal
24, year XI, quoted above.)
[42] Cf., amongst other documents, his letter to Jerome, King of
Westphalia, October 15, 1807, and the constitution he gives to that
kingdom on that date, and especially titles 4 to 12: "The welfare of
your people concerns me, not only through the influence it may
exercise on your fame and my own, but likewise from the point of view
of the general European system. . . . Individuals who have talent and
are not noble must enjoy equal consideration and employment from you.
. . . Let every species of serfage and of intermediary lien between
the sovereign and the lowest class of people be abolished. The
benefits of the code Napoleon, the publicity of proceedings, the
establishment of juries, will form so many distinctive characteristics
of your monarchy." - His leading object is the suppression of
feudalism, that is to say, of the great families and old historic
authorities. He relies for this especially on his civil code: "That is
the great advantage of the code; . . . it is what has induced me to
preach a civil code and made me decide on establishing it." (Letter to
Joseph, King of Naples, June 5, 1806.) - "The code Napoleon is adopted
throughout Italy. Florence has it, and Rome will soon have it."
(Letter to Joachim, King of the Two Sicilies, Nov. 27, 1808.) - " My
intention is to have the Hanseatic towns adopt the code Napoleon and
be governed by it from and after the 1st of January." - The same with
Dantzic: "Insinuate gently and not by writing to the King of Bavaria,
the Prince-primate, the grand-dukes of Hesse-Darmstadt and of Baden,
that the civil code should be established in their states by
suppressing all customary law and confining themselves wholly to the
code Napoleon." (Letter to M. de Champagny, Oct. 31, 1807.) - " The
Romans gave their laws to their allies. Why should not France have its
laws adopted in Holland? . . . It is equally essential that you should
adopt the French monetary system." (Letter to Louis, King of Holland,
Nov. 13, 1807.) - To the Spaniards: "Your nephews will honor me as
their regenerator." (Allocution addressed to Madrid Dec. 9, 1808.) -
"Spain must be French. The country must be French and the government
must be French." (Roederer, III., 529, 536, words of Napoleon, Feb.
11, 1809.) - In short, following the example of Rome, which had
Latinized the entire Mediterranean coast, he wanted to render all
western Europe French. The object was, as he declared, "to establish
and consecrate at last the empire of reason and the full exercise, the
complete enjoyment of every human faculty." (Mémorial.)
BOOK THIRD. Object and Merits of the System.
CHAPTER I. Recovery of Social Order.
I. Rule as the mass want to be ruled.
How Napoleon comprehends the sovereignty of the people. - His maxim on
the will of the majority and on the office of government. - Two groups
of prominent and obvious desires in 1799.
HOWEVER clear and energetic his artistic convictions may be, his mind
is absorbed by the preoccupations of the ruler: It is not enough for
him that his edifice should be monumental, symmetrical, and beautiful.
As he lives in it and derives the greatest benefit from it, he wants
first of all that it should be fit to live in, habitable for Frenchmen
of the year 1800. Consequently, he takes into account the habits and
dispositions of his tenants, the pressing and permanent wants. But
these needs must not be theoretic and vague, but verified and defined;
for he is as accurate as he is shrewd, and deals only with positive
facts.
"My political system," says he to the Council of State,[1] "is to rule
men as the mass want to be ruled. . . By constituting myself a
Catholic I put an end to the war in La Vendée; by turning into a
Moslem I established myself in Egypt: by turning ultramontane[2] I
gained over the priests in Italy. Were I to govern a population of
Jews, I would restore the temple of Solomon. I shall speak just in
this fashion about liberty in the free part of St. Domingo; I shall
confirm slavery in the Ile-de-France and even in the slave section of
St. Domingo, with the reservation of diminishing and limiting slavery
where I maintain it, and of restoring order and keeping up discipline
where I maintain freedom. I think that is the way to recognize the
sovereignty of the people."
" Now, in France, at this epoch, there are two groups of preponderant
desires which evidently outweigh all others, one dating back the past
ten years, and the other for a century or more: the question is how to
satisfy these, and the sagacious constructor, who estimates them for
what they are worth, combines to this end the proportions, plan,
arrangement, and entire interior economy of his edifice.
II. The Revolution Ends.
Necessities dating from the Revolution. - Lack of security for
Persons, Property, and Consciences. - Requisite conditions for the
establishment of order. - End of Civil war, Brigandage, and Anarchy. -
Universal relief and final security.
The first of these two needs is urgent, almost physical. For the last
ten years, the government has not done its duty, or has ruled in a
contrary sense. By turns or at the same time its impotence and
injustice have been deplorable. It has committed or allowed too many
outrages on persons, property, and consciences. All in all the
Revolution did nothing else, and it is time that this should stop.
Safety and security for consciences, property, and persons is the loud
and unanimous outcry vibrating in all hears.[3] - To calm things down,
many novelties are required: To start with, the political and
administrative concentration just described, a centralization of all
powers in one hand, local powers conferred by the central power, and,
to exercise this supreme power a resolute chief, equal in intelligence
to his high position. Next, a regularly paid army,[4] carefully
equipped, properly clothed and fed, strictly disciplined and therefore
obedient and able to do its duty without wavering or faltering, like
any other instrument of precision. An active police force and
gendarmerie kept on a tight rein. Administrators independent of those
under their jurisdiction, and judges independent of those due to be
tried. All appointed, maintained, watched, and restrained from above,
as impartial as possible, sufficiently competent, and, in their
official spheres, capable functionaries. Finally, freedom of worship,
and, accordingly, a treaty with Rome and the restoration of the
Catholic Church, that is to say, a legal recognition of the orthodox
hierarchy and of the only clergy which the faithful may accept as
legitimate, in other words, the institution of bishops by the Pope,
and of priests by the bishops.
This done, the rest is easily accomplished. A well-led army corps
marches along and tramples out the embers of the conflagration now
kindling in the West, while religious toleration extinguishes the
smoldering fires of popular insurrection. Henceforth, there is an end
to civil war.[5] Regiments ready to act in harmony with the military
commissions[6] purge the South and the valley of the Rhône;
thenceforth, there are no more roving bands in the rural districts,
while brigandage on a grand scale, constantly repressed, ceases, and
after this, that on a small scale. No more chouans, chauffeurs, or
barbets;[7] The mail-coach travels without a guard, and the highways
are safe.[8] There is longer any class or category of citizens
oppressed or excluded from the common law, the latest Jacobin decrees
and the forced loan have been at once revoked: noble or plebeian,
ecclesiastic or layman, rich or poor, former émigré or former
terrorist, every man, whatever his past, his condition, or his
opinions, now enjoys his private property and his legal rights; he has
no longer to fear the violence of the opposite party; he may relay on
the protection of the authorities,[9] and on the equity of the
magistrates.[10] So long as he respects the law he can go to bed at
night and sleep tranquilly with the certainty of awaking in freedom on
the morrow, and with the certainty of doing as he pleases the entire
day; with the privilege of working, buying, selling, thinking, amusing
himself,[11] going and coming at his pleasure, and especially of going
to mass or of staying away if he chooses. No more jacqueries either
rural or urban, no more proscriptions or persecutions and legal or
illegal spoliations, no more intestine and social wars waged with
pikes or by decrees, no more conquests and confiscations made by
Frenchmen against each other. With universal and unutterable relief
people emerge from the barbarous and anarchical régime which reduced
them to living from one day to another, and return to the pacific and
regular régime which permits them to count on the morrow and make
provision for it. After ten years of harassing subjection to the
incoherent absolutism of unstable despotism, here, for the first time,
they find a rational and stable government, or, at least, a
reasonable, tolerable, and fixed degree of it. The First Consul is
carrying out his declarations and he has declared that "The Revolution
has ended."[12]
III. Return of the Emigrés.
Lasting effect of revolutionary laws. - Condition of the Émigrés. -
Progressive and final amnesty. -They return. - They recover a portion
of their possessions. - Many of them enter the new hierarchy. -
Indemnities for them incomplete.
The main thing now is to dress the severe wounds it has made and which
are still bleeding, with as little torture as possible, for it has cut
down to the quick, and its amputations, whether foolish or outrageous,
have left sharp pains or mute suffering in the social organism.
One hundred and ninety-two thousand names have been inscribed on the
list of émigrés[13] the terms of the law, every émigré is civilly
dead, and his possessions have become the property of the Republic;"
if he dared return to France, the same law condemned him to death;
there could be no appeal, petition, or respite; it sufficed to prove
identity and the squad of executioners was at once ordered out. Now,
at the beginning of the Consulate, this murderous law is still in
force; summary proceedings are always applicable,[14] and one hundred
and forty-six thousand names still appear on the mortuary list. This
constitutes a loss to France of 146,000 Frenchmen, and not those of
the least importance - gentlemen, army and navy officers, members of
parliaments, priests, prominent men of all classes, conscientious
Catholics, liberals of 1789, Feuillantists of the Legislative
assembly, and Constitutionalists of the years III and V. Worse still,
through their poverty or hostility abroad, they are a discredit or
even a danger for France, as formerly with the Protestants driven out
of the country by Louis XIV.[15] - To these 146,000 exiled Frenchmen
add 200,000 or 300,000 others, residents, but semi-proscribed:[16]
First, those nearly related and allied to each émigré, excluded by the
law from "every legislative, administrative, municipal and judicial
function," and even deprived of the elective vote. Next, all former
nobles or ennobled, deprived by the law of their status as Frenchmen
and obliged to re-naturalize themselves according to the formalities.
It is, accordingly, almost the entire elite of old France which is
wanting in the new France, like a limb violently wrenched and half-
detached by the unskillful and brutal scalpel of the revolutionary
"sawbones"; for both the organ and the body are not only living, but
they are still feverish and extremely sensitive; it is important to
avoid too great irritation; inflammation of any kind would be
dangerous. A skilful surgeon, therefore, must mark the places for the
stitches, not force the junctures, but anticipate and prepare for the
final healing process, and await the gradual and slow results of vital
effort and spontaneous renewal. Above all he must not alarm the
patient. The First Consul is far from doing this; on the contrary his
expressions are all encouraging. Let the patient keep quiet, there
shall be no re-stitching, the wound shall not be touched. The
constitution solemnly declares that the French people shall never
allow the return of the émigrés,[17] and, on this point, the hands of
future legislators are already tied fast; it prohibits any exception
being added to the old ones. - But, first, by virtue of the same
constitution, every Frenchman not an émigré or banished has the right
to vote, to be elected, to exercise every species of public function;
consequently, twelve days later,[18] a mere order of the Council of
State restores civil and political rights to former nobles and the
ennobled, to the kinsmen and relations of émigrés, to all who have
been dubbed émigrés of the interior and whom Jacobin intolerance had
excluded, if not from the territory, at least from the civic body:
here are 200,000 or 300,000 Frenchmen already brought back into
political communion if not to the soil. - They had succumbed to the
coup-d'état of Fructidor; naturally, the leading fugitives or those
transported, suffering under the same coup-d'état, were restored to
political rights along with them and thus to the territory - Carnot,
Barthélémy, Lafont-Ladébat, Siméon, Poissy d'Anglas, Mathieu Dumas, in
all thirty-nine, designated by name;[19] very soon after. Through a
simple extension of the same resolution, others of the Fructidor
victims, a crowd of priests huddled together and pining away on the
Ile-de-Ré, the most unfortunate and most inoffensive of all.[20] - Two
months later, a law declares that the list of émigrés is definitely
closed;[21] a resolution orders immediate investigation into the
claims of those who are to be struck off the list; a second resolution
strikes off the first founders of the new order of things, the members
of the National Assembly "who voted for the establishment of equality
and the abolition of nobility;" and, day after day, new erasures
succeed each other, all specific and by name, under cover of
toleration, pardon, and exception:[22] on the 19th of October 1800,
there are already 1200 of them. Bonaparte, at this date, had gained
the battle of Marengo; the surgical restorer feels that his hands are
more free; he can operate on a larger scale and take in whole bodies
collectively. On the 20th of October 1800, a resolution strikes off
entire categories from the list, all whose condemnation is too grossly
unjust or malicious,[23] at first, minors under sixteen and the wives
of émigrés; next, farmers, artisans, workmen, journeymen and servants
with their wives and children and at last 18,000 ecclesiastics who,
banished by law, left the country only in obedience to the law.
Besides these, "all individuals inscribed collectively and without
individual denomination," those already struck off, but provisionally,
by local administrations; also still other classes. Moreover, a good
many emigrants, yet standing on the lists, steal back one by one into
France, and the government tolerates them.[24] Finally, eighteen
months later, after the peace of Amiens and the Concord at,[25] a
sénatus-consulte ends the great operation; an amnesty relieves all who
are not yet struck off, except the declared leaders of the militant
emigration, its notables, and who are not to exceed one thousand; the
rest may come back and enjoy their civic rights; only, they must
promise "loyalty to the government established under the constitution
and not maintain directly or indirectly any connection or
correspondence with the enemies of the State." On this condition the
doors of France are thrown open to them and they return in crowds.
But their bodily presence is not of itself sufficient; it is moreover
essential that they should not be absent in feeling, as strangers and
merely domiciliated in the new society. Were these mutilated fragments
of old France, these human shreds put back in their old places, simply
attached or placed in juxtaposition to modern France, they would prove
useless, troublesome and even mischievous. Let us strive, then, to
have them grafted on afresh through adherence or complete fusion; and
first, to effect this, they must not be allowed to die of inanition;
they must take root physically and be able to live. In private life,
how can former proprietors, the noblesse, the parliamentarians, the
upper bourgeoisie, support themselves, especially those without a
profession or pursuit, and who, before 1789, maintained themselves,
not by their labor, but by their income? Once at home, they can no
longer earn their living as they did abroad; they can no longer give
lessons in French, in dancing, or in fencing. - There is no doubt but
that the sénatus-consulte which amnesties them restores to them a part
of their unsold possessions;[26] but most of these are sold and, on
the other hand, the First Consul, who is not disposed to re-establish
large fortunes for royalists,[27] retains and maintains the largest
portion of what they have been despoiled of in the national domain:
all woods and forests of 300 arpents[28] and over, their stock and
property rights in the great canals, and their personal property
already devoted to the public service. The effective restitution is
therefore only moderate; the émigrés who return recover but little
more than one-twentieth of their patrimony, one hundred millions[29]
out of more than two milliards. Observe, besides, that by virtue even
of the law and as admitted by the First Consul,[30] this alms is badly
distributed; the most needy and the greatest number remain empty-
handed, consisting of the lesser and medium class of rural
proprietors, especially of country gentlemen whose domain, worth less
than 50,000 francs, brings in only 2000 or 3000 francs income;[31] a
domain of this size came within reach of a great many purses, and
hence found purchasers more readily and with greater facility than a
large holding; the State was almost always the seller, and thenceforth
the old proprietor could make no further claim or pretension. - Thus,
for many of the émigrés, "the sénatus-consulte of the year X is simply
a permit to starve to death in France "and,[32] four years later,[33]
Napoleon himself estimates that "40,000 are without the means of
subsistence." They manage to keep life and soul together and nothing
more;[34] many, taken in and cared for by their friends or relations,
are supported as guests or parasites, somewhat through compassion and
again on humanitarian grounds. One recovers his silver plate, buried
in a cellar; another finds notes payable to bearer, forgotten in an
old chest. Sometimes, the purchaser of a piece of property, an honest
man, gives it back at the price he paid for it, or even gratis, if,
during the time he had held it, he had derived sufficient profit from
it. Occasionally, when the adjudication happens to have been
fraudulent, or the sale too irregular, and subject to legal
proceedings, the dishonest purchaser does not refuse a compromise. But
these cases are rare, and the evicted owner, if he desires to dine
regularly, will wisely seek a small remunerative position and serve as
clerk, book-keeper or accountant. M. des Echerolles, formerly a
brigadier-general, keeps the office of the new line of diligences at
Lyons, and earns 1200 francs a year. M. de Puymaigre, who, in 1789,
was worth two millions, becomes a contrôleur des droits réunis at
Briey with a salary of 2400 francs. - In every branch of the new
administration a royalist is welcome to apply for a post;[35] however
slightly recommended, he obtains the place. Sometimes he even receives
one without having asked for it; M. de Vitrolles[36] thus becomes, in
spite of himself, inspector of the imperial sheepfolds; this fixes his
position and makes it appear as if he had given in his adhesion to the
government. - Naturally, the great political recruiter singles out the
tallest and most imposing subjects, that is to say, belonging to the
first families of the ancient monarchy, and, like one who knows his
business, he brings to bear every means, constraint and seduction,
threats and cajoleries, supplies in ready money, promises of promotion
with the influence of a uniform and gold-lace embroidery.[37] It
matters little whether the enlistment is voluntary or extorted; the
moment a man becomes a functionary and is enrolled in the hierarchy,
he loses the best portion of his independence; once a dignitary and
placed at the top of the hierarchy, he gives his entire individuality
up, for henceforth he lives under the eye of the master, feels the
daily and direct pressure of the terrible hand which grasps him, and
he forcibly becomes a mere tool.[38] These historic names, moreover,
contribute to the embellishment of the reign. Napoleon hauls in a good
many of them, and the most illustrious among the old noblesse, of the
court of the robe and of the sword. He can enumerate among his
magistrates, M. Pasquier, M. Séguier, M. Molé; among his prelates, M.
de Boisgelin, M. du Barral, M. du Belley, M. de Roquelaure, M. de
Broglie; among his military officers, M. de Fézensac, M. de Ségur, M.
de Mortemart, M. de Narbonne;[39] among the dignitaries of his palace,
chaplains, chamberlains and ladies of honor - the Rohan, Croy,
Chevreuse, Montmorency, Chabot, Montesquiou, Noailles, Brancas,
Gontaut, Grammont, Beauvau, Saint-Aignan, Montalembert, Haussonville,
Choiseul-Praslin, Mercy d'Argenteau, Aubusson de la Feuillade, and
many others, recorded in the imperial almanac as formerly in the royal
almanac.
But they are only with him nominally and in the almanac. Except
certain individuals, M. de las Cases and M. Philippe de Ségur, who
gave themselves up body and soul, even to following him to Saint
Helena, to glorifying, admiring and loving him beyond the grave, the
others are submissive conscripts and who remain more or less
refractory spirits. He does nothing to win them over. His court is
not, like the old court, a conversational ball-room, but a hall of
inspection, the most sumptuous apartment in his vast barracks; the
civil parade is a continuation of the military parade; one finds one's
self constrained, stiff, mute and uncomfortable.[40]
He does not know how to entertain as the head of his household, how to
welcome guests and be gracious or even polite to his pretended
courtiers; he himself declares that[41] "they go two years without
speaking to him, and six months without seeing him; he does not like
them, their conversation displeases him." When he addresses them it is
to browbeat them; his familiarities with their wives are those of the
gendarme or the pedagogue, while the little attentions he inflicts
upon them are indecorous criticisms or compliments in bad taste. They
know that they are spied upon in their own homes and responsible for
whatever is said there; "the upper police is constantly hovering over
all drawing-rooms."[42] For every word uttered in privacy, for any
lack of compliance, every individual, man or woman, runs the risk of
exile or of being relegated to the interior at a distance of forty
leagues.[43] And the same with the resident gentry in the provinces;
they are obliged to pay court to the prefect, to be on good terms with
him, or at least attend his receptions; it is important that their
cards should be seen on his mantel piece.[44] Otherwise, let them take
heed, for it is he who reports on their conduct to the minister Fouché
or to Savary who replaced him. In vain do they live circumspectly and
confine themselves to a private life; a refusal to accept an office is
unpardonable; there is a grudge against them if they do not employ
their local influence in behalf of the reign.[45] Accordingly, they
are, under the empire as under the republic, in law as in fact, in the
provinces as well as at Paris, privileged persons the wrong way, a
suspicious class under a special surveillance" and subject to
exceptional rigor.[46] In 1808,[47] Napoleon orders Fouché "to draw up
. . . among the old and wealthy families who are not in the system . .
. a list of ten in each department, and of fifty for Paris," of which
the sons from sixteen to eighteen years of age shall be forced to
enter Saint-Cyr and from thence go into the army as second
lieutenants. In 1813, still "in the highest classes of society," and
arbitrarily selected by the prefects, he takes ten thousand other
persons, exempt or redeemed from the conscription, even the married,
even fathers of families, who, under the title of guards of honor,
become soldiers, at first to be slaughtered in his service, and next,
and in the mean time, to answer for the fidelity of their relatives.
It is the old law of hostages, a resumption of the worst proceedings
of the Directory for his account and aggravated for his profit. -
Decidedly, the imperial Régime, for the old royalists, resembles too
much the Jacobin régime; they are about as repugnant to one as to the
other, and their aversion naturally extends to the whole of the new
society. - As they comprehend it, they are more or less robbed and
oppressed for a quarter of a century. In order that their hostility
may cease, the indemnity of 1825 is essential, fifty years of gradual
adaptation, the slow elimination of two or three generations of
fathers and the slow elimination of two or three generations of sons.
Nothing is so difficult as the reparation of great social wrongs. In
this case the incomplete reparation did not prove sufficient; the
treatment which began with gentleness ended with violence, and, as a
whole, the operation only half succeeded.
IV. Education and Medical Care.
Confiscation of collective fortunes. - Ruin of the Hospitals and
Schools.
Other wounds are not less deep, and their cure is not less urgent; for
they cause suffering, not only to one class, but to the whole people -
that vast majority which the government strives to satisfy. Along with
the property of the émigrés, the Revolution has confiscated that of
all local or special societies, ecclesiastic or laic, of churches and
congregations, universities and academies, schools and colleges,
asylums and hospitals, and even the property of the communes. All
these fortunes have been swallowed up by the public treasury, which is
a bottomless pit, and are gone forever. - Consequently, all services
thus maintained, especially charitable institutions, public worship
and education, die or languish for lack of sustenance; the State,
which has no money for itself, has none for them. And what is worse,
it hinders private parties from taking them in charge; being Jacobin,
that is to say intolerant and partisan, it has proscribed worship,
driven nuns out of the hospitals, closed Christian schools, and, with
its vast power, it prevents others from carrying out at their own
expense the social enterprises which it no longer cares for.
And yet the needs for which this work provides have never been so
great nor so imperative. In ten years,[48] the number of foundlings
increased from 23,000 to 62,000; it is, as the reports state, a
deluge: there are 1097 instead of 400 in Aisne, 1500 in Lot-et-
Garonne, 2035 in la Manche, 2043 in Bouches-du-Rhône, 2673 in
Calvados. From 3000 to 4000 beggars are enumerated in each department
and about 300,000 in all France.[49] As to the sick, the infirm, the
mutilated, unable to earn their living, it suffices, for an idea of
their multitude, to consider the régime to which the political doctors
have just subjected France, the Régime of fasting and bloodletting.
Two millions of Frenchmen have marched under the national flag, and
eight hundred thousand have died under it;[50] among the survivors,
how many cripples, how many with one arm and with wooden legs! All
Frenchmen have eaten dog-bread for three years and often have not had
enough of that to live on; over a million have died of starvation and
poverty; all the wealthy and well-to-do Frenchmen have been ruined and
have lived in constant fear of the guillotine; four hundred thousand
have wasted away in prisons; of the survivors, how many shattered
constitutions, how many bodies and brains disordered by an excess of
suffering and anxiety, by physical and moral wear and tear![51]
Now, in 1800, assistance is lacking for this crowd of civil and
military invalids, the charitable establishments being no longer in a
condition to furnish it. Under the Constituent Assembly, through the
suppression of ecclesiastical property and the abolition of octrois, a
large portion of their revenue had been cut off, that assigned to them
out of octrois and the tithes. Under the Legislative Assembly and the
Convention, through the dispersion and persecution of nuns and monks,
they were deprived of a body of able male and female volunteer
servants who, instituted for centuries, gave their labor without
stint. Under the Convention, all their possessions, the real-estate
and the debts due them, had been confiscated;[52] and, in the
restitution to them of the remainder at the end of three years, a
portion of their real-estate is found to have been sold, while their
claims, settled by assignats or converted into state securities, had
died out or dwindled to such an extent that, in 1800, after the final
bankruptcy of the assignats and of the state debt, the ancient
patrimony of the poor is two-thirds or one-half reduced.[53] It is
for this reason that the eight hundred charitable institutions which,
in 1789, had one hundred thousand or one hundred and ten thousand
occupants, could not support more than one-third or one-half of them;
on the other hand, it may be estimated that the number of applicants
tripled; from which it follows that, in 1800, there is less than one
bed in the hospitals and asylums for six children, either sick or
infirm.
V. Old and New.
Complaints of the Poor, of Parents, and of Believers. - Contrast
between old and new educational facilities. - Clandestine instruction.
- Jacobin teachers.
Under this wail of the wretched who vainly appeal for help, for
nursing and for beds, another moan is heard, not so loud, but more
extensive, that of parents unable to educate their children, boys or
girls, and give them any species of instruction either primary or
secondary.
Previous to the Revolution "small schools" were innumerable: in
Normandy, Picardy, Artois, French Flanders, Lorraine and Alsace, in
the Ile-de-France, in Burgundy and Franche-Comté, in the Dombes,
Dauphiny and Lyonnais, in the Comtat, in the Cévennes and in
Béarn,[54] almost as many schools could be counted as there were
parishes, in all probably twenty or twenty-five thousand for the
thirty-seven thousand parishes in France, and all frequented and
serviceable; for, in 1789, forty-seven men out of a hundred, and
twenty-six girls or women out of a hundred, could read and write or,
at least, sign their names.[55] - And these schools cost the treasury
nothing, next to nothing to the tax-payer, and very little to parents.
In many places, the congregations, supported by their own property,
furnished male or female teachers, - Frères de la Doctrine Chrétienne,
Frères de Saint-Antoine, Ursulines, Visitandines, Filles de la
Charité, Sœurs de Saint-Charles, Sœurs de la Providence, Sœurs de la
Sagesse, Sœurs de Notre-Dame de la Croix, Vatelottes, Miramiones,
Manettes du Tiers Ordre, and many others. Elsewhere, the curate of the
parish was obliged through a parish regulation to teach himself, or to
see that his vicar taught. A very large number of factories or of
communes had received legacies for maintaining a school; the
instructor often enjoyed, through an endowment, a métayer farm or a
piece of ground; he was generally provided with a lodging; if he was a
layman he was exempt, besides, from the most onerous taxes; as sexton,
beadle, chorister or bell-ringer, he had small perquisites; finally,
he was paid for each child four or five sous[56] a month; sometimes,
especially in poor districts, he taught only from All Saints' day down
to the spring, and followed another occupation during the summer. In
short, his salary and his comfort were about those of a rural vicar or
of a suitably paid curate.
Higher education (éducation secondaire) was provided for in the same
manner, and still better by local and private enterprise. More than
one hundred and eight establishments furnished it completely, and more
than four hundred and fifty-four partially.[57] Like the others, and
not less liberally than the smaller schools, these were supported by
endowments, some of which were very ample and even magnificent; a
certain upper school in the provinces, Rodez,[58] possessed twenty-
seven thousand livres income, and one in Paris, Louis-le-Grand, an
income of four hundred and fifty thousand livres, each of these, large
or small, having its own distinct endowment, in real property, lands
and houses, and in revenues on privileges derived from the hotel-de-
ville, the octroi and from transportation lines. - And, in each of
them, the scholarships, or half-scholarships, were numerous-six
hundred alone in Louis-le-Grand. In total, out of the seventy-two
thousand scholars in the kingdom, there were forty thousand for whom a
high-school education was gratuitous or half-gratuitous; nowadays, it
is less than five thousand out of seventy-nine thousand.[59] The
reason why is that, before 1789, the revenues were not only large, but
the expenses were small. The salary of a head-master, teacher, or
assistant-teacher was not large, say four hundred and fifty, six
hundred, nine hundred, or twelve hundred livres per annum at most,
just enough for a single man to live on; in effect, most of the
teachers were priests or monks, Benedictines, regular canons,
Oratorians, the latter alone officiating in thirty colleges. Not
subject to the expenses and necessities which a family imposes, they
were abstemious through piety, or at least through discipline, habit,
and respect for persons; frequently, the statutes of the school
obliged them to live in common,[60] which was much cheaper than living
apart. - The same economical accord is found with all the wheels, in
the arrangement and working of the entire system. A family, even a
rural one, never lived far away from a high-school, for there were
high-schools in nearly all the small towns, seven or eight in each
department, fifteen in Ain, seventeen in Aisne.[61] The child or
youth, from eight to eighteen, had not to endure the solitude and
promiscuity of a civil barracks; he remained within reach of his
parents. If they were too poor to pay the three hundred francs board
required by the school, they placed their son in a respectable family,
in that of some artisan or acquaintance in the town; there, with three
or four others, he was lodged, had his washing done, was cared for and
watched, had a seat at the family table and by the fireside, and was
provided with light; every week, he received from the country his
supply of bread and other provisions; the mistress of the house cooked
for him and mended his clothes, the whole for two or three livres a
month.[62] - Thus do institutions flourish that arise spontaneously on
the spot; they adapt themselves to circumstances, conform to
necessities, utilize resources and afford the maximum of returns for
the minimum of expense.
This great organization disappears entirely, bodily and with all its
possessions, like a ship that sinks beneath the waves. The teachers
are dismissed, exiled, transported, and proscribed; its property is
confiscated, sold and destroyed, and the remainder in the hands of the
State is not restored and again applied to its former service. Public
education, worse treated than public charity, does not recover a shred
of its former endowment. Consequently, in the last years of the
Directory, and even early in the Consulate,[63] there is scarcely any
instruction given in France; in fact, for the past eight or nine years
it has ceased,[64] or become private and clandestine. Here and there,
a few returned priests, in spite of the intolerant law and with the
connivance of the local authorities, also a few scattered nuns, teach
in a contraband fashion a few small groups of Catholic children ; five
or six little girls around a disguised Ursuline nun spell out the
alphabet in a back room;[65] a priest without tonsure or cassock
secretly receives in the evening two or three youths whom he makes
translate the De Viris. - During the intervals, indeed, of the Reign
of Terror, before the 13th of Vendémiaire and the 18th of Fructidor,
sundry schools spring up again like tufts of grass in a mowed pasture-
ground, but only in certain spots and meagerly; moreover, as soon as
the Jacobin returns to power he stubbornly stamps them out;[66] he
wants to have teaching all to himself. - Now the institution by which
the State pretends to replace the old and free establishments makes a
figure only on paper. One école centrale in each department is
installed or decreed, making eighty eight on the territory of ancient
France; this hardly supplies the place of the eight or nine hundred
high-schools (collèges), especially as these new schools are hardly
viable, being in ruin at the very start,[67] poorly maintained, badly
furnished, with no preparatory schools nor adjacent boarding-
houses,[68] the programme of studies being badly arranged and parents
suspicious of the spirit of the studies.[69] Thus, there is little or
no attendance at most of the courses of lectures; only those on
mathematics are followed, particularly on drawing, and especially
mechanical and geometrical drawing, probably by the future surveyors
and engineers of roads and bridges, by building contractors and a few
aspirants to the École Polytechnique. As to the other courses, on
literature, history, and the moral sciences, as comprehended by the
Republic and imposed by it, these obtain not over a thousand auditors
in all France; instead of 72,000 pupils, only 7000 or 8000 seek
superior education, while six out of seven, instead of seeking self-
culture, simply prepare themselves for some practical pursuit.[70]
It is much worse with primary instruction. This task is given to the
local authorities. But, as they have no money, they generally shirk
this duty, and, if they do set up a school, are unable to maintain
it.[71] On the other hand, as instruction must be laic and Jacobin,
"almost everywhere,"[72] the teacher is an outcast layman, a fallen
Jacobin, some old, starving party member, unemployed, foul-mouthed and
of ill-repute. Families, naturally, refuse to trust their children
with him; even when honorable, they avoid him; and the reason is that,
in 1800, Jacobin and scoundrel have become synonymous terms.
Henceforth, parents desire that their children should learn to read in
the catechism and not in the declaration of rights:[73] as they view
it, the old manual formed polite and civilized youths and respectful
sons; the new one forms only insolent rascals and precocious, slovenly
blackguards.[74] Consequently, the few primary schools in which the
Republic has placed its people and imposed its educational system
remain three-quarters empty; in vain does she close the doors of those
in which other masters teach with other books; fathers persist in
their repugnance and distaste; they prefer for their sons utter
ignorance to unsound instruction.[75] - A secular establishment, created
and provided for by twenty generations of benefactors, gave gratis, or
at a much lower rate, the first crumbs of intellectual food to more
than 1,200,000 children.[76] It was demolished; in its place, a few
improvised and wretched barracks distributed here and there a small
ration of moldy and indigestible bread. Thereupon, one long, low
murmur, a long time suppressed, breaks out and keeps on increasing,
that of parents whose children are condemned to go hungry; in any
event, they demand that their sons and daughters be no longer forced,
under penalty of fasting, to consume the patent flour of the State,
that is to say a nauseous, unsatisfactory, badly-kneaded, badly-baked
paste which, on trial, proves offensive to the palate and ruinous to
the stomach.
VI. Religion
The Spirit and Ministrations of Catholicism. - How the Revolution
develops a sense of this.
Another plaint is heard, deeper and more universal, that of all souls
in which regret for their established church and forms of worship
still subsists or is revived.
In every religious system discipline and rites depend upon faith, for
it is faith alone which suggests or prescribes these; they are the
outcome and expansion of this; it attains its ends through these, and
manifests itself by them; they are the exterior of which it is the
interior; thus, let these be attacked and it is in distress; the
living, palpitating flesh suffers through the sensitive skin. - In
Catholicism, this skin is more sensitive than elsewhere, for it clings
to the flesh, not alone through ordinary adhesiveness, the effect of
adaptation and custom, but again through a special organic attachment,
consisting of dogmatic doctrine; theology, in its articles of belief,
has here set up the absolute necessity of the sacraments and of the
priesthood; consequently, between the superficial and central
divisions of religion the union is complete. The Catholic sacraments,
therefore, are not merely symbols; they possess in themselves "an
efficacious power, a sanctifying virtue." "That which they represent,
they really work out."[77] If I am denied access to them, I am cut
off from the fountains to which my soul resorts to drink in grace,
pardon, purity, health and salvation. If my children cannot be
regularly baptized, they are not Christians; if extreme unction cannot
be administered to my dying mother, she sets out on the long journey
without the viaticum; if I am married by the mayor only, my wife and I
live in concubinage; if I cannot confess my sins, I am not absolved
from them, and my burdened conscience seeks in vain for the helping
hand which will ease the too heavy load; if I cannot perform my Easter
duties, my spiritual life is a failure; the supreme and sublime act by
which it perfects itself through the mystic union of my body and soul
with the body, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, is wanting. - Now,
none of these sacraments are valid if they have not been conferred by
a priest, one who bears the stamp of a superior, unique, ineffaceable
character, through a final sacrament consisting of ordination and
which is conferred only on certain conditions; among other conditions,
it is essential that this priest should have been ordained by a
bishop; among other conditions, it is essential that this bishop[78]
should have been installed by the Pope. Consequently, without the Pope
there are no bishops; without bishops no priests; without priests no
sacraments; without the sacraments no salvation. The ecclesiastical
institution is therefore indispensable to the believer. The canonical
priesthood, the canonical hierarchy is necessary to him for the
exercise of his faith. - He must have yet more, if fervent and
animated with true old Christian sentiment, ascetic and mystic, which
separates the soul from this world and ever maintains it in the
presence of God. Several things are requisite to this end:
* First, vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, that is to say, the
steady and voluntary repression of the most powerful animal instinct
and of the strongest worldly appetites;
* Next, unceasing prayer, especially prayer in common, where the
emotion of the prostrate soul increases through the emotion of the
souls that surround it; in the same degree, active piety, meaning by
this the doing of good works, education and charity, especially the
accomplishment of repulsive tasks, such as attending the sick, the
infirm, the incurable, idiots, maniacs and repentant prostitutes;
* Finally, the strict daily rule which, a sort of rigorous and minute
countersign, enjoining and compelling the repetition of the same acts
at the same hours, renders habit the auxiliary of will, adds
mechanical enthusiasm to a serious determination, and ends in making
the task easy.
Hence, communities of men and of women, congregations and convents,
these likewise, the same as the sacraments, the priesthood and the
hierarchy, form a body along with belief and thus constitute the
inseparable organs of faith.
Before 1789, the ignorant or indifferent Catholic, the peasant at his
plow, the artisan at his work-bench, the good wife attending to her
household, were unconscious of this innermost suture. Thanks to the
Revolution, they have acquired the sentiment of it and even the
physical sensation. They had never asked themselves in what respect
orthodoxy differed from schism, nor how positive religion was opposed
to natural religion; it is the civil organization of the clergy which
has led them to distinguish the difference between the unsworn curé
and the interloper, between the right mass and the wrong mass; it is
the prohibition of the mass which has led them to comprehend its
importance; it is the revolutionary government which has transformed
them into theologians and canonists.[79] Compelled, under the Reign
of Terror, to sing and dance before the goddess Reason, and next,
in the temple of the "Étre Supreme," subjected, under the Directory,
to the new-fangled republican calendar, and to the insipidity of
the decade festivals, they have measured, with their own eyes, the
distance which separates a present, personal, incarnate deity, redeemer
and savior, from a deity without form or substance, or, in any
event, absent; a living, revealed, and time-honored religion, and
an abstract, manufactured, improvised religion; their spontaneous
worship, which is an act of faith, and a worship imposed on them
which is only frigid parade; their priest, in a surplice, sworn to
continence, delegated from on high to open out to them the infinite
perspectives of heaven or hell beyond the grave, and the republican
substitute, officiating in a municipal scarf, Peter or Paul, a
lay-man like themselves, more or less married and convivialist,
sent from Paris to preach a course of Jacobin morality.[80] -
Their attachment to their clergy, to the entire body regular and
secular, is due to this contrast. Previously, they were not always
well-disposed to it; the peasantry, nowhere, were content
to pay tithes, and the artisan, as well as the peasant, regarded the
idle, well-endowed, meditative monks as but little more than so many
fat drones. The man of the people in France, by virtue of being a
Gaul, has a dry, limited imagination; he is not inclined to
veneration, but is rather mocking, critical and insubordinate at the
powers above him, with a hereditary undertone of distrust and envy at
every man who wears a cloth suit and who eats and drinks without doing
manual labor. - At this time, his clergy do not excite his envy, but
his pity; monks and nuns, cure's and prelates, roofless, without
bread, imprisoned, transported, guillotined, or, at best, fugitives,
hunted down and more unfortunate than wild beasts - it is he who,
during the persecutions of the years II, IV and VI, harbors them,
conceals them, lodges them and feeds them. He sees them suffering for
their faith, which is his faith, and, before their constancy, equal to
that of the legendary martyrs, his indifference changes into respect
and next into zeal. From the year IV,[81] the orthodox priests have
again recovered their place and ascendancy in his soul which the creed
assigns to them; they have again become his serviceable guides, his
accepted directors, the only warranted interpreters of Christian
truth, the only authorized dispensers and ministers of divine grace.
He attends their mass immediately on their return and will put up with
no other. Brutalized as he may be, or indifferent and dull, and his
mind filled with nothing but animal concerns, he needs them;[82] he
misses their solemnities, the great festivals, the Sunday; and this
privation is a periodical want both for eyes and ears; he misses the
ceremonial, the lights, the chants, the ringing of the bells, the
morning and evening Angelus. - Thus, whether he knows it or not, his
heart and senses are Catholic[83] and he demands the old church back
again. Before the Revolution, this church lived on its own revenues;
70,000 priests, 37,000 nuns, 23,000 monks, supported by endowments,
cost the State nothing, and scarcely anything to the tax-payer; at any
rate, they cost nothing to the actual, existing tax-payer not even the
tithes, for, established many centuries ago, the tithes were a tax on
the soil, not on the owner in possession, nor on the farmer who tilled
the ground, who has purchased or hired it with this tax deducted. In
any case, the real property of the Church belonged to it, without
prejudice to anybody, through the strongest legal and most legitimate
of property titles, the last will and testament of thousands of the
dead, its founders and benefactors. All is taken from it, even the
houses of prayer which, in their use, disposition and architecture,
were, in the most manifest manner, Christian works and ecclesiastical
objects, 38,000 parsonages, 4000 convents, over 40,000 parochial
churches, cathedrals and chapels. Every morning, the man or woman of
the people, in whom the need of worship has revived, passes in front
of one of these buildings robbed of its cult; these declare aloud to
them through their form and name what they have been and what they
should be to-day. This voice is heard by incredulous philosophers and
former Conventionalists;[84] all Catholics hear it, and out of thirty-
five millions of Frenchmen,[85] thirty-two millions are Catholics.
VII. The Confiscated Property.
Reasons for the concordat. - Napoleon's economical organization of the
Church institution. - A good bargainer. - Compromise with the old
state of things.
How withstand such a just complaint, the universal complaint of the
destitute, of relatives, and of believers? - The fundamental
difficulty reappears, the nearly insurmountable dilemma into which the
Revolution has plunged every steady government, that is to say the
lasting effect of revolutionary confiscations and the conflict which
sets two rights to the same property against each other, the right of
the despoiled owner and the right of the owner in possession. This
time, again the fault is on the side of the State, which has converted
itself from a policeman into a brigand and violently appropriated to
itself the fortune of the hospitals, schools, and churches; the State
must return this in money or in kind. In kind, it is no longer able;
everything has passed out of its hands; it has alienated what it
could, and now holds on only to the leavings. In money, nothing more
can be done; it is itself ruined, has just become bankrupt, lives on
expedients from day to day and has neither funds nor credit. Nobody
dreams of taking back property that is sold; nothing is more opposed
to the spirit of the new Régime: not only would this be a robbery as
before, since its buyers have paid for it and got their receipts, but
again, in disputing their title the government would invalidate its
own. For its authority is derived from the same source as their
property: it is established on the same principle as their rights of
possession and by virtue of the same accomplished facts
* because things are as they are and could not be different,
* because ten years of revolution and eight years of war bear down on
the present with too heavy a weight,
* because too many and too deep interests are involved and enlisted on
the same side,
* because the interests of twelve hundred thousand purchasers are
incorporated with those of the thirty thousand officers to whom the
Revolution has provided a rank, along with that of all the new
functionaries and dignitaries, including the First Consul himself,
who, in this universal transposition of fortunes and ranks, is the
greatest of parvenus and who must maintain the others if he wants to
be maintained by them.
Naturally, he protects everybody, through calculation as well as
sympathy, in the civil as in the military order of things,
particularly the new property-owners, especially the smaller and the
average ones, his best clients, attached to his reign and to his
person through love of property, the strongest passion of the ordinary
man, and through love of the soil, the strongest passion of the
peasant.[86] Their loyalty depends on their security, and
consequently he is lavish of guarantees. In his constitution of the
year VIII,[87] he declares in the name of the French nation that after
a legally consummated sale of national property, whatever its origin,
the legitimate purchaser cannot be divested of it." Through the
institution of the Legion of Honor he obliges each member "to swear,
on his honor, to devote himself to the conservation of property
sanctioned by the laws of the republic."[88] According to the terms
of the imperial constitution[89] "he swears" himself "to respect and
to enforce respect for the irrevocability of the sale of national
possessions."
Unfortunately, a cannon-ball on the battle-field, an infernal machine
in the street, an illness at home, may carry off the guarantor and the
guarantees.[90] On the other hand, confiscated goods preserve their
original taint. Rarely is the purchaser regarded favorably in his
commune; the bargain he has made excites envy; he is not alone in his
enjoyment of it, but the rest suffer from it. Formerly, this or that
field of which he reaps the produce, this or that domain of which he
enjoys the rental, once provided for the parsonage, the asylum and the
school; now the school, the asylum and the parsonage die through
inanition for his advantage; he fattens on their fasting. In his own
house, his wife and mother often look melancholy, especially during
Easter week; if he is old, or becomes ill, his conscience disturbs
him; this conscience, through habit and heredity, is Catholic: he
craves absolution at the last moment at the priest's hands, and says
to himself that, at the last moment, he may not probably be
absolved.[91] In other respects, he would find it difficult to
satisfy himself that his legal property is legitimate property; for,
not only is it not so rightfully before the tribunal of conscience,
but again it is not so in fact on the market; the figures, in this
particular, are convincing, daily and notorious. A patrimonial domain
which brings in 3000 francs finds a purchaser at 100,000 francs;
alongside of this a national domain which brings in just as much,
finds a purchaser only at 60,000 francs; after several sales and
resale, the depreciation continues and 40 % of the value of the
confiscated property is lost.[92] A low, indistinct murmur is heard,
and reverberates from sale to sale, the muttering of private probity
protesting against public probity, declaring to the new proprietor
that his title is defective; it lacks one clause and a capital one,
that of the surrender and cession, the formal renunciation, the
authentic withdrawal of the former owner. The State, the first seller,
owes this voucher to the purchasers; let it procure this and negotiate
accordingly; let it apply for this to the rightful party, to the
owners whom it has dispossessed, to the immemorial and legitimate
authorities, I mean to the ancient corporations. These have been
dissolved by revolutionary law and have no longer a representative who
can sign for them. Nevertheless, in spite of revolutionary law, one of
these corporations, with more vitality than the rest, still subsists
with its proper, if not legal, representative, its regular and
undisputed chief. This chief is qualified and authorized to bind the
body; for, institutionally, he is supreme, and the conscience of all
its members is in his hand. His signature is of the highest value; it
is very important to obtain this, and the First Consul concludes the
Concordat with the Pope.
By this Concordat, the Pope "declares that neither himself nor his
successors shall in any manner disturb the purchasers of alienated
ecclesiastical property, and that the ownership of the said property,
the rights and revenues derived there from, shall consequently remain
in commutable in their hands or in those of their assigns."[93]
Henceforth the possession of this property is no longer a sin; at
least, it is not condemned by the spiritual authority, by that
external conscience which, in Catholic countries, governs the inward
conscience and often supplies its place; the Church, the moral head,
removes with its own hands the moral scruple, the last small stone,
troublesome and dangerous, which, lying underneath the cornerstone of
lay society, breaks the level of the entire structure and compromises
the equilibrium of the new government. - In exchange, the State endows
the Church. By the same Concordat, and by the decrees which follow it,
"the government[94] ensures a suitable salary to bishops and cure's,"
15,000 francs to each archbishop, 10,000 francs to each bishop, 1500
francs to each curé of the first class and 1000 francs to each curé of
the second class,[95] also, later on,[96] a maximum of 500 francs and a
minimum of 300 francs to each assistant-priest or vicar. "If
circumstances require it,[97] the conseils-généraux of the large
communes may grant to prelates or to curés an increase of salary out
of their rural possessions or octrois." In all cases, archbishops,
bishops, curés and priests shall be lodged, or receive a lodging
indemnity. So much for the support of persons.-As to real
property,[98] "all the metropolitan churches, cathedrals, parochial
buildings and others, not alienated, and needed for the purposes of
worship, shall be subject to the disposition of the bishops." - The
parsonages and gardens attached to these, not alienated, shall be
given up to the curés and assistant-priests." - " The possessions of
the fabriques,[99] not alienated, as well as the rentals they enjoyed,
and which have not been transferred, shall be restored to their
original purpose. - As to the outlay and expenditure for worship,[100]
for the parochial center or cathedral, if its revenue is not
sufficient, this shall receive aid from its commune or from its
department; besides, "an assessment of 10 %.[101] shall be laid on
the revenues of all the real estate of the communes, such as houses,
woods, and rural possessions, for the formation of a common fund of
subsidy," a general sum with which to provide for "acquisitions,
reconstructions or repairs of churches, . . . seminaries and
parsonages." Moreover,[102] the government allows "the French
Catholics to make endowments, if so disposed, in favor of churches . .
. for the support of ministers and the exercise of worship," that is
to say to bequeath or make gifts to the fabriques or seminaries; in
fine, it exempts seminarists, the future cure's, from the
conscription.
It also exempts the "Ignorantins," or brethren of the Christian
schools, who are the instructors of the common people. With respect to
these and in relation to every other Catholic institution, it follows
the same utilitarian principle, the fundamental maxim of laic and
practical good sense: when religious vocations make their appearance
and serve the public, it welcomes and makes use of them; it grants
them facilities, dispensations and favors, its protection, its
donations, or at least its tolerance. Not only does it turn their zeal
to account, but it authorizes their association.[103] Numerous
societies of men or of women again spring up with the assent of the
public authorities - the "Ignorantins," the "Filles de la Charité,"
the "Seurs Hospitalières," the "Sœurs de Saint-Thomas," the "Sœurs de
Saint-Charles," the "Sœurs Vatelottes." The Council of State accepts
and approves of their statutes, vows, hierarchy, and internal
regulations. They again become proprietors; they may accept donations
and legacies. The State frequently makes presents to them. In
1808,[104] thirty-one communities of Sisters of Charity, and mostly
educational, thus obtain the buildings and furniture they ask for, in
full possession and gratuitously. The State, also, frequently supports
them;[105] it repeatedly decides that in this asylum, or in that
school, the "sisters" designated by the ancient foundation shall
resume their work and be paid out of the income of the asylum or
school. Better still, and notwithstanding threatening decrees,[106]
Napoleon, between 1804 and 1814, allows fifty-four communities to
arise and exist, outside of the congregations authorized by him, which
do not submit their statutes to him and which dispense with his
permission to exist; he lets them live and does not disturb them; he
judges[107] "that there is every sort of character and imagination, that
eccentricities even should not be repressed when they do no harm,"
that, for certain people, an ascetic life in common is the only
refuge; if that is all they desire they should not be disturbed, and
it is easy to feign ignorance of them; but let them remain quiet and
be sufficient unto themselves! - Such is the new growth of the regular
clergy alongside of the secular clergy, the two main branches of the
Catholic trunk. Owing to the help, or to the authorization, or to the
connivance of the State, inside or outside of its limitations, both
clerical bodies, legally or in reality, recover a civil existence, and
thus obtain, or at least nearly so, their physical maintenance.[108]
And nothing more. Nobody, better than Napoleon, knows how to make a
good bargain, that is to say, to give a little in order to gain a
great deal. In this treaty with the Church he tightens his purse-
strings and especially avoids parting with his ready money. Six
hundred and fifty thousand francs for fifty bishops and ten
archbishops, a little more than four million francs for the three or
four thousand cantonal curés, in all five million francs per annum, is
all that the State promises to the new clergy. Later on,[109] he takes
it on himself to pay those who officiate in the branch chapels;
nevertheless, in 1807, the entire appropriation for public worship
costs the State only twelve million francs a year;[110] the rest, as a
rule, and especially the salaries of the forty thousand assistant-
priests and vicars, must be provided by the fabriques and the
communes.[111] Let the clergy benefit by occasional
contributions;[112] let it appeal to the piety of believers for its
monstrances, chalices, albs and chasubles, for decorations and the
other expenses of worship; they are not prohibited from being liberal
to it, not only during the services, on making collections, but in
their houses, within closed doors, from hand to hand. Moreover, they
have the right of making gifts or bequests before a notary, of
establishing foundations in favor of seminaries and churches ; the
foundation, after verification and approval by the Council of State,
becomes operative; only,[113] it must consist of state securities,
because, in this shape, it helps maintain their value and the credit
of the government; in no case must it be composed of real estate;[114]
should the clergy become land-owners it would enjoy too much local
influence. No bishop, no curé must feel himself independent; he must
be and always remain a mere functionary, a hired workman for whom the
State provides work in a shop with a roof overhead, a suitable and
indispensable atelier, in other words, the house of prayer well known
in each parish as "one of the edifices formerly assigned to worship."
This edifice is not restored to the Christian community, nor to its
representatives; it is simply "placed at the disposition of the
bishop."[115] The State retains the ownership of it, or transfers
this to the communes; it concedes to the clergy merely the right of
using it, and, in that, loses but little. Parish and cathedral
churches in its hands are, for the most part, dead capital, nearly
useless and almost valueless; through their structure, they are not
fitted for civil offices; it does not know what to do with them except
to make barns of them; if it sells them it is to demolishers for their
value as building material, and then at great scandal. Among the
parsonages and gardens that have been surrendered, several have become
communal property,[116] and, in this case, it is not the State which
loses its title but the commune which is deprived of its investment.
In short, in the matter of available real estate, land or buildings,
from which the State might derive a rent, that which it sets off from
its domain and hands over to the clergy is of very little account. As
to military service, it makes no greater concessions. Neither the
Concordat nor the organic articles stipulate any exemption for the
clergy; the dispensation granted is simply a favor; this is
provisional for the seminarians and only becomes permanent under
ordination; now, the government fixes the number of the ordained, and
it keeps this down as much as possible;[117] for the diocese of
Grenoble, it allows only eight in seven years.[118] In this way, it
not only saves conscripts, but again, for lack of young priests, it
forces the bishops to appoint old priests, even constitutionalists,
nearly all pensioners on the treasury, and which either relieves the
treasury of a pension or the commune of a subsidy.[119] - Thus, in
the reconstruction of the ecclesiastical fortune the State spares
itself and the portion it contributes remains very small: it furnishes
scarcely more than the plan, a few corner and foundation stones and
the permission or injunction to build; the rest concerns the communes
and private individuals. They must exert themselves, continue and
complete it, by order or spontaneously and under its permanent
direction.
VIII. Public Education.
State appropriations very small. - Toleration of educational
institutions. - The interest of the public in them invited. - The
University. - Its monopoly. - Practically, his restrictions and
conditions are effective. - Satisfaction given to the first group of
requirements.
Invariably the government proceeds in the same manner with the
reorganization of the other two collective fortunes.- As regards the
charitable institutions, under the Directory, the asylums and
hospitals had their unsold property restored to them, and in the place
of what had been sold they were promised national property of equal
value.[120] But this was a complicated operation; things had dragged
along in the universal disorder and, to carry it out, the First Consul
reduced and simplified it. He at once sets aside a portion of the
national domain, several distinct morsels in each district or
department, amounting in all to four millions of annual income derived
from productive real-estate,[121] which he distributes among the
asylums, pro rata, according to their losses. He assigns to them,
moreover, all the rents, in money or in kind, due for foundations to
parishes, curés, fabriques and corporations; finally, "he applies to
their wants" various outstanding claims, all national domains which
have been usurped by individuals or communes and which may be
subsequently recovered, "all rentals be-longing to the Republic, the
recognition and payment of which have been interrupted."[122] In
short, he rummages every corner and picks out the scraps which may
help them along; then, resuming and extending another undertaking of
the Directory, he assigns to them, not merely in Paris, but in many
other towns, a portion of the product derived from theatres and
octrois.[123] - Having thus increased their income, he applies himself
to diminishing their expenses. On the one hand, he gives them back
their special servants, those who cost the least and work the best, I
mean the Sisters of Charity. On the other hand, he binds them down
rigidly to exact accounts; he subjects them to strict supervision; he
selects for them competent and suitable administrators; he stops, here
as everywhere else, waste and peculation. Henceforth, the public
reservoir to which the poor come to quench their thirst is repaired
and cleaned; the water remains pure and no longer oozes out; private
charity may therefore pour into it its fresh streams with full
security; on this side, they flow in naturally, and, at this moment,
with more force than usual, for, in the reservoir, half-emptied by
revolutionary confiscations, the level is always low.
There remain the institutions for instruction. With respect to these,
the restoration seems more difficult, for their ancient endowment is
almost entirely wasted; the government has nothing to give back but
dilapidated buildings, a few scattered investments formerly intended
for the maintenance of a college scholarship,[124] or for a village
schoolhouse. And to whom should these be returned since the college
and the schoolhouse no longer exist? - Fortunately, instruction is an
article of such necessity that a father almost always tries to procure
it for his children; even if poor, he is willing to pay for it, if not
too dear; only, he wants that which pleases him in kind and in quality
and, therefore, from a particular source, bearing this or that factory
stamp or label. If you want him to buy it do not drive the purveyors
of it from the market who enjoy his confidence and who sell it
cheaply; on the contrary, welcome them and allow them to display their
wares. This is the first step, an act of toleration; the conseils-
généraux demand it and the government yields.[125] It permits the
return of the Ignorantin brethren, allows them to teach and authorizes
the towns to employ them; later on, it graduates them at its
University: in 1810, they already possess 41 schoolhouses and 8400
pupils.[126] Still more liberally, it authorizes and favors female
educational congregations; down to the end of the empire and
afterwards, nuns are about the only instructors of young girls,
especially in primary education. - Owing to the same toleration, the
upper schools are likewise reorganized, and not less spontaneously,
through the initiative of private individuals, communes, bishops,
colleges or pensionnats, at Reims, Fontainebleau, Metz, Évreux,
Sorrèze, Juilly, La Fléche and elsewhere small seminaries in all the
dioceses. Offer and demand have come together; instructors meet the
children half-way, and education begins on all sides.[127]
Thought can now be given to its endowment, and the State invites
everybody, the communes as well as private persons, to the
undertaking. It is on their liberality that it relies for replacing
the ancient foundations; it solicits gifts and legacies in favor of
new establishments, and it promises "to surround these donations with
the most invariable respect."[128] Meanwhile, and as a precautionary
measure, it assigns to each its eventual duty;[129] if the commune
establishes a primary school for itself, it must provide the tutor
with a lodging and the parents must compensate him; if the commune
founds a college or accepts a lycée, it must pay for the annual
support of the building,[130] while the pupils, either day-scholars or
boarders, pay accordingly. In this way, the heavy expenses are already
met, and the State, the general-manager of the service, furnishes
simply a very small quota; and this quota, mediocre as a rule, is
found almost null in fact, for its main largess consists in 6400
scholarships which it establishes and engages to support; but it
confers only about 3000 of them,[131] and it distributes nearly all of
these among the children of its military or civilian employees This
way a son's scholarship becomes additional pay or an increased salary
for the father; thus, the 2 millions which the State seems, under this
head, to assign to the lycées are actually gratifications which it
distributes among its functionaries and officials: it takes back with
one hand what it be-stows with the other. - Having put this in place,
it establishes the University. It is not at its own expense, however,
but at the expense of others, at the expense of private persons and
parents, of the communes, and above all at the expense of rival
schools and private boarding-schools, of the free institutions, and
all this in favor of the University monopoly which subjects these to
special taxation as ingenious as it is multifarious.[132] A private
individual obtaining diploma to open on a boarding school must pay
from 200 to 300 francs to the University; likewise, every person
obtaining a diploma to open an institution shall pay from 400 to 600
francs to the University; likewise every person obtaining permission
to lecture on law or medicine.[133] Every student, boarder, half-
boarder or day-scholar in any school, institution, seminary, college
or lycée, must pay to the University one-twentieth of the sum which
the establishment to which he belongs demands of each of its pupils.
In the higher schools, in the faculties of law, medicine, science and
literature, the students pay entrance and examination fees and for
diplomas, so that the day comes when superior instruction provides for
its expenditures out of its receipts and even shows on its budget a
net surplus of profit. The new University, with its expenses thus
defrayed, will support itself alone; accordingly, all that the State
really grants to it, as a veritable gift, in ready cash, is 400,000
francs annual income on the public ledger, a little less than the
donation of one single college, Louis-le-Grand, in 1789.[134] It may
even be said that it is exactly the fortune of the old college which,
after being made use of in many ways, turned aside and with other
mischance, becomes the patrimony of the new University.[135] From
high-school to University, the State has effected the transfer. Such
is its generosity. This is especially apparent in connection with
primary instruction; in 1812, for the first time, it allows 25,000
francs for this purpose, of which only 4,500 are received.[136]
Such is the final liquidation of the great collective fortunes. A
settlement of accounts, an express or tacit bargain, intervenes
between the State and all institutions for instruction, worship and
charity. It has taken from the poor, from the young and from
believers, 5 milliards of capital and 270 millions of revenue;[137] it
gives back to them, in public income and treasury interest, about 17
millions per annum. As it has the might and makes the law it has no
difficulty in obtaining or in giving itself its own discharge; it is a
bankrupt who, having spent his creditors money, bestows on these 6%.
of their claim by way of alms.
Naturally, it takes the opportunity to bring them under its strict and
permanent dependence, in adding other claims to those with which the
old monarchy had already burdened the corporations that administered
collective fortunes. Napoleon increases the weight of these chains and
screws them tighter. Not only does he take it upon himself to impose
order, probity, and economy on the administrators, but, again, he
appoints them, dismisses them, and prescribes or authorizes each of
their acts. He puts words in their mouths; he wants to be the great
bishop, the universal genius, the sole tutor and professor, in short,
the dictator of opinion, the creator and director of every political,
social and moral idea throughout his empire. - With what rigidity and
pertinacious intent, with what variety and convergence of means, with
what plenitude and certainty of execution, with what detriment and
with what danger, present and to come, for corporations, for the
public, for the State, for himself, we shall see presently; he
himself, living and reigning, is to realize this. For his
interference, pushed to extremes, is to end in encountering resistance
in a body which he considers as his own creature, the Church: here,
forgetting that she has roots of her own, deep down and out of his
reach, he carries off the Pope, holds him captive, sends cardinals
into the interior, (Page 198/504)imprisons bishops, banishes priests,
and incorporates seminarians in his regiments.[138] He decrees the
closing of all small seminaries,[139] alienates forever the Catholic
clergy like the royalist nobility, precisely at the same moment and
through the same absolutism, through the same abuse of power, through
the same recurrence to revolutionary tradition, to Jacobin infatuation
and brutality, even to the frustration of his Concordat of 1802 as
with his amnesty of 1802, even to compromising his capital work of the
attempted reconciliation and reunion of old France with the new
France. His work, nevertheless, although incomplete, even interrupted
and marred by himself, remains substantial and salutary. The three
grand machines which the Revolution had demolished with so little
foresight, and which he had reconstructed at so little cost, are in
working order, and, with deviations or shortcomings in result, they
render to the public the required services, each its own, worship,
charity and instruction. Full toleration and legal protection to the
three leading Christian cults, and even to Judaism, would of itself
already satisfy the most sensitive of religious demands; owing to the
donation furnished by the State and communes and by private
individuals, the necessary complement is not wanting.
The Catholic community, in particular, the most numerous of all,
exercises and celebrates its system of worship in conformity with its
faith, according to ecclesiastical canons under its own orthodox
hierarchy; in each parish, or within reach of each parish, dwells one
authorized priest who administers valid sacraments; in his stole he
says mass publicly in a consecrated edifice, plainly decorated at
first but gradually beautified; not less publicly, various
congregations of monks and nuns, the former in black robes and the
"sisters in wimples and white caps, serve in the schools and asylums.
On the other hand, in these well-equipped and well-governed asylums
and hospitals, in the bureaux of charity, their resources are no
longer inferior to their needs, while Christian charity and
philanthropic generosity are constantly operating in all directions to
fill the empty drawers; legacies and private donations, after 1802,
authorized by the Council of State, multiply; we see them swelling the
pages of the "Bulletin des Lois."[140] From 1800 to 1845, the
hospitals and asylums are thus to receive more than 72 millions, and
the charity bureaux over 49 millions; from 1800 to 1878, all together
will thus receive more than 415 millions.[141] The old patrimony of
the poor is again reconstituted piece by piece; and on January 1st,
1833, asylums and hospitals, with their 51 millions of revenue, are
able to support 154,000 elderly and the sickly.[142]
Like public charity, public education again becomes effective;
Fourcroy, after 1806,[143] lists 29 organized and full lycées; besides
these, 370 communal secondary schools and 377 private secondary
schools are open and receive 50,200; there are 25,000 children in the
4500 schools. Finally, in 1815,[144] we find in France, restored to
its ancient boundaries, 12 faculties of Law or Medicine with 6,329
students, 36 lycées with 9000 pupils, 368 colleges with 28,000 pupils,
41 small seminaries with 5233 pupils, 1255 boarding-schools and
private institutions with 39,623 pupils, and 22,348 primary schools
with 737,369 scholars; as far as can be gathered, the proportion of
men and women able to read and to sign their name is raised under the
empire up to and beyond the figures[145] it had reached previous to
1789.
In this manner are the worst damages repaired. The three new
administrative services, with a different set-up, do the job of the
old ones and, at the expiration of twenty-five years, give an almost
equal return. - In sum, the new proprietor of the great structure
sacked by the Revolution has again set up the indispensable apparatus
for warming, lighting and ventilation; as he knows his own interests
perfectly, and is poorly off in ready money, he contributes only a
minimum of the expense; in other respects, he has grouped together his
tenants into syndicates, into barracks, in apartments, and,
voluntarily or involuntarily, he has put upon them the burden of cost.
In the meantime, he has kept the three keys of the three engines in
his own cabinet, in his own hands, for himself alone; henceforth, it
is he who distributes throughout the building, on each story and in
every room, light, air and heat. If he does not distribute the same
quantity as before he at least distributes whatever is necessary; the
tenants can, at last, breathe comfortably, see clearly and not shiver;
after ten years of suffocation, darkness and cold they are too well
satisfied to wrangle with the proprietor, discuss his ways, and
dispute over the monopoly by which he has constituted himself the
arbitrator of their wants. - The same thing is done in the material
order of things, in relation to the highways, dikes, canals, and
structures useful to the people: here also he repairs or creates
through the same despotic initiative,
* with the same economy,[146]
* the same apportionment of expense,[147]
* the same spontaneous or forced aid to those interested,
* the same practical efficiency.[148]
Summing it up and if we take things as a whole, and if we offset the
worse with the better, it may be said that the French people have
recovered the possessions they had been missing since 1789:
* internal peace,
* public tranquility,
* administrative regularity,
* impartial justice,
* a strict police,
* security of persons, property and consciences,
* liberty in private life,
* enjoyment of one's native land, and, on leaving it, the privilege of
coming back;
* the satisfactory endowment, gratuitous celebration and full exercise
of worship;
* schools and instruction for the young;
* beds, nursing and assistance for the sick, the indigent and for
foundlings;
* the maintenance of roads and public buildings.
So that of the two groups of cravings which troubled men in 1800, the
first one, that which dated from the Revolution, has, towards 1808 or
1810, obtained reasonable satisfaction.
______________________________________________________________________
Notes:
[1] Roederer, III., 334 (August 6, 1800).
[2] The word means "what is beyond the Alps" but refers to a number
of doctrines favoring the Pope's absolute authority. (SR.)
[3] Stanislas Girardin, "Mémoires," I., 273 (22 Thermidor, year X):
"The only craving, the only sentiment in France, disturbed for so many
years, is repose. Whatever secures this will gain its assent. Its
inhabitants, accustomed to take an active part in all political
questions, now seem to take no interest in them." - Roederer, III.,
484 (Report on the Sénatorerie of Caen, Dec. 1, 1803): "The people of
the rural districts, busy with its new affairs, . . . are perfectly
submissive, because they now find security for persons and property. .
. . They show no enthusiasm for the monarch, but are full of respect
for and trust in a gendarme; they stop and salute him on passing him
on the roads."
[4] Rocquam, "l'État de la France au 18 Brumaire." (Report by Barbé-
Marbois, p. 72, 81.) Cash-boxes broken open and exclamations by the
officers "Money and fortune belong to the brave. Let us help
ourselves. Our accounts will be settled at the cannon's mouth." - "
The subordinates," adds Barbé-Marbois, "fully aware of their
superior's drafts on the public treasury, stipulate for their share of
the booty; accustomed to exacting contributions from outside enemies
they are not averse to treating as conquered enemies the departments
they were called upon to defend."
[5] Ibid. (Reports of Barbe-Marbois and Fourcroy while on their
missions in the 12th and 13th military divisions, year IX., p.158, on
the tranquility of La Vendée.) "I could have gone anywhere without an
escort. During my stay in some of the villages I was not disturbed by
any fear or suspicion whatever. . . . The tranquility they now enjoy
and the cessation of persecutions keep them from insurrection."
[6] Archives nationales, F7,3273 (Reports by Gen. Ferino, Pluviôse,
year IX, with a table of verdicts by the military commission since
Floreal, year VIII.) The commission mentions 53 assassinations, 3
rapes, 44 pillagings of houses, by brigands in Vaucluse, Drôme, and
the Lower Alps; 66 brigands taken in the act are shot, 87 after
condemnation, and 6, who are wounded, die in the hospital. - Rocquain,
ibid., p. 17, (Reports of Français, from Nantes, on his mission in the
8th military division.) "The South may be considered as purged by the
destruction of about 200 brigands who have been shot. There remains
only three or four bands of 7 or S men each."
[7] Three classes of insurrectionary peasants or marauders. - Tr.
[8] Archives Nationales, F7, 7152 (on the prolongation of brigandage).
Letter from Lhoste, agent, to the minister of justice, Lyons, Pluviôse
8, year VIII. "The diligences are robbed every week." - Ibid.,
F7,3267, (Seine-et-Oise, bulletins of the military police and
correspondence of the gendarmerie). Brumaire 25, year VIII, attack on
the Paris mail near Arpajon by 5 brigands armed with guns. Fructidor,
year VIII, at three o'clock P.M., a cart loaded with 10,860 francs
sent by the collector at Mantes to the collector at Versailles is
stopped near the Marly water-works, by 8 or 10 armed brigands on
horseback. - Similar facts abound. It is evident that more than a year
is required to put an end to brigandage. - It is always done by
employing an impartial military force. (Rocquam, Ibid, p. 10.) "There
are at Marseilles three companies of paid national guards, 60 men
each, at a franc per man. The fund for this guard is supplied by a
contribution of 5 francs a month paid by every man subject to this
duty who wishes to be exempt. The officers . . . are all strangers in
the country. Robberies, murders, and conflicts have ceased in
Marseilles since the establishment of this guard."
[9] Archives Nationales, 3144 and 3145, No.1004. (Reports of the
councillors of State on mission during the year IX, published by
Rocquam, with omissions, among which is the following, in the report
of François de Nantes.) "The steps taken by the mayors of Marseilles
are sufficiently effective to enable an émigré under surveillance and
just landed, to walk about Marseilles without being knocked down or
knocking anybody else down, an alternative to which they have been
thus far subject. And yet there are in this town nearly 500 men who
have slaughtered with their own hands, or been the accomplices of
slaughterers, at different times during the Revolution. . . . The
inhabitants of this town are so accustomed to being annoyed and
despoiled, and to being treated like those of a rebellious town or
colony, that arbitrary power no longer frightens them, and they simply
ask that their lives and property be protected against murderers and
pillagers, and that things be entrusted to sure and impartial hands."
[10] Roederer, III., 481. (Report on the Sénatorerie of Caen, Germinal
2, year XIII.)- Faber, "Notice sur l'intérieur de la France"(1807),
p.110, 112. "Justice is one of the bright sides of France of to-day.
It is costly, but it cannot be called venal."
[11] Rocquain, ibid., 19. (Report of François de Nantes on the 8th
military division.) "For the past eighteen months a calm has prevailed
here equal to that which existed before the Revolution. Balls and
parties have been resumed in the towns, while the old dances of
Provence, suspended for ten years, now gladden the people of the
country."
[12] Proclamation to the French people, Dec. 15, 1799.
[13] See "The Revolution," vol. III., p.292. (Notes.) (Laff. II, the
notes on pp. 218-219.)
[14] Decision of the Council of State, Pluviôse 5, year VIII (Jan. 25,
1800).
[15] Forneron, "Histoire générale des émigrés," II., 374. In 1800, the
army of Condé still comprised 1007 officers and 5840 volunteers.
[16] Decrees of Brumaire 3, year IV, and of Frimaire 9, year VI. (Cf.
"The Revolution," pp.433, 460.)
[17] Constitution of Frimaire 22, year VIII. (December 13, 1799),
article 93. "The French nation declares that in no case will it suffer
the return of the Frenchmen who, having abandoned their country since
the 14th of July 1789, are not comprised in the exceptions made to the
laws rendered against émigrés. It interdicts every new exception in
this respect."
[18] Opinion of the Council of State, Dec. 25, 1799.
[19] Resolution of Dec. 26, 1799. - Two ultra-Jacobins, exiled after
Thermidor, are added to the list, Barère and Vadier, undoubtedly by
way of compensation and not to let it appear that the scales inclined
too much on one side.
[20] Resolution of Dec. 30, 1799.
[21] Resolutions of February 26, March 2, and March 3, 1800.
[22] Thibaudeau, "Mémoires sur le Consulat," 199. (Stated by the First
Consul at Regnault at a meeting of the council of state, Aug.12,
1801.) "I am glad to hear the denunciation of striking off names. How
many have you yourselves not asked for? It could not be otherwise.
Everybody has some relation or friend on the lists."
[23] Thibaudeau. ibid. (Speech by the First Consul.) "Never have there
been lists of émigrés;" there are only lists of absentees. The proof
of this is that names have always been struck off. I have seen members
of the Convention and even generals on the lists. Citizen Monge was
inscribed."
[24] Thibaudeau, ibid., 97. - "The minister of police made a great hue
and cry over the arrest and sending back of a few émigrés who returned
without permission, or who annoyed the buyers of their property,
while, at the same time, it granted surveillance to all who asked for
it, paying no attention to the distinction made by the resolution of
Vendémiaire 28."
[25] Sénatus-consulte of April 26, 1802.
[26] Sénatus-consulte of April 26, 1802, title II., articles 16 and
17. - Gaudin, Duc de Gaëte, "Mémoires," I., 183. (Report on the
administration of the Finances in 1803.) "The old proprietors have
been reinstated in more than 20,000 hectares of forests."
[27] Thibaudeau, ibid., p. 98. (Speech of the First Consul, Thermidor
24, year IX.) Some of the émigrés who have been pardoned are cutting
down their forests, either from necessity or to send money abroad. I
will not allow the worst enemies of the republic, the defenders of
ancient prejudices, to recover their fortunes and despoil France. I am
glad to welcome them back; but it is important that the nation should
preserve its forests; the navy needs them."
[28] An arpent measures about an acre and a half.(TR.)
[29] Stourm, "Les Finances de l'ancien régime et de la
révolution,"II., 459 to 461. - (According to the figures appended to
the projected law of 1825.) - This relates only to their patrimony in
real estate; their personal estate was wholly swept away, at first
through the abolition, without indemnity, of their available feudal
rights under the Constituent and Legislative assemblies, and
afterwards through the legal and forced transformation of their
personal capital into national bonds (titres sur le grand-livre,
rentes) which the final bankruptcy of the Directory reduced to almost
nothing.
[30] Pelet de la Lozère, "Opinions de Napoléon au conseil d'état"
(March 15th and July 1st, 1806): "One of the most unjust effects of
the revolution was to let an émigré; whose property was found to be
sold, starve to death, and give back 100,000 crowns of rente to
another whose property happened to be still in the hands of the
government. How odd, again, to have returned unsold fields and to have
kept the woods! It would have been better, starting from the legal
forfeiture of all property, to return only 6000 francs of rente to one
alone and distribute what remained among the rest."
[31] Léonce de Lavergne, "Economie rurale de la France," p.26.
(According to the table of names with indemnities awarded by the law
of 1825.) - Duc de Rovigo, Mémoires," IV., 400.
[32] De Puymaigre, "Souvenirs de l'émigration de l'empire et de la
restauration," p.94.
[33] Pelet de la Lozère, ibid., p.272.
[34] De Puymaigre, ibid., passim. - Alexandrine des Écherolles, "Une
famille noble pendant la Terreur," pp.328, 402, 408. - I add to
published documents personal souvenirs and family narrations.
[35] Duc de Rovigo, "Mémoires," IV., 399. (On the provincial noblesse
which had emigrated and returned.) "The First Consul quietly gave
orders that none of the applications made by the large number of those
who asked for minor situations in various branches of the
administration should be rejected on account of emigration."
[36] M. de Vitrolles, "Mémoires." - M. d'Haussonville, "Ma jeunesse,"
p. 6o: "One morning, my father learns that he has been appointed
chamberlain, with a certain number of other persons belonging to the
greatest families of the faubourg Saint-Germain."
[37] Madame de Rémusat, "Mémoires," II., 312, 315 and following pages,
373. - Madame de Staël, "Considérations sur la révolution française,"
4th part, ch IV.
[38] Roederer, III., 459. (Speech by Napoleon, December 30, 1802.)--"
Very well, I do protect the nobles of France; but they must see that
they need protection. . . . I give places to many of them; I restore
them to public distinction and even to the honors of the drawing-room;
but they feel that it is alone through my good will. - Ibid., III.,
558 (January 1809): "I repent daily of a mistake I have made in my
government; the most serious one I ever made, and I perceive its bad
effects every day. It was the giving back to the émigrés the totality
of their possessions. I ought to have massed them in common and given
each one simply the chance of an income of 6000 francs. As soon as I
saw my mistake I withdrew from thirty to forty millions of forests;
but far too many are still in the hands of a great number of them." -
We here see the attitude he would impose on them, that of clients and
grateful pensioners. They do not stand in this attitude. (Roederer,
III., 472. Report on the Sénatorerie of Caen, 1803.) - "The returned
émigrés are not friendly nor even satisfied; their enjoyment of what
they have recovered is less than their indignation at what they have
lost. They speak of the amnesty without gratitude, and as only partial
justice. . . . In other respects they appear submissive."
[39] Duc de Rovigo1 "Memoires." V., 297. Towards the end, large
numbers of the young nobles went into the army. "In 1812, there, was
not a marshal, or even a general, who had not some of these on his
staff, or as aids-de-camp. Nearly all the cavalry regiments in the
army were commanded by officers belonging to these families. They had
already attracted notice in the infantry. All these young nobles had
openly joined the emperor because they were easily influenced by love
of glory."
[40] Madame de Rémusat II., 299 (1806): "He began to surround himself
about this time with so much ceremony that none of us had scarcely any
intimate relations with him. . . . The court became more and more
crowded and monotonous, each doing on the minute what he had to do.
Nobody thought of venturing outside the brief series of ideas which
are generated within the restricted circle of the same duties. . . .
Increasing despotism, . . . fear of a reproof if one failed in the
slightest particular, silence kept by us all. . . . There was no
opportunity to indulge emotion or interchange any observation of the
slightest importance."
[41] Roederer, III., 558 (January 1809). - "The Modern Régime," ante,
book I., ch. II.
[42] Madame de Rémusat, III., 75, 155: "When the minister of police
learned that jesting or malicious remarks had been made in one of the
Paris drawing-rooms he at once notified the master or mistress of the
house to be more watchful of their company." - Ibid., p.187 (1807):
"The emperor censured M. Fouché for not having exercised stricter
watchfulness. He exiled women, caused distinguished persons to be
warned, and insinuated that, to avoid the consequences of his anger,
steps must be taken to show that his power was recognized in atonement
for the faults committed. In consequence of these hints many thought
themselves obliged to be presented." - Ibid., II., 170, 212, 303. - Duc
de Rovigo, "Mémoires," IV., 311 and 393. "Appointed minister of
police, said he, I inspired everybody with fear: each packed up his
things; nothing was talked about but exiles, imprisonment and worse
still." - He took advantage of all this to recommend "everybody on his
list who was inscribed as an enemy of the government" to be presented
at court, and all, in fact, except stubborn "grandmothers" were
presented. (Note that the Duc de Rovigo and the general Savary
mentioned many times by Taine is one and the same person. Savary was
the general who organized the infamous kidnapping and execution of the
Duc d'Enghien. He was later made minister of police (1810-1814) and
elevated Duke of Rovigo by Napoleon. SR.)
[43] Madame de Staël, "Considérations sur la révolution française" and
"Dix ans d'exil." Exile of Madame de Balbi, of Madame de Chevreuse, of
Madame de Duras, of Madame d'Aveaux, of Madame de Staël, of Madame de
Récamier, etc. - Duc de Rovigo, Ibid., IV., 389: "The first exiles
dated from 1805; I think there were fourteen."
[44] Roederer, III., 472. (Report on the Sénatorerie of Caen, 1803.)
The nobles "have no social relations either with citizens or with the
public functionaries, except with the prefect of Caen and the general
in command. . . . Their association with the prefect intimates their
belief that they might need him. All pay their respects to the general
of division; his mantelpiece is strewed with visiting-cards."
[45] Madame de la Rochejaquelein, "Mémoires," 423: "We lived exposed
to a tyranny which left us neither calm nor contentment. At one time a
spy was placed amongst our servants, at another some of our relations
would be exiled far from their homes, accused of exercising a charity
which secured them too much affection from their neighbors. Sometimes,
my husband would be obliged to go to Paris to explain his conduct.
Again, a hunting-party would be represented as a meeting of Vendéans.
Occasionally, we were blamed for going into Poitou because our
influence was regarded as too dangerous; again, we were reproached for
not living there and not exercising our influence in behalf of the
conscription." - Her brother-in-law, Auguste de la Rochejaquelein,
invited to take service in the army comes to Paris to present his
objections. He is arrested, and at the end of two months "the minister
signifies to him that he must remain a prisoner so long as he refuses
to be a second-lieutenant."
[46] Sénatus-consulte of April 26, 1802: "Considering that this
measure is merely one of pardon to the large number who are always
more led astray than criminal . . . the amnestied will remain for ten
years under a special government surveillance." It may oblige each one
"to leave his usual residence and go to a distance of twenty leagues,
and even farther if circumstances demand it."
[47] Thiers, X., 41. (Letter to Fouché, Dec.31, 1808, not inserted in
the correspondence.) - "The Modern Régime," book I., ch.II.
[48] Rocquain, "État de la France au 18 brumaire," pp.33, 189, 190.
(Reports of Français de Nantes and of Fourcroy.) - "Statistique
elementaire de la France," by Peuchet (according to a statement
published by the minister of the interior, year IX), p. 260. -
"Statistiques des préfets," Aube, by Aubray, p.23; Aisne, by Dauchet,
p.87; Lot-et-Garonne, by Pieyre, p. 45: "It is during the Revolution
that the number of foundlings increased to this extraordinary extent
by the too easy admission in the asylums of girls who had become
mothers, along with their infants; through the passing sojourn of
soldiers in their houses; through the subversion of every principle of
religion and morality." - Gers, by Balguerie: "Many defenders of the
country became fathers before their departure. . . . The soldiers, on
their return, maintained the habits of their conquests. . . . Many of
the girls, besides, for lack of a husband took a lover."- Moselle, by
Coichen, p.91: "Morals are more lax. In 1789, at Metz, there are 524
illegitimate births; in the year IX, 646; in 1789, 70 prostitutes; in
the year IX, 260. There is the same increase of kept women." -
Peuchet, " Essai d'une statistique générale de la France," year IX,
p.28. "The number of illegitimate births, from one forty-seventh in
1780, increased to nearly one eleventh of the total births, according
to the comparative estimates of M. Necker and M. Mourgue."
[49] Rocquam, ibid., p. 93. (Report of Barbé-Marbois.)
[50] "The Revolution," III., p.416 (note), P.471 (note). (Laff. II.
pp. 307-308, p 348.)
[51] "Statistiques des préfets," Deux-Sèvres, by Dupin, p. 174:
"Venereal diseases which thanks to good habits. were still unknown in
the country in 1789, are now spread throughout the Bocage and in all
places where the troops have sojourned." - "Dr. Delahay, at Parthenay
observes that the number of maniacs increased fright fully in the
Reign of Terror." (It should be remembered that the terminal stage of
untreated syphilis is madness and death. SR.)
[52] Decrees of March 19, 1793, and Messidor 23, year II. - Decrees of
Brumaire 2, year IV, and Vendémiaire 16 year V.
[53] "Statistiques des préfets," Rhône, by Verminac, year X. Income of
the Lyons Asylums in 1789,1.510,827 francs; to-day, 459,371 francs. -
Indre, by Dalphonse, year XII. The principal asylum of Issoudun,
founded in the twelfth century, had 27,939 francs revenue, on which it
loses 16,232. Another asylum, that of the Incurables, loses, on an
income of 12,062 francs, 7457 francs. - Eure, by Masson Saint-Amand,
year XIII: "14 asylums and 3 small charity establishments in the
department, with about 100,000 francs income in 1789, have lost at
least 60,000 francs of it. - Vosges, by Desgouttes, year X: "10
asylums in the department. Most of these have been stripped of nearly
the whole of their property and capital on account of the law of
Messidor 23, year II; on the suspension of the execution of this law,
the property had been sold and the capital returned. - Cher, by Luçay:
"15 asylums before the revolution; they remain almost wholly without
resources through the loss of their possessions. - Lozère, by
Jerphaniou, year X: "The property belonging to the asylums, either in
real estate or state securities, has passed into other hands." -
Doubs, analysis by Ferrieres: "Situation of the asylums much inferior
to that of 1789, because they could not have property restored to them
in proportion to the value of that which had been alienated. The
asylum of Pontarlier lost one-half of its revenue through
reimbursements in paper-money. All the property of the Ornans asylum
has been sold," etc. - Rocquain, p. 187. (Report by Fourcroy.) Asylums
of Orne: their revenue, instead of 123,189 francs, is no more than
68,239. - Asylums of Calvados: they have lost 173,648 francs of
income, there remains of this only 85,955 francs. - Passim, heart-
rending details on the destitution of the asylums and their inmates,
children, the sick and the infirm. - The figures by which I have tried
to show the disproportion between requirements and resources are a
minimum.
[54] Abbé Allain, "l'Instruction primaire en France avant la
Révolution," and Albert Duruy, "l'Instruction publique et la
Révolution," passim.
[55] "Statistique de l'enseignement primaire" (1880),II., CCIV. The
proportion of instructed and uninstructed people has been ascertained
in 79 departments, and at various periods, from 168o down to the year
1876, according to the signatures on 1,699,985 marriage-records. - In
the "Dictionnaire de pédagogie et d'instruction primaire," published
by M. Buisson, M. Maggiolo, director of these vast statistics, has
given the proportion of literate and illiterate people for the
different departments; now, from department to department, the figures
furnished by the signatures on marriage records correspond with
sufficient exactness to the number of schools, verified moreover by
pastoral visits and by other documents. The most illiterate
departments are Cantal, Puy-de-Dome, Nièvre, Allier, Vienne, Haute-
Vienne, Deux-Sèvres, Vendée and the departments of Brittany.
[56] One sou equals 1/20 of a franc or 5 centimes. (SR.)
[57] Albert Duruy, ibid., p.25. (According to the report of M.
Villemain on common-school education in 1843.) - Abbé Allain, "la
Question d'enseignement en 1789," p. 88 - A. Silvy, "les Collèges en
France avant la Révolution," p.5. The researches of M. Silvy show that
the number of high-schools (collèges) given by M. Villemain is much
too low: "The number of these schools under the ancient Régime cannot
be estimated at less than about 900. . . . I have ascertained 800. . .
. I must add that my search is not yet finished and that I find new
institutions every day."
[58] Lunet, "Histoire du collège de Rodez," p. 110. - Edmond,
"Histoire du collège de Louis-le-Grand," p. 238. - "Statistiques des
préfets," Moselle. (Analysis by Ferrière, year XII.) Before 1789, 4
high-schools at Metz, very complete, conducted by regular canons,
Benedictines, with 33 professors, 38 assistant teachers, 63 servants,
259 day-scholars and 217 boarders. All this was broken up. In the year
IX there is only one central school, very inadequate, with 9
professors, 5 assistants, 3 servants and 233 day-scholars.
[59] Albert Duruy, ibid., p. 25.
[60] Lunet, ibid, p.110,
[61] "Statistiques des préfets," Ain, by Bossi, p.368. At Bourg,
before the revolution, 220 pupils, of which 70 were boarders, 8000
livres income in real property confiscated during the revolution. - At
Belley, the teachers consist of the congregationist of Saint-Joseph;
250 pupils, 9950 francs revenue from capital invested in the pays
d'état, swept away by the revolution. - At Thoissy, 8000 francs rental
of real property sold, etc. - Deux-Sèvres, by Dupin, year IX, and
"analyse" by Ferrière, P. 48: "Previous to the revolution, each
department town had its high-school. - At Thouars, 60 boarders at 300
livres per annum, and 40 day-scholars. At Niort, 80 boarders at 450
livres per annum, and 100 day-scholars". -Aisne, by Dauchy, p.88.
Before 1789, nearly all the small high-schools were gratuitous, and,
in the large ones, there were scholarships open to competition. All
their possessions, except large buildings, were alienated and sold, as
well as those of the 60 communities in which girls were taught
gratuitously. - Eure, by Masson Saint-Amand. There were previous to
1789, 8 high-schools which were all suppressed and destroyed. - Drôme,
by Collin, p.66. Before the revolution, each town had its high-
school," etc.
[62] Cf. Marmontel, "Mémoires," I., 16, for details of these customs;
M. Jules Simon found the same customs afterwards and describes them in
the souvenirs of his youth. - La Chalotais, at the end of the reign of
Louis XV., had already described the efficiency of the institution.
"Even the people want to study. Farmers and craftsmen send their
children to the schools in these small towns where living is cheap."--
This rapid spread of secondary education contributed a good deal
towards bringing on the revolution.
[63] "Statistiques des préfets," Indre, by Dalphonse, year XII, p.104:
"The universities, the colleges, the seminaries, the religious
establishments, the free schools are all destroyed; vast plans only
remain for a new system of education raised on their ruins. Nearly all
of these rest unexecuted. . . . Primary schools have nowhere, one may
say, been organized, and those which have been are so poor they had
better not have been organized at all. With a pompous and costly
system of public instruction, ten years have been lost for
instruction."
[64] Moniteur, XXI., 644. (Session of Fructidor 19, year II.) One of
the members says: "It is very certain, and my colleagues see it with
pain, that public instruction is null." - Fourcroy: "Reading and
writing are no longer taught." - Albert Duruy, p. 208. (Report to the
Directory executive, Germinal 13, year IV.) "For nearly six years no
public instruction exists." - De La Sicotiere, "Histoire du collège de
Alençon," p.33: "In 1794, there were only two pupils in the college."
- Lunet, "Histoire du collège de Rodez," p.157: "The recitation-rooms
remained empty of pupils and teachers from March 1793 to May 16,
1796." - " Statistiques des préfets," Eure, by Masson Saint-Amand year
XIII: "In the larger section of the department, school-houses existed
with special endowments for teachers of both sexes. The school-houses
have been alienated like other national domains; the endowments due to
religious corporations or establishments have been extinguished - As
to girls, that portion of society has suffered an immense loss,
relatively to its education, in the suppression of religious
communities which provided them with an almost gratuitous and
sufficiently steady instruction."
[65] My maternal grandmother learned how to read from a nun concealed
in the cellar of the house.
[66] Albert Duruy, ibid., 349. (Decree of the Directory, Pluviôse 17,
year V, and circular of the minister Letourneur against free schools
which are "dens of royalism and superstition." - Hence the decrees of
the authorities in the departments of Eure, Pas de Calais, Drôme,
Mayenne and La Manche, closing these dens.) "From Thermidor 27, year
VI, to Messidor 2, year VII, say the authorities of La Manche, we have
revoked fifty-eight teachers on their denunciation by the
municipalities and by popular clubs."
[67] Archives nationales, cartons 3144 to 3145, No. l04. (Reports of
the Councillors of State on mission in the year IX.) Report by Lacuée
on the first military division. Three central schools at Paris, one
called the Quatre-Nations. "This school must be visited in order to
form any idea of the state of destruction and dilapidation which all
the national buildings are in. No repairs have been made since the
reopening of the schools; everything is going to ruin. . . . Walls are
down and the floors fallen in. To preserve the pupils from the risks
which the occupation of these buildings hourly presents, it is
necessary to give lessons in rooms which are very unhealthy on account
of their small dimensions and dampness. In the drawing-class the
papers and models in the portfolios become moldy."
[68] Albert Duruy, ibid., 484. ("Procès-verbaux des conseils-
généraux," year IX, passim.)
[69] Ibid., 476. ("Statistiques des préfets," Sarthe, year X.)
"Prejudices which it is difficult to overcome, as well on the
stability of this school as on the morality of some of the teachers,
prevented its being frequented for a time." - 483. (Procès-verbaux des
conseils-généraux," Bas-Rhin.) "The overthrow of religion has excited
prejudices against the central schools." - 482. (Ibid., Lot.) "Most of
the teachers in the central school took part in the revolution in a
not very honorable way. Their reputation affects the success of their
teaching. Their schools are deserted."
[70] Albert Duruy, ibid., '94. (According to the reports of 15 central
schools, from the year VI. to the year VIII.) The average for each
central school is for drawing, 89 pupils; for mathematics, 28; for the
classics, 24; for physics, chemistry and natural history, 19; for
general grammar, 5; for history, 10; for legislation, 8: for belles-
lettres, 6. - Rocquam, ibid., P.29. (Reports of Français de Nantes, on
the departments of the South-east.) "There, as elsewhere, the courses
on general grammar, on belles-lettres, history and legislation, are
unfrequented. Those on mathematics, chemistry, Latin and drawing are
better attended, because these sciences open up lucrative careers. -
Ibid., p. 108. (Report by Barbé-Marboi on the Brittany departments.)
[71] Statistiques des préfets," Meurthe, by Marquis, year XIII, p.120.
"In the communal schools of the rural districts, the fee was so small
that the poorest families could contribute to the (teacher's) salary.
Assessments on the communal property, besides, helped almost
everywhere in providing the teacher with a satisfactory salary, so
that these functions were sought after and commonly well fulfilled. .
. . Most of the villages had Sisters of Saint-Vincent de Paul for
instructors, or others well known under the name of Vatelottes." -
"The partition of communal property, and the sale of that assigned to
old endowments, had deprived the communes of resources which afforded
a fair compensation to schoolmasters and schoolmistresses. The product
of the additional centimes scarcely sufficed for administrative
expenses. - Thus, there is but little else now than people without
means, who take poorly compensated places; again, they neglect their,
schools just as soon as they see an opportunity to earn something
elsewhere." - Archives nationales, No. 1004, cartons 3044 and 3145.
(Report of the councillors of state on mission in the year IX. - First
military division, Report of Lacuée.) Aisne: "There is now no primary
school according to legal institution." - The situation is the same
in Oise, also in Seine for the districts of Sceaux and SaintDenis.
[72] Albert Duruy, 178. (Report drawn up in the bureaux of the
ministry of the interior, year VIII.) "A detestable selection of those
called instructors; almost everywhere, they are men without morals or
education, who owe their nomination solely to a pretended civism,
consisting of nothing but an insensibility to morality and propriety.
. . . They affect an insolent contempt for the (old) religious
opinions." - Ibid., p.497. (Procès-verbaux des conseils-généraux.) On
primary school-teachers, Hérault: "Most are blockheads and vagabonds."
- Pas-de-Calais:" Most are blockheads or ignoramuses."
[73] Rocquam, '94. (Report by Fourcroy on the 14th military division,
Manche, Orne, Calvados.) "Besides bad conduct, drunkenness, and the
immorality of many of these teachers, it seems certain that the lack
of instruction in religion is the principal motive which prevents
parents from sending their children to these schools." - Archives
nationales, ibid. (Report by Lacuée on the 1st military division.)
"The teachers, male and female, who desired to conform to the law of
Brumaire 3 and to the different rules prescribed by the central
administration, on placing the constitution and the rights of man in
the hands of their pupils, found their schools abandoned one after the
other. The schools the best attended are those where the Testament,
the catechism, and the life of Christ are used. . . . The instructors,
obliged to pursue the line marked out by the government, could not do
otherwise than carry out the principles which opposed the prejudices
and habits of the parents; hence their loss of credit, and the almost
total desertion of the pupils."
[74] "The Revolution," vol. III., p. 81, note 2. (Laff. II. pp.68-69,
note 4.)
[75] "Statistiques des préfets," Moselle. (Analysis by Ferrière.) At
Metz, in 1789, there were five free schools for young children, of
which one was for boys and four for girls, kept by monks or nuns; in
the year XII there were none: "An entire generation was given up to
ignorance." Ibid., Ain, by Bossi, 1808: "In 1800, there were scarcely
any primary schools in the department, as in the rest of France." In
1808, there are scarcely thirty. - Albert Duruy, p.480, 496. (Procès-
verbaux des conseils-généraux, year IX.) Vosges: "Scarcely any primary
instruction." - Sarthe: "Primary instruction, none." - Meuse-
Inférieure: "It is feared that in fifteen years or so there will not
be one man in a hundred able to write," etc.
[76] These are the minimum figures, and they are arrived at through
the following calculation. Before 1789, 47 men out of 100, and 26
women out of 100, that is to say 36 or 37 persons in 100, received
primary instruction. Now, according to the census from 1876 to 1881
(official statistics of primary instruction, III., XVI.), children
from six to thirteen number about twelve % of the entire population.
Accordingly, in 1789, out of a population of 26 millions, the children
from 6 to 13 numbered 3,120,000, of whom 1,138,000 learned to read and
write. It must be noted that, in 1800, the adult population had
greatly diminished, and that the infantine population had largely
increased. France, moreover, is enlarged by 12 departments (Belgium,
Savoy, Comtat, Nice), where the old schools had equally perished. - If
all the old schools had been kept up, it is probable that the children
who would have had primary instruction would have numbered nearly
1,400,000.
[77] Saint Thomas, "Summa theologica," pars III., questio 60 usque ad
85: "Sacramenta efficiunt quod figurant. . . . Sant necessaria ad
salutem hominum. . . . Ab ipso verbo incarnata efficaciam habent. Ex
sua institutione habent quod conferant gratiam. . . . Sacramentum est
causa gratiœ, causa agens, principalis et instrumentalis."
[78] Except priests ordained by a bishop of the Greek church.
[79] "The Revolution," I. 161. - Archives nationales. (Reports of the
Directory commissioners from the cantons and departments. - There are
hundreds of these reports, of which the following are specimens.) -
F7, 7108. (Canton of Passavent, Doubs, Ventôse 7, year IV.) "The sway
of religious opinions is much more extensive here than before the
revolution, because the mass of the people did not concern themselves
about them, while nowadays they form among the generality the subject
of conversation and complaint." - F7, 7127. (Canton of Goux, Doubs,
Pluviôse 13, year IV.) "The hunting down of unsworn priests, coupled
with the dilapidation and destruction of the temples, displeased the
people, who want a religion and a cult; the government became hateful
to them." - Ibid. (Dordogne, canton of Livrac, Ventôse 13, year IV.)
"The demolition of altars, the closing of the churches, had rendered
the people furious under the Tyranny." - F7, 7129. (Seine-Infèrieure,
canton of Canteleu, Pluviôse 12, year IV.) "I knew enlightened men
who, in the ancient regime, never went near a church, and yet who
harbored refractory priests." - Archives nationales, cartons 3144-
3145, No. 1004. (Missions of the councillors of state in the year IX.)
At this date, worship was everywhere established and spontaneously.
(Report by Lacuée.) In Eure-et-Loire, "nearly every village has its
church and minister; the temples are open in the towns and are well
attended." - In Seine-et-Oise, "the Roman Catholic cult prevails in
all the communes of the department." - In Oise, "worship is carried on
in all the communes of the department."-In Loiret, "the churches are
attended by the multitude almost as regularly as before 1788. One-
sixth of the communes (only) have neither worship nor minister and, in
these communes, both are strongly desired."
[80] Archives nationales, F7, 7129. (Tarn, canton of Vielmur, Germinal
10, year IV.) "The ignorant now regard patriot and brigand as
synonymous."
[81] Archives nationales, F7, 7108. (Doubs, canton of Vercel, Pluviôse
20, year IV.) "Under the law of Prairial II, the unsworn priests were
all recalled by their former parishioners. Their hold on the people is
so strong that there is no sacrifice that they will not make, no ruse
nor measures that they will not employ to keep them and elude the
rigor of the laws bearing on them" - (Ibid., canton of Pontarlier,
Pluviôse 3, year IV.) "In the primary assemblies, the aristocracy,
together with spite, have induced the ignorant people not to accept
the constitution except on condition of the recall of their
transported or emigrant priests for the exercise of their worship." -
(Ibid., canton of Labergement, Pluviôse 14, year IV.) "The
cultivators adore them. . . . I am the only citizen of my canton who,
along with my, family, offers up prayers to the Eternal without any
intermediary." - F7, 7127. (Côte-d'Or, canton of Beaune, Ventôse 5,
year IV.) "Fanaticism is a power of great influence." - (Ibid., canton
of Frolois, Pluviôse 9, year IV.) "Two unsworn priests returned
eighteen months ago; they are hidden away and hold nocturnal meetings.
. . They have seduced and corrupted at least three-quarters of the
people of both sexes." - (Ibid., canton of Ivry, Pluviôse 1, year IV.)
"Fanaticism and popery have perverted the public mind." - F7, 7119.
(Puy-de-Dôme, canton of Ambert, Ventôse 15, year IV.) "Five returned
priests have celebrated the mass here, and each time were followed by
3000 or 4000 persons." - F7, 7127. (Dordogne, canton of Carlux,
Pluviôse 18, year IV.) "The people are so attached to the Catholic
faith, they walk fully two leagues to attend mass." - F7, 7119.
(Ardèche, canton of Saint-Barthélemy, Pluviôse 15, year IV.) "The
unsubmissive priests have become absolute masters of popular opinion."
- (Orne, canton of Alençon, Ventôse 22, year IV.) "Presidents,
members of the municipal councils, instead of arresting the refractory
priests and bringing them into court, admit them to their table, lodge
them and impart to them the secrets of the government." - F7, 7129.
(Seine-et-Oise, canton of Jouy, Pluviôse 8, year IV.) "Forty-nine out
of fifty citizens seem to have the greatest desire to profess the
Catholic faith." - Ibid., canton of Dammartin, Pluviôse 7, year IV.)
"The Catholic religion has full sway; those who do not accept it are
frowned upon." - At the same date (Pluviôse 9, year IV), the
commissioner at Chamarande writes: "I see persons giving what they
call blessed bread and yet having nothing to eat."
[82] Ibid., cartons 3144 and 3145, No. 1004, missions of the
councillors of state, year IX. - (Report of Barbé-Marbois on
Brittany.) "At Vannes, I entered the cathedral on the jour des Rois,
where the constitutional mass was being celebrated; there were only
one priest and two or three poor people there. A little farther on I
found a large crowd barring the way in the street; these people could
not enter a chapel which was already full and where the mass called
for by the Catholics was being celebrated. - Elsewhere, the churches
in the town were likewise deserted, and the people went to hear mass
by a priest just arrived from England." - (Report by Français de
Nantes on Vaucluse and Provence.) One tenth of the population follows
the constitutional priests; the rest follow the returned emigré
priests; the latter have on their side the rich and influential
portion of society." - (Report of Lacuée on Paris and the seven
surrounding departments.) "The situation of the unsubmissive priests
is more advantageous than that of the submissive priests. . . . The
latter are neglected and abandoned; it is not fashionable to join
them. . . (The former) are venerated by their adherents as martyrs;
they excite tender interest, especially from the women."
[83] Archives nationales, cartons 3144 and 3145, No.1004, missions of
the councillors of state, year IX.- (Report by Lacuée.) "The wants of
the people in this way seem at this moment to be confined. . . to a
vain spectacle, to ceremonies: going to mass, the sermon and vespers,
which is all very well; but confession, the communion, fasting, doing
without meat, is not common anywhere. . . . In the country, where
there are no priests, the village schoolmaster officiates, and people
are content; they would prefer bells without priests rather than
priests without bells." - This regret for bells is very frequent and
survives even in the cantons which are lukewarm. - (Creuse, Pluviôse
10, year IV.) "They persist in replanting the crosses which the
priests have dug up; they put back the ropes to the bells which the
magistrate has taken away."
[84] Archives nationales, cartons 3144 and 3145, No. 1004, missions of
the councilors of state, year IX. - (Report by Fourcroy.) "The keeping
of Sunday and the attendance on the churches, which is seen
everywhere, shows that the mass of Frenchmen desire a return to
ancient usages, and that the time has gone by for resisting this
national tendency. . . The mass of mankind require a religion, a
system of worship and a priesthood. It is an error of certain modern
phi1osophers, into which I have myself been led, to believe in the
possibility of any instruction sufficiently widespread to destroy
religious prejudices; they are a source of consolation for the vast
number of the unfortunate. . . . Priests, altars and worship must
accordingly be left to the mass of the people."
[85] Peuchet, "Statistique élémentaire de la France" (published in
1805), p.228. According to statements furnished by prefects in the
years IX and X, the population is 33,111,962 persons; the annexation
of the island of Elbe and of Piedmont adds 1,864,350 Total,
34,976,313. - Pelet de la Lozère, P.203. (Speech by Napoleon to the
council of state, February 4, 1804, on the Protestant seminaries of
Geneva and Strasbourg, and on the number of Protestants in his
states.) "Their population numbers only 3 millions."
[86] Roederer, III., 330 (July 1800): "The First Consul spoke to me
about the steps necessary to be taken to prevent the (emigrés) who had
been struck off from getting back their possessions, in view of
maintaining the interest in the revolution of about 1,200,000
purchasers of national domains. " - Rocquain, "État de la France au 18
Brumaire." (Report by Barbé-Marbois on Morbihan, Finisterre, Ile-et-
Vilaine, and Côtes-du-Nord, year IX.) "In every place I have just
passed through the proprietors recognize that their existence is
attached to that of the First Consul."
[87] Constitution of Frimaire 22, year VIII, art. 94. - Article 93,
moreover, declares that "the possessions of the émigrés are
irrevocably acquired by the republic."
[88] Law of Floréal 29, year X, title I, article 8. The member also
swears "to combat with all the means which justice, reason and the law
authorize, every enterprise tending to restore the feudal régime,"
and, consequently, feudal rights and tithes
[89] Organic Sénatus-consulte, Floreal 28, year XII (18th May 1804).
Title VII., art. 53.
[90] Roederer, III., 430-432 (April 4, 1802, May I, 1802): "Defermon
remarked to me yesterday, 'This will all go on well as long as the
First Consul lives; the day after his death we shall all emigrate.' "
- " Every one, from the sailor to the worker, says to himself, 'All
this is very well, but will it last? . . .- This work we undertake,
this capital we risk, this house we build, these trees we plant, what
will become of them if he dies?"
[91] Ibid., 340. (Words of the First Consul, November 4, 1800.) "Who
is the rich man to-day? The buyer of national domains, the contractor.
the robber." -These details, above, are provided for me by family
narrations and souvenirs.
[92] Napoleon, "Correspondance," letter of September 5, 1795.
"National and émigré property is not dear; patrimonies are priceless."
- Archives nationales, cartons 3144 to 3145, No.1004, missions of the
councillors of state, year IX. (Report by Lacuée on the seven
departments of the division of the Seine.) "The proportion of value,
in Seine, between national and patrimonial properties is from 8 to
15." - In Eure, national property of every kind is sold about 10 %.
off, and patrimonial at about 4 %. off. There are two sorts of
national property, one of first origin (that of the clergy), and the
other of second origin (that of the émigrés). The latter is much more
depreciated than the former. Compared with patrimonial property, in
Aisne, the former loses a fifth or a quarter of its value and the
latter a third; in Loiret, the former loses a quarter and the latter
one-half; in Seine-et-Oise the former loses one-third and the latter
three-fifths; in Oise the former is at about par, the latter loses a
quarter. - Roederer, III., 472 (December 1803). Depreciation of
national property in Normandy: "But little is bought above 7 %. off;
this, however, is the fate of this sort of property throughout
France." - Ibid., III., 534 (January 1809): "In Normandy, investments
on patrimonial property bring only 3 %., while State property brings 5
%. " - Moniteur (January 4, 1825). Report of M. de Martignac: "The
confiscated property of the emigrés finds its purchasers with
difficulty, and its commercial value is not in proportion to its real
value." - Duclosonge, former inspector of domains, "Moyens de porter
les domaines nationaux à la valeur des biens patrimoniaux," p.7.
"Since 1815, national property has generally been bought at a rate of
income of 3 %. or, at the most, 4 %. The difference for this epoch is
accordingly one-fifth, and even two-fifths."
[93] Treaty between the Pope and the French government, July '5, 1801.
Ratifications exchanged September 1, 1801, and published with its
articles April 8, 1802. - Article 13.
[94] Ibid., article 14.
[95] Articles organiques, 64, 65, 66.
[96] Law of November 30, 1809, and opinion of the Council of State,
May 19, 1811.
[97] Articles organiques, 68.
[98] Articles organiques, 71, 72. - Concordat, article 12. - Law
passed July 26, 1803.
[99] Councils of laymen entrusted with the administration of parish
incomes.
[100] Law of December 30, 1809, articles 39, 92 and following
articles, 105 and following articles.
[101] Law of September 15, 1807, title IX.
[102] Concordat, article 15. - Articles organiques, 73.
[103] Alexis Chevalier, "les Frères des écoles chrétiennes et
l'Enseignement primaire après la révolution," passim. (Act of
Vendémiare 24 and Prairial 28, year XI, and Frimiaire II, year XII;
laws of May 14, 1806, March 7, 1808, February 17, 1809, Dec. 26,
1810.)
[104] Alexis Chevalier, ibid., 189.
[105] Ibid., p.185 sequitur. (Decision of Aug. 8, 1803, of March 25,
of May 30, 1806.)
[106] Decree of June 22, 1804 (articles I and 4). - "Consultation sur
les decrets du 29 Mars 1880," by Edmond Rousse, p.32. (Out of 54
communities, there were two of men, the "Pères du tiers-ordre de
Saint-François" and the priests of "la Miséricorde," one founded in
1806 and the other in 1808.)
[107] "Mémorial de Sainte-Héléne." Napoleon adds" that an empire like
France may and must have some refuge for maniacs called Trappists." -
Pelet de la Lozère, p.208. (Session of the council of state, May 22,
1804.) "My intention is to have the house of foreign missions
restored; these monks will be of great use to me in Asia, Africa, and
America. . . . I will give them a capital of 15,000 francs a year to
begin with. . . . I shall also re-establish the 'Sisters of Charity;'
I have already had them put in possession of their old buildings. I
think it necessary also, whatever may be said of it, to re-establish
the 'Ignorantins.' "
[108] Roederer, III., 481. (Sénatorerie of Caen, Germinal 17, year
XIII.) Constant lamentations of bishops and most of the priests he has
met. "A poor curé, an unfortunate curé, . . . The bishop invites you
to dinner, to partake of the poor cheer of an unfortunate bishop on
12,000 francs salary." - The episcopal palaces are superb, but their
furniture is that of a village curé; one can scarcely find a chair in
the finest room. - "The officiating priests have not yet found a fixed
salary in any commune. . . . The peasants ardently longed for their
usual mass and Sunday service as in the past, but to pay for this is
another thing."
[109] Decrees of May 31 and Dec. 26, 1804, assigning to the Treasury
the salaries of 24,000 and then 30,000 assistant-priests.
[110] Charles Nicolas, "le Budget de la France depuis le commencement
du XIXe siecle;" appropriation in 1807, 12,341,537 francs.
[111] Decrees of Prairial 2, year XII, Nivôse 5. year XIII, and Sep.
30, 1807. - Decree of Dec. 30, 1809 (articles 37, 39, 40, 49 and ch.
IV.)- - Opinion of the council of state, May 19, 1811.
[112] These are limited (articles organiques, 5): "All ecclesiastical
functions are gratuitous except the authorized oblations fixed by the
regulations."
[113] Articles organiques, 73.
[114] Ibid., 74: " Real property other than dwellings with their
adjoining gardens, shall not be held under ecclesiastical titles or
possessed by ministers of worship by reason of their functions."
[115] Opinion of the Council of State, January 22, 1805, on the
question whether the communes have become owners of the churches and
parsonages abandoned to them by the law of Germinal 18, year X
(articles organiques). - The Council of State is of the opinion that
"the said churches and parsonages must be considered as communal
property." If the State renounces ownership in these buildings it is
not in favor of the fabrique, curé or bishop, but in favor of the
commune.
[116] In 1790 and 1791 a number of communes had made offers for
national property with a view to re-sell it afterwards, and much of
this, remaining unsold, was on their hands.
[117] Articles organiques, 26. "The bishops will make no ordination
before submitting the number of persons to the government for its
acceptance."
[118] "Archives de Grenoble." (Documents communicated by Mdlle. de
Franclieu.) Letter of the bishop, Monseigneur Claude Simon, to the
Minister of Worship, April 18, 1809. "For seven years that I have been
bishop of Grenoble, I have ordained thus far only eight priests;
during this period I have lost at least one hundred and fifty. The
survivors threaten me with a more rapid gap; either they are infirm,
bent with the weight of years, or wearied or overworked. It is
therefore urgent that I be authorized to confer sacred orders on those
who are old enough and have the necessary instruction. Meanwhile, you
are limited to asking authorization for the first eight on the
aforesaid list, of whom the youngest is twenty-four. . . . I beg Your
Excellency to present the others on this list for the authorization of
His Imperial Majesty." - Ibid., October 6, 1811. "I have only one
deacon and one subdeacon, whilst I am losing three or four priests
monthly."
[119] Articles organiques, 68, 69. "The pensions enjoyed by the curés
by virtue of the laws of the constituent assembly shall be deducted
from their salary. The vicars and assistants shall be taken from the
pensioned ecclesiastics according to the laws of the constituent
assembly. The amount of these pensions and the product of oblations
shall constitute their salary."
[120] Laws of Vendémiaire 16, year V, and Ventôse 20, year V..
[121] Decree of Nov. 6, 1800.
[122] Decisions of February 23, 1801, and June 26, 1801. (We find,
through subsequent decisions, that these recoveries were frequently
effected.)
[123] Law of Frimaire 7, year V (imposing one decime per franc above
the cost of a ticket in every theatre for the benefit of the poor not
in the asylums). - Also the decree of Dec. 9, 1809. - Decisions of
Vendémiaire 27, year VII, and the restoration of the Paris octroi,
"considering that the distress of the civil asylums and the
interruption of succor at domiciles admit of no further delay." - Also
the law of Frimaire 19, year VIII, with the addition of 2 decimes per
franc to the octroi duties, established for the support of the asylums
of the commune of Paris. - Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, "Traité de la science
des finances," I., 685. Many towns follow this example: "Two years had
scarcely passed when there were 293 Octrois in France."
[124] Law of Messidor 25, year V. - Alexis Chevalier, ibid., p. 185.
(Decisions of Thermidor 20, year XI, and Germinal 4, year XIII.) - Law
of Dec.. 11, 1808 (article 1.)
[125] Albert Duruy, "l'Instruction publique et la Révolution," p.480
et seq. ("Procès-verbaux des conseils-généraux de l'an IX;" among
others, the petitions from Gironde, Ile-et-Vilaine, Maine-et-Loire,
Puy.de-Dôme, Haute-Saône, Haute Vienne, la Manche, Lot-et-Garonne,
Sarthe, Aisne, Aude, Côte-d'Or, Pas-de-Calais, BassePyrénées,
Pyrénées-Orienta1es, and Lot.)
[126] Alexis Chevalier, ibid., p. 182. (According to statistical
returns of the parent establishment, rue Oudinot. - These figures are
probably too low.)
[127] "Recueil des lois et réglemens sur l'enseignement supérieur," by
A. de Beauchamp, I., 65. (Report by Fourcroy, April 20, 1802.) "Old
schools, since the suppression of upper schools and universities, have
taken a new extension, and a pretty large number of private
institutions have been formed for the literary education of the
young."
[128] Ibid., 65 and 71. (Report by Fourcroy.) "As to the primary
schools, the zeal of the municipalities must be aroused, the emulation
of the functionaries excited, and charitable tendencies revived, so
natural to the French heart and which will so promptly spring up when
the religious respect of the government for local endowments becomes
known."
[129] Ibid., p. 81. (Decree of May 1st, 1802, titles 2 and 9. - Decree
of Sept. 17, 1808, article 23.)
130] "Histoire du collège des Bons-Enfans de l'université de Reims,"
by abbé Cauly, p. 649. - The lycée of Reims, decreed May 6, 1802, was
not opened until the 24th of September, 1803. The town was to furnish
accommodations for 150 pupils. It spent nearly 200,000 francs to put
buildings in order. . . . This sum was provided, on the one hand, by a
voluntary subscription which realized 45,000 francs and, on the other
hand, by an additional tax.
[131] Law of May 1, 1802, articles 32, 33, and 34. - Guizot, "Essai
sur l'instruction publique, I., 59. Bonaparte maintained and brought
up in the lycées, at his own expense and for his own advantage, about
3000 children . . . commonly selected from the sons of soldiers or
from poor families." - Fabry, "Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de
l'instruction publique," III., 802. "Children of soldiers whose wives
lived in Paris, the sons of office-holders who were prevented by
luxury from bringing up their families - such were the scholarships of
Paris." - "In the provinces, the employees in the tax- and post-
offices, with other nomadic functionaries - such were the communal
scholarships." - Lunet, "Histoire du collège de Rodez," 219, 224. Out
of 150 scholarships, 87 are filled, on the average.
[132] "Recueil," etc., by A. de Beauchamp, I, 171, 187, 192. (Law of
September 17, 1808, article 27, and decision of April 7, 1809.)
[133] Ibid. Masters of private schools and heads of institutions must
pay additionally every year one-quarter of the sums above fixed. (Law
of Sept. 17, 1808, article 25. Law of March 17, 1808, title 17.- Law
of February 17, 1809.)
[134] Ibid., I., 189. (Decree of March 24, 1808, on the endowment of
the University.)
[135] Emond, "Histoire du collège Louis-le-Grand," p.238. (This
college, previous to 1789, enjoyed an income of 450,000 livres.) -
Guizot, ibid., I., 62. - This college was maintained during the
revolution under the name of the "Prytanée Français" and received in
1800 the property of the University of Louvain. Many of its pupils
enlisted in 1792, and were promised that their scholarships should be
retained for them on their return; hence the military spirit of the
"Prytanée." - By virtue of a decree, March 5, 1806, a perpetual income
of 400,000 francs was transferred to the Prytanée de Saint-Cyr. It is
this income which, by the decree of March 24, 1808, becomes the
endowment of the imperial University. Henceforth, the expenses of the
Prytanée de Saint-Cyr are assigned to the war department.
[136] Alexis Chevalier, Ibid., p.265. Allocution to the "Ignorantin"
brethren.
[137] "The Ancient Régime," pp.13-15. (Laff. I. pp. 17 and 18.)- "The
Revolution," III., p. 54. (Laff. II. pp. 48-49) - Alexis Chevalier,
"Les Frères des écoles chrétiennes," p.341. "Before the revolution,
the revenues of public instruction exceeded 30 millions." - Peuchet,
"Statistique elementaire de la France (published in 1805), p.256.
Revenue of the asylums and hospitals in the time of Necker, 40
millions, of which 23 are the annual income from real-estate and 17
provided by personal property, contracts, the public funds, and a
portion from octrois, etc.
[138] D'Haussonville, "l'Église romaine et le premier Empire," vol.
IV. et V., passim - Ibid., III., 370, 375. (13 Italian cardinals and
19 bishops of the Roman states are transported and assigned places in
France, as well as many of their grand-vicars and chanoines; about the
same date over 200 Italian priests are banished to Corsica). - V.,
181. (July 12, 1811, the bishops of Troyes, Tournay and Ghent are sent
to (the fortress-prison of) Vincennes.) - V., 286. (236 pupils in the
Ghent seminary are enrol1ed in an artillery brigade and sent off to
Wesel, where about fifty of them die in the hospital.) - "Souvenirs",
by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc) Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. (Numbers
of Belgian priests confined in the castles of Ham, Bouillon and
Pierre-Châtel were set free after the Restoration.)
[139] Decree of November 15, 1811, art. 28, 29, and 30. (Owing to M.
de Fontanes, the small seminaries were not all closed, many of them,
41, still existing in 1815.)
[140] Collection of laws and decrees, passim, after 1802.
[141] Documents furnished by M. Alexis Chevalier, former director of
public charities. The total amount of legacies and bequests is as
follows: 1st Asylums and hospitals, from January 1, 1800, to December
31, 1845, 72,593,360 francs; from January 1st, 1846, to December 31,
1855, 37,107,812; from January 1st, 1856, to December 31, 1877,
121,197,774. in all, 230,898,346 francs. - 2d. Charity bureaux. From
January 1st, 1800, to December 31, 1845, 49,911,090; from January 1st,
1846, to December 31, 1873, 115,629,925; from January 1st 1874, to
December 31, 1877, 19,261,065. In all, 184,802,080 francs. - Sum
total, 415,701,026 francs.
[142] According to the statements of M. de Watteville and M. de
Gasparin.
[143] Report by Fourcroy, annexed to the exposition of the empire and
presented to the Corps Législatif, March 5, 1806.
[144] Coup d'œil général sur l'éducation et l'instruction publique en
France," by Basset, censor of studies at Charlemagne college (1816), -
p. 21.
[145] "Statistique de l'enseignement primaire," II., CCIV. (From 1786
to 1789, 47 out of 100 married men and 26 married women out of a
hundred signed their marriage contract. From 1816 to 1820, the figures
show 54 husbands and 34 wives.) - Morris Birbeck, "Notes of a Journey
through France in July, August and September 1814." p.3 (London,
1815). "I am told that all the children of the laboring classes learn
to read, and are generally instructed by their parents."
[146] Madame de Rémusat, I., 243. (Journey in the north of France and
in Belgium with the First Consul, 1803.) "On journeys of this kind he
was in the habit, after obtaining information about the public
buildings a town needed, to order them as he passed along, and, for
this munificence, he bore away the blessings of the people." - Some
time after this a letter came from the minister of the interior: "In
conformity with the favor extended to you by the First Consul (later,
emperor) you are required, citizen mayor, to order the construction of
this or that building, taking care to charge the expenses on the funds
of your commune," and which the prefect of the department obliges him
to do, even when available funds are exhausted or otherwise applied.
[147] Thiers, VIII., 117 (August 1807) and 124. 13,400 leagues of
highways were constructed or repaired; 10 canals were dug or
continued, at the expense of the public treasury; 32 departments
contribute to the expense of these through the extra centimes tax,
which is imposed on them. The State and the department, on the
average, contribute each one-half. - Among the material evils caused
by the Revolution, the most striking and the most seriously felt was
the abandonment and running down of roads which had become
impracticable, also the still more formidable degeneracy of the dikes
and barriers against rivers and the sea. (Cf. in Rocquain, "État de la
France au 18 Brumaire," the reports of Français de Nantes, Fourcroy,
Barbeé-Marbois, etc.) - The Directory had imagined barrriers with
toll-gates on each road to provide expenses, which brought in scarcely
16 millions to offset 30 and 35 millions of expenditure. Napoleon
substitutes for these tolls the product of the salt-tax. (Decree of
April 24, 1806, art. 59.)
[148] "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc) Librarie Plon,
Paris 1893. "Scarcely two or three highways remained in decent order.
. . . Navigation on the rivers and canals became impossible Public
buildings and monuments were everywhere falling to ruin. . . . If the
rapidity of destruction was prodigious, that of restoration was no
less so.
CHAPTER II. TAXATION AND CONSCRIPTION.
I. Distributive Justice in Allotment of Burdens and Benefits.
Requirements previous to the Revolution. - Lack of distributive
justice. - Wrongs committed in the allotment of social sacrifices and
benefits. - Under the ancient Regime. - During the Revolution. -
Napoleon's personal and public motives in the application of
distributive justice. - The circumstances favorable to him. - His
principle of apportionment. - He exacts proportion in what he grants.
The other group of needs, dating from long before 1789, involve wants
which have survived the Revolution, because the Revolution has not
satisfied these. The first, the most tenacious, the most profound, the
most inveterate, the most frustrated of all is the desire for
distributive justice. - In political society, as in every other
society, there are burdens and benefits to be allotted. When the
apportionment of these is unbiased, it takes place according to a very
simple, self-evident principle:
For each individual the costs must be in proportion to the benefits
and the benefits to the costs, so that, for each one, the final
expense and the final receipt may exactly compensate each other, the
larger or smaller share of expense being always equal to the larger or
smaller share of profits.
Now, in France, this proportion had been wanting for many centuries;
it had even given way to the inverse proportion. If, towards the
middle of the eighteenth century, two sum-totals of the budget,
material and moral, had been calculated, assets on one side and
liabilities on the other:
On the one hand the sum of the apportionments exacted by the State,
taxes in ready money, enforced labor, military service, civil
subordination, every species of obedience and subjection, in short,
every sacrifice of leisure, comfort and self-esteem.
On the other hand the sum of dividends distributed by the State of
whatever kind or shape, security for persons and property, use and
convenience of roads, delegations of public authority land liens on
the public treasury, dignities, ranks, grades, honors, lucrative
salaries, sinecures, pensions, and the like, that is to say, every
gratification belonging to leisure, comfort, or pride - one might have
concluded that the more a man contributed to the receipts the less
would his dividend be, and the greater his dividend the less would he
furnish to the general contribution.
Consequently, every social or local group consisted of two other
groups: a majority which suffered for the benefit of the minority, and
a minority which benefited at the expense of the majority, to such an
extent that the privations of the greatest number defrayed the luxury
of the small number. This was the case in all compartments as on every
story, owing to the multitude, enormity and diversity of honorific or
useful privileges, owing to the legal prerogatives and effective
preferences by which the court nobles benefited at the expense of the
provincial nobility,
* the noblesse at the expense of plebeians,
* the prelates and beneficiaries at the expense of poorly-paid curés
and vicars,
* the two highest orders of the clergy at the expense of the third,
* the bourgeoisie at the expense of the people,
* the towns at the expense of the rural districts,
* this or that town or province at the expense of the rest,
* the artisan member of a corporation at the expense of the free
workman,
and, in general, the strong, more or less well-to-do, in league and
protected, at the expense of the weak, more or less needy, isolated
and unprotected (indéfendus).[1]
One hundred years before the Revolution a few clairvoyant, open-
hearted and generous spirits had already been aroused by this
scandalous disproportion.[2] Finally, everybody is shocked by it, for,
in each local or social group, nearly everybody is a sufferer, not
alone the rural, the peasant, the artisan, and the plebeian, not alone
the citizen, the curé and the bourgeois notable," but again the
gentleman, the grand seignior, the prelate and the King himself.[3]
Each is denouncing the privileges of all others that affect his
interests, each striving to diminish another's share in the public
cake and to keep his own, all concurring in citing natural right and
in claiming or accepting as a principle liberty and equality, but all
concurring in misconception and solely unanimous in destroying and in
allowing destruction,[4] to such an extent that, at last, the attack
being universal and no defense anywhere, social order itself perishes,
entirely owing to the abuses of it.
On the reappearance of the same abuses, the lack of distributive
justice in revolutionary France became still more apparent than in
monarchical France. Through a sudden transposition, the preferred of
the former Régime had become the disgraced, while the disgraced of the
former Régime had become the preferred; unjust favor and unjust
disfavor still subsisted, but with a change of object. Before 1789,
the nation was subject to an oligarchy of nobles and notables; after
1789, it became subject to an oligarchy of Jacobins big or little.
Before the Revolution, there were in France three or four hundred
thousand privileged individuals, recognizable by their red heels or
silver shoe-buckles. After the Revolution, there were three or four
hundred thousand of the privileged, recognizable by their red caps or
their carmagnoles.[5] The most privileged of all, the three or four
thousand verified nobles, presented at court and of racial antiquity,
who, by virtue of their parchments, rode in the royal carriages, were
succeeded by three or four thousand Jacobins of a fresh sprout, no
less verified and accepted, who, by virtue of their civic patent, sat
in the club of the rue Saint-Honoré and the latter coterie was still
more dominant, more exclusive, more partial than the former one.
Consequently, before the Revolution, the burden of taxation was light
for the rich or the well-to-do, crushing for the peasants or the
common people; after the Revolution, on the contrary, the peasants,
the common people, paid no more taxes,[6] while from the rich and the
well-to-do the government took all, not alone their income but their
capital. - On the other hand, after having fed the court of
Versailles, the public treasury had to feed the rabble of Paris, still
more voracious; and, from 1793 to 1796, the maintenance of this rabble
cost it twenty-five times as much as, from 1783 to 1786, the
maintenance of the court.[7] Finally, at Paris as at Versailles, the
subordinates who lived on the favored spot, close to the central
manger, seized on all they could get and ate much more than their
allowance. Under the ancient Régime, "the ladies of honor, every time
they travel from one royal country-house to another, gain 80 %. on the
cost of the journey," while the queen's first chambermaid gains, over
and above her wages, 38,000 francs a year out of the sales of half-
burnt candles.[8] Under the new Régime, in the distribution of food,
"the matadors of the quarter," the patriots of the revolutionary
committees, deduct their portions in advance, and a very ample
portion, to the prejudice of the hungry who await their turn, one
taking seven rations and another twenty.[9] Thus did the injustice
remain; in knocking it over, they had simply made matters worse; and
had they wished to build permanently, now was the time to put an end
to it; for, in every social edifice it introduced an imbalance.
Whether the plumb-line deflects right or left is of little
consequence; sooner or later the building falls in, and thus had the
French edifice already fallen twice, the first time in 1789, through
imminent bankruptcy and hatred of the ancient Régime, and the second
time in 1799, through an actual bankruptcy and hatred of the
Revolution.
An architect like the French Consul is on his guard against a
financial, social and moral danger of this sort. He is aware that, in
a well-organized society, there must be neither surcharge nor
discharge, no favors, no exemptions and no exclusions. Moreover,
"l'Etat c'est lui;"[10] thus is the public interest confounded with
his personal interest, and, in the management of this double interest,
his hands are free. Proprietor; and first inhabitant of France in the
fashion of its former kings, he is not obliged and embarrassed as they
were by immemorial precedents, by the concessions they have sanctioned
or the rights they have acquired. At the public table over which he
presides and which is his table, he does not, like Louis XV. or Louis
XVI., encounter messmates already installed there, the heirs or
purchasers of the seats they occupy,[11] extending in long rows from
one end of the room to the other, each in his place according to rank,
in an arm-chair, or common chair, or on a footstool, all being the
legitimate and recognized owners of their seats, all of them the
King's messmates and all authorized by law, tradition and custom to
eat a free dinner or pay for it at less than cost, to find fault with
the dishes passed around, to reach out for those not near by, to help
themselves to what they want and to carry off the dessert in their
pockets. At the new table there are no places secured beforehand. It
is Napoleon himself who arranges the table, and on sitting down, he is
the master who has invited whomsoever he pleases, who assigns to each
his portion, who regulates meals as he thinks best for his own and the
common interest, and who introduces into the entire service order,
watchfulness and economy. Instead of a prodigal and negligent grand-
seignior, here at last is a modern administrator who orders supplies,
distributes portions and limits consumption, a contractor who feels
his responsibility, a man of business able to calculate. Henceforth,
each is to pay for his portion, estimated according to his ration, and
each is to enjoy his ration according to his quota. - Judge of this by
one example: In his own house, customarily a center of abuses and
sinecures, there must be no more parasites. From the grooms and
scullions of his palace up to its grand officials, even to the
chamberlains and ladies of honor, all his domestics, with or without
titles, work and perform their daily tasks in person, administrative
or decorative, day or night, at the appointed time, for exact
compensation, without pickings or stealing and without waste. His
train and his parades, as pompous as under the old monarchy, admit of
the same ordinary and extraordinary expenses - stables, chapel, food,
hunts, journeys, private theatricals, renewals of plate and furniture,
and the maintenance of twelve palaces or châteaux. While, under Louis
XV., it was estimated that "coffee with one roll for each lady of
honor cost the King 2,000 livres a year," and under Louis XVI.," the
grand broth night and day" which Madame Royale, aged two years,
sometimes drank and which figured in the annual accounts at 5201
livres,[12] under Napoleon "in the pantries, in the kitchens, the
smallest dish, a mere plate of soup, a glass of sugared water, would
not have been served without the authorization or check of grand-
marshal Duroc. Every abuse is watched; the gains of each are
calculated and regulated beforehand."[13] Consequently, this or that
journey to Fontainebleau which had cost Louis XVI. nearly 2 million
livres, cost Napoleon, with the same series of fêtes, only 150,000
francs, while the total expense of his civil household, instead of
amounting to 25 million livres, remains under 3 million francs.[14]
The pomp is thus equal, but the expense is ten times less; the new
master is able to derive a tenfold return from persons and money,
because he squeezes the full value out of every man he employs and
every crown he spends. Nobody has surpassed him in the art of turning
money and men to account, and he is as shrewd, as careful, as sharp in
procuring them as he is in profiting by them.
II. Equitable Taxation.
The apportionment of charges. - New fiscal principle and new fiscal
machinery.
In the assignment of public burdens and of public offices Napoleon
therefore applies the maxims of the new system of rights, and his
practice is in conformity with the theory. For the social order,
which, according to the philosophers, is the only just one in itself,
is at the same time the most profitable for him: he adds equity
because equity is profitable to him. - And first, in the matter of
public burdens, there shall be no more exemptions. To relieve any
category of taxpayers or of conscripts from taxation or from military
service would annually impoverish the treasury by so many millions of
crowns, and diminish the army by so many thousands of soldiers.
Napoleon is not the man to deprive himself without reason of either a
soldier or a franc; above all things, he wants his army complete and
his treasury full; to supply their deficits he seizes whatever he can
lay his hands on, both taxable material as well as recruitable
material. But all material is limited; if he took too little on the
one hand he would be obliged to take too much on the other; it is
impossible to relieve these without oppressing those, and oppression,
especially in the matter of taxation, is what, in 1789, excited the
universal jacquerie, perverted the Revolution, and broke France to
pieces. - At present, in the matter of taxation, distributive justice
lays down a universal and fixed law; whatever the property may be,
large or small, and of whatever kind or form, whether lands,
buildings, indebtedness, ready money, profits, incomes or salaries, it
is the State which, through its laws, tribunals, police, gendarmes and
army, preserves it from ever ready aggression within and without; the
State guarantees, procures and ensures the enjoyment of it.
Consequently, property of every species owes the State its premium of
assurance, so many centimes on the franc. The quality, the fortune,
the age or the sex of the owner is of little importance; each franc
assured, no matter in whose hands, must pay the same number of
centimes, not one too much, not one too little. - Such is the new
principle. To announce it is easy enough; all that is necessary is to
combine speculative ideas, and any Academy can do that. The National
Assembly of 1789 had proclaimed it with the rattling of drums, but
merely as a right and with no practical effect. Napoleon turns it into
a reality, and henceforth the ideal rule is applied as strictly as is
possible with human material, thanks to two pieces of fiscal machinery
of a new type, superior of their kind, and which, compared with those
of the ancient Régime, or with those of the Revolution, are
masterpieces.
III. Formation of Honest, Efficient Tax Collectors
Direct real and personal taxation. - In what respect the new machinery
is superior to the old. - Full and quick returns. - Relief to
taxpayers. - Greater relief to the poor workman and small farmer.
The collection of a direct tax is a surgical operation performed on
the taxpayer, one which removes a piece of his substance: he suffers
on account of this and submits to it only because he is obliged to. If
the operation is performed on him by other hands he submits to it
willingly or not. But that he should do it himself, spontaneously and
with his own hands, it is not to be thought of. On the other hand, the
collection of a direct tax according to the prescriptions of
distributive justice, is a subjection of each taxpayer to an
amputation proportionate to his bulk or, at least, to his surface;
this requires delicate calculation and is not to be entrusted to the
patients themselves, for, not only are they surgical novices and poor
calculators, but, again, they are interested in calculating falsely.
They have been ordered to assess their group with a certain total
weight of human substance, and to apportion to each individual in
their group the lighter or heavier portion he must provide. Everyone
will soon understand that, the more that is cut from the others, the
less will be required of him. And as each is more sensitive to his own
suffering, although moderate, than to another's suffering, even
excessive, each, therefore, be his neighbor little or big, is
inclined, in order to unjustly diminish his own sacrifice by an ounce,
to add a pound unjustly to that of his neighbor.
Up to this time, in the construction of the fiscal machine, nobody
knew or had been disposed to take into account such natural and
powerful sentiments; through negligence or through optimism, the
taxpayer had been introduced into the mechanism in the quality of
first agent; before 1789, in the quality of a responsible and
constrained agent; after 1789, in the quality of a voluntary and
philanthropic agent. Hence, before 1789, the machine had proved
mischievous, and after 1789, impotent; before 1789, its working had
been almost fatal,[15] and after 1789 its returns scarcely amounted to
anything.[16] Finally, Napoleon establishes independent, special and
competent operators, enlightened by local informers, but withdrawn
from local influences. These are appointed, paid and supported by the
central government, forced to act impartially by the appeal of the
taxpayer to the council of the prefecture, and forced to keep correct
accounts by the final auditing of a special court (cour des comptes).
The are kept interested, through the security they have given as well
as by commissions, in the integral recovery of unpaid arrears and in
the prompt returns of collected taxes. All, assessors, auditors,
directors, inspectors and collectors, being good accountants, are
watched by good accountants, kept to their duties by fear, and made
aware that embezzlements, lucrative under the Directory,[17] are
punished under the Consulate.[18] They are soon led to consider
necessity a virtue, to pride themselves inwardly on compulsory
rectitude, to imagine that they have a conscience and hence to
acquiring one, in short, to voluntarily imposing on themselves probity
and exactitude through amour-propre and honorable scruples. - For the
first time in ten years lists of taxes are prepared and their
collection begun at the beginning of the year.[19] Previous to 1789,
the taxpayer was always in arrears, while the treasury received only
three-fifths of that which was due in the current year.[20] After
1800, direct taxes are nearly always fully returned before the end of
the current year, and half a century later, the taxpayers, instead of
being in arrears, are often in advance.[21] To do this work required,
before 1789, about 200,000 collectors, besides the administrative
corps,[22] occupied one half of their time for two successive years in
running from door to door, miserable and detested, ruined by their
ruinous office, fleecers and the fleeced, and always escorted by
bailiffs and constables. Since 1800, from five thousand to six
thousand collectors, and other fiscal agents, honorable and respected,
have only to do their office-work at home and make regular rounds on
given days, in order to collect more than double the amount without
any vexation and using very little constraint. Before 1780, direct
taxation brought in about 170 millions;[23] after the year XI, it
brought in 360 millions.[24] By the same measure, an extraordinary
counter-measure, the taxable party, especially the peasant-proprietor,
the small farmer with nobody to protect him, diametrically opposite to
the privileged class, the drudge of the monarchy, is relieved of
three-fourths of his immemorial burden.[25] At first, through the
abolition of tithes and of feudal privileges, he gets back one-quarter
of his net income, that quarter which he paid to the seignior and to
the clergy; next, through the application of direct taxation to all
lands and to all persons, his quota is reduced one-half. Before 1789,
he paid, on 100 francs net income, 14 to the seignior, 14 to the
clergy, 53 to the State, and kept only 18 or 19 for himself. After
1800, he pays nothing out of 100 francs of income to the seignior or
to the clergy; he pays but little to the State, only 21 francs to the
commune and department, and keeps 79 francs in his pocket.[26]
If each franc insured pays so many centimes insurance premium, each
franc of manual gain and of salary should pay as many centimes as each
franc of industrial or commercial gain, also as each franc of personal
or land revenue; that is to say, more than one-fifth of a franc, or 21
centimes. - At this rate, the workman who lives on his own labor, the
day-laborer, the journeyman who earns 1 franc 15 centimes per day and
who works 300 days of the year, ought to pay out of his 345 francs
wages 69 francs to the public treasury. At this rate; the ordinary
peasant or cultivator of his own field, owner of a cottage and a small
tract of ground which he might rent at 100 francs a year, should pay
into the public treasury, out of his land income and from manual
labor, 89 francs.[27] The deduction, accordingly, on such small
earnings would be enormous; for this gain, earned from day to day, is
just enough to live on, and very poorly, for a man and his family:
were it cut down one-fifth he and his family would be obliged to fast;
he would be nothing but a serf or half-serf, exploited by the
exchequer, his seignior and his proprietor. Because the exchequer, as
formerly the proprietary seigniors, would appropriate to itself 60
days of labor out of the 300. Such was the condition of many millions
of men, the great majority of Frenchmen, under the ancient Régime.
Indeed, the five direct taxes, the taille, its accessories, the road-
tax, the capitatim and the vingtièmes, were a tax on the taxpayer, not
only according to the net revenue of his property, if he had any, but
again and especially "of his faculties" and presumed resources
whatever these might be, comprising his manual earnings or daily
wages. - Consequently, "a poor laborer owning nothing,"[28] who earned
19 sous a day, or 270 livres a year,[29] was taxed 18 or 20 livres.
Out of 300 days' work there were 20 or 22 which belonged beforehand to
the public treasury. - Three-fifths[30] of the French people were in
this situation, and the inevitable consequences of such a fiscal
system have been seen - the excess of extortions and of suffering, the
spoliation, privations and deep-seated resentment of the humble and
the poor. Every government is bound to care for these, if not from
compassion, at least through prudential considerations, and this one
more than any other, since it is founded on the will of the greatest
number, on the repeated votes of majorities counted by heads.
To this end, it establishes two divisions of direct taxation: one, the
real-estate tax, which has no bearing on the taxpayer without any
property; and the other, the personal tax, which does affect him, but
lightly: calculated on the rate of rent, it is insignificant on an
attic, furnished lodging, hut or any other hovel belonging to a
laborer or peasant; again, when very poor or indigent, if the octroi
is burdensome, the exchequer sooner or later relieves them; add to
this the poll-tax which takes from them1 franc and a half up to 4.50
francs per annum, also a very small tax on doors and windows, say 60
centimes per annum in the villages on a tenement with only one door
and one window, and, in the towns, from 60 to 75 centimes per annum
for one room above the second story with but one window.[31] In this
way, the old tax which was crushing becomes light: instead of paying
18 or 20 livres for his taille, capitatim and the rest, the journeyman
or the artisan with no property pays no more than 6 or 7 francs;[32]
instead of paying 53 livres for his vingtièmes for his poll, real and
industrial tax, his capitatim and the rest, the small cultivator and
owner pays no more than 21 francs. Through this reduction of their
fiscal charges (corvée) and through the augmentation of their day
wages, poor people, or those badly off, who depended on the hard and
steady labor of their hands, the plowmen, masons, carpenters, weavers,
blacksmiths, wheelwrights and porters, every hired man and artisan, in
short, all the laborious and tough hands, again became almost free;
these formerly owed, out of their 300 working days, from 20 to 59 to
the exchequer; they now owe only from 6 to 19,[33] and thus gain from
14 to 40 free days during which, instead of working for the exchequer,
they work for themselves. - The reader may estimate the value to a
small household of such an alleviation of the burden of discomfort and
care.
IV. Various Taxes.
Other direct taxes. - Tax on business licenses. - Tax on real-estate
transactions. - The earnings of manual labor almost exempt from direct
taxation. - Compensation on another side. - Indirect taxation. - In
what respect the new machinery is superior to the old. - Summary
effect of the new fiscal régime. - Increased receipts of the public
treasury. - Lighter burdens of the taxpayer. - Change in the condition
of the small taxpayer.
This infraction of the principle of distributive justice is in favor
of the poor. Through the almost complete exemption of those who have
no property the burden of direct taxation falls almost entirely on
those who own property. If they are manufacturers, or in commerce,
they support still another burden, that of the license tax, which is a
supplementary impost proportioned to their probable gains.[34]
Finally, to all these annual and extra taxes, levied on the probable
or certain income derived from invested or floating capital, the
exchequer adds an eventual tax on capital itself, consisting of the
mutation tax, assessed on property every time it changes hands through
gift, inheritance or by contract, obtaining its title under free
donation or by sale, and which tax, aggravated by the timbre,[35] is
enormous[36] since, in most cases, it takes 5, 7, 9, and up to 10 1/2
% on the capital transmitted, that is to say, in the case of real-
estate, 2, 3 and even 4 years' income from it. Thus, in the first
shearing of the sheep the exchequer cuts deep, as deep as possible;
but it has sheared only the sheep whose fleece is more or less ample;
its scissors have scarcely touched the others, much more numerous,
whose wool, short, thin and scant, is maintained only by day-wages,
the petty gains of manual labor. - Compensation is to come when the
exchequer, resuming its scissors, shears the second time: it is the
indirect tax which, although properly levied and properly collected,
is, in its nature, more burdensome for the poor than for the rich and
well-off.
Through this tax, and through to the previous action of customs-
duties, tolls, octrois or monopolies, the State collects a certain
percentage on the price of various kinds of merchandise sold. In this
way it participates in trade and commerce and itself becomes a
merchant. It knows, therefore, like all able merchants, that, to
obtain large profits, it must sell large quantities, that it must have
a very large body of customers, that the largest body is that which
ensures to it and embraces all its subjects, in short, that its
customers must consist not only of the rich, who number merely tens of
thousands, not only the well-to-do, who number merely hundreds of
thousands, but likewise the poor and the half-poor, who number
millions and tens of millions. Hence, in the merchandise by the sale
of which it is to profit, it takes care to include staple articles
which everybody needs, for example, salt, sugar, tobacco and beverages
in universal and popular use. This accomplished, let us follow out the
consequences, and look in at the shops over the whole surface of the
territory, in the towns or in the villages, where these articles are
disposed of. Daily and all day long, consumers abound; their large
coppers and small change constantly rattle on the counter; and out of
every large copper and every small piece of silver the national
treasury gets so many centimes: that is its share, and it is very sure
of it, for it is already in hand, having received it in advance. At
the end of the year, these countless centimes fill its cash-box with
millions, as many and more millions than it gathers through direct
taxation.
And this second crop causes less trouble than the first one for the
taxpayer who is subject to it has less trouble and like-wise the State
which collects it. - In the first place, the tax-payer suffers less.
In relation to the exchequer, he is no longer a mere debtor, obliged
to pay over a particular sum at a particular date; his payments are
optional; neither the date nor the sum are fixed; he pays on buying
and in proportion to what he buys, that is to say, when he pleases and
as little as he wants. He is free to choose his time, to wait until
his purse is not so empty; there is nothing to hinder him from
thinking before he enters the shop, from counting his coppers and
small change, from giving the preference to more urgent expenditure,
from reducing his consumption. If he is not a frequenter of the
cabaret, his quota, in the hundreds of millions of francs obtained
from beverages, is almost nothing; if he does not smoke or snuff, his
quota, in the hundreds of millions derived from the tax on tobacco, is
nothing at all; because he is economical, prudent, a good provider for
his family and capable of self-sacrifice for those belonging to him,
he escapes the shearing of the exchequer. Moreover, when he does come
under the scissors, these hardly graze his skin; so long as tariff
regulations and monopolies levy nothing on articles which are
physically indispensable to him, as on bread in France, indirect
taxation does not touch his flesh. In general, fiscal or protective
duties, especially those which increase the price of tobacco, coffee,
sugar, and beverages, do not affect his daily life, but merely deprive
him of some of its pleasures and comforts. - And, on the other hand,
in the collection of these duties, the exchequer may not show its
hand; if it does its business properly, the anterior and partial
operation is lost sight of in the total operation which completes and
covers this up; it screens itself behind the merchant. The shears are
invisible to the buyer who presents himself to be sheared; in any
event, he has no distinct sensation of them. Now, with the man of the
people, the common run of sheep, it is the positive, actual, animal
sensation which is the cause of his cries, his convulsive shudders,
and contagious alarms and panics. As long as he is not being excited
he can be manipulated; at the utmost, he grumbles at the hard times;
the high prices from which he suffers are not imputed to the
government; he does not know how to reckon, check off and consider for
himself the surplus price which the fiscal impost extorts from him.
Even at the present day, one might tell a peasant in vain that the
State takes fifteen out of the forty sous which he pays for a pound of
coffee, and five centimes out of every two sous he pays for a pound of
salt; for him, this is simply a barren notion, a vague calculation at
random; the impression on his mind would be very different if,
standing before the grocer who weighs out his coffee and salt, he saw
with his own eyes, right before him, the clerk of the customs and of
the salt-tax actually taking the fifteen sous and the five centimes
off the counter.
Such are the good indirect taxes: in order that they may be correct,
that is to say, tolerable and tolerated, three conditions, as we see,
are requisite. In the first place, the taxpayer, in his own interest,
must be free to buy or not to buy the merchandise taxed. Next, in the
interest of the taxpayer and of the exchequer, the merchandise must
not be so taxed as to be rendered too dear. After that, in the
interest of the exchequer, its interference must not be perceptible.
Owing to these precautions, indirect taxes can be levied, even on the
smaller taxpayers, without either fleecing or irritating them. It is
for lack of these precautions before 1789, when people were fleeced in
such a clumsy way,[37] that, in 1789, they first rebelled against
indirect taxation,[38] against the meal-tax, the salt-tax, the tax on
liquors, the internal tariffs, and the town octrois, against fiscal
officers, bureaux and registries, by murdering, pillaging, and
burning, beginning in the month of March in Provence and after the
13th of July in Paris, and then throughout France, with such a
universal, determined and persistent hostility that the National
Assembly, after having vainly attempted to restore the suspended tax-
levies and enforce the law on the populace, ended in subjecting the
law to the populace and in decreeing the suppression of indirect
taxation entirely.[39]
Such, in the matter of taxation, is the work of the Revolution. Of the
two sources which, through their regular afflux, fill the public
Treasury, and of which the ancient Régime took possession and managed
badly, violently, through loose and bungling measures, it has nearly
dried up the first one, direct taxation, and completely exhausted the
second one, indirect taxation. At present, as the empty Treasury must
be filled, the latter must be taken in hand the same as the former,
its waters newly gathered in and gently conducted without loss. The
new government sets about this, not like the old one, in a rude,
conventional manner, but as an engineer and calculator who knows the
ground, its inclination and other obstacles, in short, who comprehends
human sensibility and the popular imagination.[40] - And, first of
all, there is to be no more farming-out (of the collection of the
revenues): the State no longer sells its duties on salt or on
beverages to a company of speculators, mere contractors, who care for
nothing but their temporary lease and annual incomes, solely concerned
with coming dividends, bleeding the tax-payer like so many leeches and
invited to suck him freely, interested in multiplying affidavits by
the fines they get, and creating infractions, authorized by a needy
government which, supporting itself on their advances, places the
public force at their disposal and surrenders the people to their
exactions. Henceforth, the exchequer collects for itself and for its
own account. It is the same as a proprietor who, instead of leasing or
renting out, improves his property and becomes his own farmer. The
State, therefore, considers the future in its own interest; it limits
the receipts of the current year so as not to compromise the receipts
of coming years; it avoids ruining the present tax-payer who is also
the future taxpayer; it does not indulge in gratuitous chicanery, in
expensive lawsuits, in warrants of execution and imprisonment; it is
averse to converting a profitable laborer into a beggar who brings in
nothing, or into a prisoner for debt who costs it something. Through
this course, the relief is immense; ten years previous to the
Revolution,[41] it was estimated that, in principal and in
accessories, especially in costs of collection and in fines, indirect
taxation cost the nation twice as much the king derived from it, that
it paid 371 millions to enable him to receive 184 millions, that the
salt-tax alone took out of the pockets of the taxpayer 100 millions
for 45 millions deposited in his coffers. Under the new government,
fines became rarer; seizures, executions and sales of personal
property still rarer, while the costs of collection, reduced by
increasing consumption, are not to exceed one-twentieth in-stead of
one-fifth of the receipts.[42] - In the second place, the consumer
becomes free again, in law as in fact, not to purchase taxed goods. He
is no longer constrained, as formerly, in the provinces subject to
high salt-tax, to accept, consume, and pay for duty-salt, 7 pounds per
head at 13 sous the pound. Provincial, town or seignorial taxes on
Bread, a commodity which he cannot do without, no longer exist; there
is no piquet, or duty on flour, as in Provence,[43] no duties on the
sale or of grinding wheat, no impediments to the circulation or
commerce of grain. And, on the other hand, through the lowering of
fiscal charges, in the suppression of internal duties, and the
abolition of multitudinous tolls, other commodities, apart from bread
reached by a different tax, now becomes affordable for those of small
means. Salt, instead of costing thirteen sous and over, no longer
costs more than two sous the pound. A cask of Bordeaux wine no longer
pays two hundred livres before it is retailed by the tavern-keeper at
Rennes.[44] Except in Paris, and even at Paris, so long as the
extravagance of municipal expenditure does not increase the octroi the
total tax on wine, cider and beer does not add, even at retail, more
than 18 % to their selling price,[45] while, throughout France, the
vine-grower, or the wine-maker, who gathers in and manufactures his
own wine, drinks this and even his brandy, without paying one cent of
tax under this heading.[46] - Consequently, consumption increases,
and, as there are no longer any exempt or half-exempt provinces, no
more free salt (franc salé),[47] no more privileges arising from
birth, condition, profession or residence, the Treasury, with fewer
duties, collected or gained as much as before the Revolution: In 1809
and 1810, 20 millions on tobacco, 54 millions on salt, 100 millions on
liquors, and then, as the taxpayer became richer and spent more, still
larger and larger sums: in 1884, 305 millions on tobacco: in 1885, 429
millions on liquors,[48] without counting another 100 millions again
raised on liquors through town octrois. - And lastly, the exchequer,
with extreme prudence, keeps out of sight and succeeds in almost
saving the taxpayer from contact with, or the presence of, its agents.
There is an end to a domestic inquisition. The excise man no longer
pounces in on the housewife to taste the pickle, to find out whether
the ham has been cured with bogus salt, to certify that all the
dutiable salt has been used in "the pot and the salt-cellar." The
wine-inspector no longer comes suddenly on the wine-grower, or even on
the consumer, to gauge his casks, to demand an account of what he
drinks, to make an affidavit in case of deficit or over-consumption,
to impose a fine should a bottle have been given to a sick person or
to a poor one. The 50,000 customs officers or clerks of the ferme, the
23,000 soldiers without a uniform who, posted in the interior along a
line of 1200 leagues, guarded the heavily taxed salt districts against
the provinces which were less taxed, redeemed or free, the innumerable
employees at the barriers, forming a confused and complicated band
around each province, town, district or canton, levying on twenty or
thirty different sorts of merchandise forty-five principal duties,
general, provincial, or municipal, and nearly sixteen hundred tolls,
in short, the entire body of officials of the old system of indirect
taxation has almost wholly disappeared. Save at the entrance of towns,
and for the octroi the eye no longer encounters an official clerk. The
carters who, from Roussillon or Languedoc, transport a cask of wine to
Paris, are no longer subject to his levies, humiliations and moods in
twenty different places, nor to ascribe to him the dozen or fifteen
days' useless extension of their trip due to his predecessor, and
during which they had to wait in his office until he wrote a receipt
or a permit. There is scarcely any one now but the inn-keeper who sees
his green uniform on his premises. After the abolition of the house-
inventory, nearly two millions of proprietors and wine métayers are
forever free of his visits;[49] from now on, for consumers, especially
for the people, he seems absent and non existent. In effect, he has
been transferred one or two hundred leagues off, to the salt-
establishments in the interior and on the coasts, and on the frontier.
There only is the system at fault, nakedly exposing its vice, - a war
against exchanges, the proscription of international commerce,
prohibition pushed to extreme, the continental blockade, an
inquisition of 20,000 customs officials, the hostility of 100,000
defrauders, the brutal destruction of seized goods, an augmentation in
price of 100 % on cottons and 400% on sugar, a dearth of colonial
articles, privation to the consumer, the ruin of the manufacturer and
trader, and accumulated bankruptcies one after the other in 1811 in
all the large towns from Hamburg to Rome.[50] This vice, however,
belongs to the militant policy and personal character of the master;
the error that taints the external side of his fiscal system does not
reach the internal side. After him, under pacific reigns, it is
gradually modified; prohibition gives way to protection and then
changes from excessive protection to limited protection. France
remains, along with secondary improvements and partial amendments, on
the course marked out by the Consulate and the Empire; this course, in
all its main lines, is clearly traced, straight, and yet adapted to
all things, by the plurality, establishment, distribution, rate of
taxation and returns of the various direct and indirect taxes, nearly
in conformity with the new principles of political economy, as well as
in conformity with the ancient maxims of distributive justice,
carefully directed between the two important interests that have to be
cared for, that of the people who pays and of the State which
collects.
Consider, in effect, what both have gained. - In 1789, the State had a
revenue of only 475 millions; afterwards, during the Revolution, it
scarcely collected any of its revenues; it lived on the capital it
stole, like a genuine brigand, or on the debts it contracted, like a
dishonest and insolvent bankrupt. Under the Consulate and during the
first years of the Empire, its revenue amounts to 750 to 800 millions,
its subjects being no longer robbed of their capital, while it no
longer runs in debt. - In 1789, the ordinary taxpayer paid a direct
tax to his three former or late sovereigns, namely, to the King, the
clergy and the seigniors, more than three-quarters of his net income.
After 1800, he pays to the State less than one-quarter, the one
sovereign alone who replaces the other three. We have seen how relief
came to the old taxable subject, to the rural, to the small
proprietor, to the man without any property, who lived on the labor of
his own hands; the lightening of the direct tax restored to him from
14 to 43 free days, during which, instead of working for the
exchequer, he worked for himself. If married, and the father of two
children over 7 years of age, the alleviation of one direct tax alone,
that of the salt-tax, again restores to him 12 days more, in all from
one to two complete months each year during which he is no longer, as
formerly, a man doing statute-work, but the free proprietor, the
absolute master of his time and of his own hands. - At the same time,
through the re-casting of other taxes and owing to the increasing
price of labor, his physical privations decrease. He is no longer
reduced to consuming only the refuse of his crop, the wheat of poor
quality, the damaged rye, the badly-bolted flour mixed with bran, nor
to drink water poured over the lees of his grapes, nor to sell his
pigs before Christmas because the salt he needs is too dear.[51] He
salts his pork and eats it, and likewise butcher's meat; he enjoys his
boiled beef and broth on Sunday; he drinks wine; his bread is more
nutritious, not so black and healthier; he no longer lacks it and has
no fear of lacking it. Formerly, he entertained a lugubrious phantom,
the fatal image of famine which haunted him day and night for
centuries, an almost periodical famine under the monarchy, a chronic
famine and then severe and excruciating during the Revolution, a
famine which, under the republic, had in three years destroyed over a
million of lives.[52] The immemorial specter recedes and vanishes;
after two accidental and local recurrences, in 1812 and 1817, it never
again appears in France.[53]
V. Conscription or Professional soldiers.
Military service. - Under the Ancient Regime. - The militia and
regular troops. - Number of soldiers. - Quality of the recruits. -
Advantages of the institution.- Results of the new system. - The
obligation universal. - Comparison between the burdens of citizens and
subjects. - The Conscription under Napoleon. - He lightens and then
increases its weight. - What it became after him. - The law of 1818.
One tax remains, and the last, that by which the State takes, no
longer money, but the person himself, the entire man, soul and body,
and for the best years of his life, namely military service. It is the
Revolution which has rendered this so burdensome; formerly, it was
light, for, in principle, it was voluntary. The militia, alone, was
raised by force, and, in general, among the country people; the
peasants furnished men for it by casting lots.[54] But it was simply a
supplement to the active army, a territorial and provincial reserve, a
distinct, sedentary body of reinforcements and of inferior rank which,
except in case of war, never marched; it turned out but nine days of
the year, and, after 1778, never turned out again. In 1789, it
comprised in all 72,260 men, and for eleven years their names,
inscribed on the registers, alone constituted their presence in the
ranks.[55] There were no other conscripts under the monarchy; in this
matter, its exactions were not great, ten times less than those of the
Republic and of the Empire, since both the Republic and the Empire,
using the same constraint, were to levy more than ten times the number
of drafted men or conscripts.[56]
Alongside of this militia body, the entire army properly so called,
the "regular" troops were, under, the ancient Régime, all recruited by
free enlistment, not only the twenty-five foreign regiments, Swiss,
Irish, Germans, and Liégeois, but again the hundred and forty-five
French regiments, 177 000 men.[57] The enlistment, indeed, was not
free enough; frequently, through the maneuvers of the recruiting-
agent, it was tainted with inveigling and surprises, and sometimes
with fraud or violence; but, owing to the remonstrances due to the
prevailing philanthropic spirit, these abuses had diminished; the law
of 1788 had suppressed the most serious of them and, even with its
abuses, the institution had two great advantages. - The army, in the
first place, served as an issue: through it the social body purged
itself of its bad humors, of its overheated or vitiated blood. At this
date, although the profession of soldier was one of the lowest and
least esteemed, a barren career, without promotion and almost without
escape, a recruit was obtainable for about one hundred francs bounty
and a "tip"; add to this two or three days and nights of revel in the
grog-shop, which indicates the kind and quality of the recruits; in
fact, very few could be obtained except among men more or less
disqualified for civil and domestic life, incapable of spontaneous
discipline and of steady labor, adventurers and outcasts, half-savage
or half-blackguard, some of them sons of respectable parents thrown
into the army in an angry fit, and others again, regular vagabonds
picked up in beggars' haunts, mostly stray workmen and loafers, in
short, "the most debauched, the most hot-brained, the most turbulent
people in an ardent, turbulent and somewhat debauched community."[58]
In this way, the anti-social class was utilized for the public good.
Let the reader imagine an ill-kept domain overrun by a lot of stray
curs that might prove dangerous: they are enticed and caught; a
collar, with a chain attached to it, is put on their necks and they
become good watch-dogs. - In the second place, this institution
preserved to the subject the first and most precious of all liberties,
the full possession and the unrestricted management of one's own
person, the complete mastery of body and being. This was assured to
him, guaranteed to him against the encroachments of the State. It was
better guaranteed than by the wisest constitution, for the institution
was a recognized custom accepted by everybody. In other words, it was
a tacit, immemorial convention,[59] between the subject and the State,
proclaiming that, if the State had a right to draw on purses it had no
right to draft persons: in reality and in fact, the King, in his
principal function, was merely a contractor like any other; he
undertook natural defense and public security the same as others
undertook cleaning the streets or the maintenance of a dike. It was
his business to hire military workmen as they hired their civil
workmen, by mutual agreement, at an understood price and at current
market rates. Accordingly, the sub-contractors with whom he treated,
the colonel and captains of each regiment, were subject as he was to
the law of supply and demand; he allowed them so much for each
recruit,[60] to replace those dropped out, and they agreed to keep
their companies full. They were obliged to procure men at their own
risk and at their own expense, while the recruiting-agent whom they
dispatched with a bag of money among the taverns, enlisted
artillerymen, horsemen or foot-soldiers, after bargaining with them,
the same as one would hire men to sweep or pave the street and to
clean the sewers.
Against this practice and this principle comes the theory of the
Contrat-Social. It declares that the people are sovereign. Now, in
this divided Europe, where a conflict between rival States is always
imminent, sovereigns are military men; they are such by birth,
education, and profession, and by necessity; the title carries along
with it and involves the function. Consequently, the subject, in
assuming their rights, imposes upon himself their duties; in his quota
(of responsibility) he, in his turn, is sovereign; but, in his turn
and in his person, he is a soldier.[61] Henceforth, if he is born an
elector, he is born a conscript; he has contracted an obligation of a
new species and of infinite reach; the State, which formerly had a
claim only on his possessions, now has one on his entire body; never
does a creditor let his claims rest and the State always finds reasons
or pretexts to enforce its claims. Under the threats or trials of
invasion the people, at first, had consented to pay this one; they
regarded it as accidental and temporary. After victory and when peace
came, its government continues to enforce the claim; it becomes
settled and permanent. After the treaties of Luneville and Amiens,
Napoleon maintains it in France; after the treaties of Paris and
Vienna, the Prussian government is to maintain it in Prussia. One war
after another and the institution becomes worse and worse; like a
contagion, it has spread from State to State. At the present time, it
has overspread the whole of continental Europe and here it reigns
along with its natural companion which always precedes or follows it,
its twin-brother, universal suffrage. Each more or less conspicuously
"trotted out" and dragging the other along, more or less incomplete
and disguised, both being the blind and formidable leaders or
regulators of future history, one thrusting a ballot into the hands of
every adult, and the other putting a soldier's knapsack on every
adult's back:
* with what promises of massacre and bankruptcy for the twentieth
century,
* with what exasperation of international rancor and distrust,
* with what waste of human labor,
* through what perversion of productive discoveries,
* through what perfection of destructive appliances,
* through what a recoil to the lower and most unwholesome forms of
old militant societies,
* through what retrograde steps towards brutal and selfish instincts,
* towards the sentiments, habits and morality of the antique city and
of the barbarous tribe
is only too well known.[62] It is sufficient for us to place the two
military systems face to face, that of former times and that of to-
day: formerly, in Europe, a few soldiers, some hundreds of thousands ;
to-day, in Europe, 18 millions of actual or eventual soldiers, all the
adults, even the married, even fathers of families summoned or subject
to call for twenty-five years of their life, that is to say, as long
as they continue able-bodied men; formerly, for the heaviest part of
the service in France, no lives are confiscated by decree, only those
bought by contract, and lives suited to this business and elsewhere
idle or mischievous; about one hundred and fifty thousand lives of
inferior quality, of mediocre value, which the State could expend with
less regret than others, and the sacrifice of which is not a serious
injury to society or to civilization. To-day, for the same service in
France, 4 millions of lives are taken by authority, and, if they
attempt to escape, taken by force; all of them, from the twentieth
year onward, employed in the same manual and murderous pursuit,
including the least suited to the purpose and the best adapted to
other purposes, including the most inventive and the most fecund, the
most delicate and the most cultivated, those remarkable for superior
talent (Page 232/526)who are of almost infinite social value, and
whose forced collapse, or precocious end, is a calamity for the human
species.
Such is the terminal fruit of the new Régime; military duty is here
the counterpart, and as it were, the ransom of political right; the
modern citizen may balance one with the other like two weights in the
scale. On the one side, he may place his prerogative as sovereign,
that is to say, in point of fact, the faculty every four years of
giving one vote among ten thousand for the election or non-election of
one deputy among six hundred and fifty; on the other side, he may
place his positive, active service, three, four or five years of
barrack life and of passive obedience, and then twenty-eight days
more, then a thirteen-days' summons in honor of the flag, and, for
twenty years, at each rumor of war, anxiously waiting for the word of
command which obliges him to shoulder his gun and slay with his own
hand, or be slain. He will probably end by discovering that the two
sides of the scales do not balance and that a right so hollow is poor
compensation for so heavy a burden.
Of course, in 1789, he foresaw nothing like that; he was optimistic,
pacific, liberal, humanitarian; he knew nothing of Europe nor of
history, nothing of the past nor of the present. When the Constituent
Assembly constituted him a sovereign, he let things go on; he did not
know what he engaged to do, he had no idea of having allowed such a
heavy claim against him. But, in signing the social contract, he made
himself responsible; in 1793, the note came due and the Convention
collected it.[63] Then comes Napoleon who put things in order.
Henceforth, every male, able-bodied adult must pay the debt of blood;
no more exemptions in the way of military service:[64] all young men
who had reached the required age drew lots in the conscription and set
out in turn according to the order fixed by their drafted number.[65]
But Napoleon is an intelligent creditor; he knows that this debt is
"most frightful and most detestable for families," that his debtors
are real, living men and therefore different in kind, that the head of
the State should keep these differences in mind, that is to say their
condition, their education, their sensibility and their vocation;
that, not only in their private interest, but again in the interest of
the public, not merely through prudence but also through equity, all
should not be indistinguishably restricted to the same mechanical
pursuit, to the same manual labor, to the same prolonged and
indefinite servitude of soul and body. Already, under the Directory,
the law had exempted young married men and widowers or divorced
persons who were fathers.[66] Napoleon also exempts the conscript who
has a brother in the active army, the only son of a widow, the eldest
of three orphans, the son of a father seventy-one years old dependent
on his labor, all of whom are family supports. He joins with these all
young men who enlist in one of his civil militias, in his
ecclesiastical militia or in his university militia, pupils of the
École Normale, ignorantin brothers, seminarians for the priesthood, on
condition that they shall engage to do service in their vocation and
do it effectively, some for ten years, others for life, subject to a
discipline more rigid, or nearly as rigid, as military discipline.[67]
Finally, he sanctions or institutes volunteer substitutes, through
private agreement between a conscript and the able-bodied, certified
volunteer substitute for whom the conscript is responsible.[68] If
such a bargain is made between them it is done freely, knowing what
they are about, and because each man finds the exchange to his
advantage; the State has no right to deprive either of them uselessly
of this advantage, and oppose an exchange by which it does not suffer.
So far from suffering it often gains by it. For, what it needs is not
this or that man, Peter or Paul, but a man as capable as Peter or Paul
of firing a gun, of marching long distances, of resisting
inclemencies, and such are the substitutes it accepts. They must all
be[69] "of sound health and robust constitution," and sufficiently
tall; as a matter of fact, being poorer than those replaced, they are
more accustomed to privation and fatigue; most of them, having reached
maturity, are worth more for the service than youths who have been
recruited by anticipation and too young; some are old soldiers: and in
this case the substitute is worth twice as much as the new conscript
who has never donned the knapsack or bivouacked in the open air.
Consequently, those who are allowed to obtain substitutes are "the
drafted and conscripts of all classes, . . . unable to endure the
fatigues of war, and those who shall be recognized of greater use to
the State by continuing their labors and studies than in forming a
part of the army. . . ."[70]
Napoleon had too much sense to be led by the blind existences of
democratic formulae; his eyes, which penetrated beyond mere words, at
once perceived that the life of a simple soldier, for a young man well
brought up and a peasant or for day-laborer, is unequal. A tolerable
bed, sufficient clothing, good shoes, certainty of daily bread, a
piece of meat regularly, are novelties for the latter but not for the
former, and, consequently, enjoyments; that the promiscuity and odor
of the barrack chamber, the corporal's cursing and swearing and rude
orders, the mess-dish and camp-bread, physical hardships all day and
every other day, are for the former, but not for the latter, novelties
and, consequently, sufferings. From which it follows that, if literal
equality is applied, positive inequality is established, and that by
virtue even of the new creed, it is necessary, in the name of true
equality as in the name of true liberty, to allow the former, who
would suffer most, to treat fairly and squarely with the latter, who
will suffer less. And all the more because, by this arrangement, the
civil staff preserves for itself its future recruits; it is from
nineteen to twenty-six that the future chiefs and under-chiefs of the
great work of peaceful and fruitful labor, the savants, artists or
scholars, the jurisconsults, engineers or physicians, the enterprising
men of commerce or of industry, receive and undertake for themselves a
special and superior education, discover or acquire their leading
ideas, and elaborate their originality or their competency. If talent
is to be deprived of these productive years their growth is arrested
in full vegetation, and civil capacities, not less precious for the
State than military capacities, are rendered abortive.[71] - Towards
1804,[72] owing to substitution, one conscript out of five in the
rural districts, one conscript out of seven in the towns, and, on the
average, one conscript out of ten in France, escapes this forced
abortive condition; in 1806, the price of a substitute varies from
eighteen hundred to four thousand francs,[73] and as capital is
scarce, and ready money still more so, a sum like this is sufficiently
large. Accordingly, it is the rich or well-to-do class, in other words
the more or less cultivated class, which buys off its sons: reliance
may be placed on their giving them more or less complete culture. In
this way, it prevents the State from mowing down all its sprouting
wheat and preserves a nursery of subjects among which society is to
find its future élite. - Thus attenuated, the military law is still
rigid enough: nevertheless it remains endurable. It is only towards
1807[74] that it becomes monstrous and grows worse and worse from year
to year until it becomes the sepulcher of all French youth, even to
taking as canon fodder the adolescent under age and men already exempt
or free by purchase. But, as before these excesses, it may still be
maintained with certain modifications; it suffices almost to retouch
it, to establish exemptions and the privilege of substitution as
rights, which were once simply favors,[75] reduce the annual
contingent, limit the term of service, guarantee their lasting freedom
to those liberated, and thus secure in 1818 a recruiting law
satisfactory and efficacious which, for more than half a century, will
attain its ends without being too detrimental or too odious, and
which, among so many laws of the same sort, all mischievous, is
perhaps the least pernicious.
_________________________________________________________________
Notes:
[1] "The Ancient Régime," book II., ch. 2, 3, 4, and book V. (Laff. I.
pp. 95 to 125 and pp. 245 to 308.)
[2] La Bruyère is, I believe, the first of these precursors. Cf. his
chapters on "The Great," on "Personal Merit," on "The Sovereign and
the Republic," and his chapter on "Man," his passages on "The
Peasants," on "Provincial Notes," etc. These appeals, later on, excite
the applause given to the "Marriage of Figaro." But, in the
anticipatory indictment, they strike deeper; there is no gayety in
them, the dominant sentiment being one of sadness, resignation, and
bitterness.
[3] "Discours prononcé par l'ordre du roi et en sa presence, le 22
février 1787," by M. de Calonne, contrô1eur-général, p.22. "What
remains then to fill this fearful void (in the finances)? Abuses. The
abuses now demanding suppression for the public weal are the most
considerable and the best protected, those that are the deepest rooted
and which send out the most branches. They are the abuses which weigh
most heavily on the working and producing classes, the abuses of
financial privileges, the exceptions to the common law and to so many
unjust exemptions which relieve only a portion of the taxpayers by
aggravating the lot of the others; general inequality in the
distribution of subsidies and the enormous disproportion which exists
in the taxation of different provinces and among the offices filled by
subjects of the same sovereign; severity and arbitrariness in the
collection of the taille; bureaux of internal transportation, and
obstacles that render different parts of the same kingdom strangers to
each other; rights that discourage industry; those of which the
collection requires excessive expenditure and innumerable collectors."
[4] De Ségur, " Mémoires," III., 591. In 1791, on his return from
Russia, his brother says to him, speaking of the Revolution:
"Everybody, at first, wanted it . . From the king down to the most
insignificant man in the kingdom, everybody did something to help it
along; one let it come on up to his shoe-buckle, another up to his
garter, another to his waist, another to his breast, and some will not
be content until their head is attacked!"
[5] My French dictionary tells me that the Carmagnole is not only a
popular revolutionary dance but also a short and tight jacket worn by
the revolutionaries between 1792 and 1795 and that it came via
Marseille with workers from the town of Carmagnola in Piedmont. (SR.)
[6] "The Revolution," pp. 271-279. (Laff. I. 505 to 509.) -Stourm "
Les Finances de 1'ancien régime et de la Révolution," I., 171 to 177.
- (Report by Ramel, January 31, 1796.) "One would scarcely believe it
- the holders of real-estate now owe the public treasury over 13
milliards."- (Report by Gaudin, Germinal, year X. on the assessment
and collection of direct taxes.) "This state of things constituted a
permanent, annual deficit of 200 millions."
[7] "The Ancient Régime," p. 99, and "The Revolution," p.407. (Laff.
I. pp 77-78 and II. 300) (About 1,200 millions per annum in bread for
Paris, instead of 45 millions for the civil and military household of
the King at Versailles.)
[8] "The Ancient Régime," p. 68. (Laff. I. p. 55) - Madame Campan,
"Mémoires," I., 291, 292.
[9] "The Revolution," II., 151, and III., 500. (Laff. II. 282-283)
[10] "Mémorial." (Napoleon's own words.) "The day when, adopting the
unity and concentration of power, which could alone save us, . . . the
destinies of France depended solely on the character, measures and
conscience of him who had been clothed with this accidental
dictatorship - beginning with that day, public affairs, that is to
stay the State, was myself . . . I was the keystone of an entirely new
building and how slight the foundation! Its destiny depended on each
of my battles. Had I been defeated at Marengo you would have then had
a complete 1814 and 1815."
[11] Beugnot, "Mémoires,"II., 317. "To be dressed, taxed, and ordered
to take up arms, like most folks, seemed a punishment as soon as one
had found a privilege within reach," such, for example, as the title
of "déchireur de bateaux" (one who condemns unseaworthy craft and
profits by it), or inspector of fresh butter (using his fingers in
tasting it), or tide-waiter and inspector of salt fish. These titles
raised a man above the common level, and there were over twenty
thousand of them.
[12] See "The Ancient Régime," p. 129. (Laff. I. p. 99)
[13] Madame de Rémusat, "Mémoires," III., 316, 317.
[14] De Beausset, "Intérieur du palais de Napoléon " I., p. 9 et seq..
For the year 1805 the total expense is 2,338,167 francs; for the year
1806 it reaches 2,770,861 francs, because funds were assigned "for the
annual augmentation of plate, 1,000 silver plates and other objects."
- "Napoleon knew, every New Year's day, what he expended (for his
household) and nobody ever dared overpass the credits he allowed."
[15] "The Ancient Régime," pp. 35o-357.(Laff. I. 259-266)
[16] "The Revolution," I. pp. 276-281.(Laff. pp. 508-510) - Stourm,
ibid., 168-171. (Speech by Bénard-Lagrave to the Five Hundred,
Pluviôse II, year IV.) "It cannot be concealed that, for many years,
people were willingly accustoming themselves to the non-payment of
taxes."
[17] Stourm, ibid.,II., 365. (Speech of Ozanam to the Five Hundred,
Pluviôse 14, year VII.) "Scandalous traffic. . . . Most of the (tax)
collectors in the republic are heads and managers of banks." -
(Circular of the minister of the finances, Floréal 25 year VII.)
"Stock-jobbing of the worst kind to which many collectors give
themselves up, using bonds and other public securities received in
payment of taxes." - (Report by Gros-Cassaud Florimond, Sep.19, 1799.)
"Among the corruptible and corrupting agents there are only too many
public functionaries." - Mollien, "Mémoires," I., 222. (In 1800, he
had just been appointed director of the sinking-fund.) "The
commonplace compliment which was everywhere paid to me (and even by
statesmen who affected the sternest morality) was as follows - you are
very fortunate to have an office in which one may legitimately
accumulate the largest fortune in France. " - Cf. Rocquain, "État de
la France au 18 Brumaire." (Reports by Lacuée, Fourcroy and Barbé-
Marbois.)
[18] Charlotte de Sohr, "Napoléon en Belgique et en Hollande," 1811,
vol. I., 243. (On a high functionary condemned for forgery and whom
Napoleon kept in prison in spite of every solicitation.) "Never will I
pardon those who squander the public funds. . . . Ah ! parbleu! We
should have the good old times of the contractors worse than ever if I
did not show myself inexorable for these odious crimes."
[19] Stourm, ibid., I., 177. (Report by Gaudin, Sep. 15, 1799.) "A few
(tax) rolls for the year V, and one-third of those for the year VII,
are behindhand." - (Report by the same, Germinal I, year X.)
"Everything remained to do, on the advent of the consulate, for the
assessment and collection of direct taxes; 35,000 rolls for the year
VII still remained to be drawn up. With the help of the new office,
the rolls for the year VII have been completed; those of the year VIII
were made out as promptly as could be expected, and those of the year
IX have been prepared with a dispatch which, for the first time since
the revolution, enables the collections to be begun in the very year
to which they belong."
[20] "Archives parlementaires," VIII., p.11. (Report by Necker to the
States-General, May 5, 1789.) "These two-fifths, although legitimately
due to the king, are always in arrears. . . . (To-day) these arrears
amount in full to about 80 millions."
[21] De Foville, "la France économique," p.354.
[22] "The Ancient Régime," p. 354. (Laff. I. p. 263.)
[23] Necker, "De l'administration des finances," I., 164, and "Rapport
aux états-généraux," May 5th, 1789. (We arrive at these figures, 179
millions, by combining these documents, on both sides, with the
observation that the 3rd vingtième is suppressed in 1789.)
[24] Charles Nicolas, "les Budgets de la France depuis le commencement
du XIXème siècle" (in tabular form). - De Foville, ibid., 356.--In
the year IX, the sum-total of direct taxes is 308 millions; in the
year XI. 360, and in the year XII, 376. The total income from real-
estate in France towards 1800 is 1,500 millions.
[25] It is only after 1816 that the total of each of the four direct
taxes can be got at (land, individual, personal, doors and windows).
In 1821, the land-tax amounts to 265 millions, and the three others
together to 67 millions. Taking the sum of 1,580 millions, estimated
by the government as the net revenue at this date in France, we find
that, out of this revenue, 16.77 % is deducted for land, and that,
with the other three, it then abstracts from the same revenue 21 % -
On the contrary, before 1789, the five corresponding direct taxes,
added to tithes and feudal privileges, abstracted 81.71 % from the net
income of the taxable party. (Cf. "The Ancient Régime," pp.346, 347,
351 et seq. Laff. I. pp. 258, 259, 261 and following pages. )
[26] These figures are capital, and measure the distance which
separates the old from the new condition of the laboring and poor
class, especially in the rural districts; hence the tenacious
sentiments and judgments of the people with respect to the Ancient
Régime, the Revolution and the Empire. - All local information
converges in this sense. I have verified the above figures as well as
I could: 1st, by the "Statistiques des préfets," of the year IX and
year XIII and afterwards (printed); 2nd, by the reports of the
councillors of state on mission during the year IX (published by
Rocquam, and in manuscript in the Archives nationales); 3rd, by the
reports of the senators on their sénatories and by the prefects on
their departments, in 1806, 1809, 1812, 1814 and 1815, and from 1818
to 1823 (in manuscript in the Archives nationales); 4th, by the
observations of foreigners travelling in France from 1802 to 1815. -
For example ("A Tour through several of the Middle and Western
Departments of France," 1802, p.23): "There are no tithes, no church
taxes, no taxation of the poor. . . . All the taxes together do not go
beyond one-sixth of a man's rent-roll, that is to say, three shillings
and sixpence on the pound sterling." - ("Travels in the South of
France, 1807 and 1808," by Lieutenant-Colonel Pinkney, citizen of the
United States, p.162.) At Tours a two-story house, with six or eight
windows on the front, a stable, carriagehouse, garden and orchard,
rents at £20 sterling per annum, with the taxes which are from £1,10,
to £2, for the state and about ten shillings for the commune. -
("Notes on a Journey through July, August and September, 1814," by
Morris Birkbeck, p.23.) Near Cosne (Orléanais), an estate of 1,000
acres of tillable land and 500 acres of woods is rented for nine
years, for about 9,000 francs a year, together with the taxes, about
1,600 francs more. - (Ibid., p.91.) "Visited the Brie. Well cultivated
on the old system of wheat, oats and fallow. Average rent 16 francs
the acre with taxes, which are about one-fifth of the rent." -
Roederer, III., 474 (on the sénatorerie of Caen, Dec.. 1, 1803): "The
direct tax is here in very moderate proportion to the income, it being
paid without much inconvenience. - The travellers above quoted and
many others are unanimous in stating the new prosperity of the
peasant, the cultivation of the entire soil and the abundance and
cheapness of provisions. (Morris Birkbeck, p.11.) "Everybody assures
me that the riches and comfort of the cultivators of the soil have
been doubled since twenty-five years." (Ibid., p.43, at Tournon-sur-
le-Rhône.) "I had no conception of a country so entirely cultivated as
we have found from Dieppe to this place." - (Ibid., P.51,, at
Montpellier.) "From Dieppe to this place we have not seen among the
laboring people one such famished, worn-out, wretched figure as may be
met in every parish of England, I had almost said on almost every
farm. . . . A really rich country, and yet there are few rich
individuals." - Robert, " De l'Influence de la révolution sur la
population, 1802," p.41. "Since the Revolution I have noticed in the
little village of Sainte-Tulle that the consumption of meat has
doubled; the peasants who formerly lived on salt pork and ate beef
only at Easter and at Christmas, frequently enjoy a pot-à-feu during
the week, and have given up rye-bread for wheat-bread."
[27] The sum of 1 fr. 15 for a day's manual labor is an average,
derived from the statistics furnished by the prefects of the year IX
to the year XIII, especially for Charente, Deux-Sèvres, Meurthe,
Moselle and Doubs.
[28] "The Ancient Régime." p. 353. (Laff. I. p. 262).
[29] Arthur Young, II., 259. (Average rate for a day's work throughout
France in 1789.)
[30] About 15 millions out of 26 millions, in the opinion of Mallet-
Dupan and other observers. - Towards the middle of the 18th century,
in a population estimated at 20 millions, Voltaire reckons that "many
inhabitants possess only the value of 10 crowns rental, that others
have only 4 or 5, and that more than 6 millions of inhabitants have
nothing." ("L'homme aux quarante écus.")- A little later, Chamfort
(I., 178) adds: "It is an incontestable truth that, in France, 7
millions of men beg, and 12 millions of men are incapable of giving
anything."
[31] Law of Floréal 3, year X, title II, articles 13, 14, § 3 and 4.
[32] Charles Nicolas, ibid. - In 1821, the personal and poll tax
yields 46 millions; the tax on doors and windows, 21 millions: total,
67 millions. According to these sums we see that, if the recipient of
100 francs income from real-estate pays 16 fr. 77 real-estate tax, he
pays only 4 fr. 01 for his three other direct taxes. - These figures,
6 to 7 francs, can nowadays be arrived at through direct observation.
- To omit nothing, the assessment in kind, renewed in principle after
1802 on all parish and departmental roads, should be added; this tax,
demanded by rural interests, laid by local authorities, adapted to the
accommodation of the taxpayer, and at once accepted by the
inhabitants, has nothing in common with the former covée, save in
appearance; in fact, it is as easy as the corvée was burdensome.
(Stourm, I., 122.)
[33] They thus pay between 2 and 6% in taxes, a very low taxation if
we compare with the contemporary industrial consumer welfare society,
where, in Scandinavia, the average worker pay more than 50% of his
income in direct and indirect taxes. (SR.)
[34] Charles Nicolas, "Les Budgets de la France depuis le commencement
du XIXe Siècle," and de Foville, "La France économique," p. 365, 373.
- Returns of licenses in 1816, 40 millions; in 1820, 22 millions; in
1860, 80 millions; in 1887, 171 millions.
[35] The mutation tax is that levied in France on all property
transmitted by inheritance. or which changes hands through formal sale
(other than in ordinary business transactions), as in the case of
transfers of real-estate, effected through purchase or sale. Timbre
designates stamp duties imposed on the various kinds of legal
documents.-Tr.
[36] Ibid. Returns of the mutation tax (registration and timbre).
Registration in 1820, 127 millions ; in 1860, 306 millions; in 1886,
518 millions. - Timbre, in 1820, 26 millions; in 1860, 56 millions; in
1886, 156 millions. Sum-total in 1886, 674 millions. - The rate of
corresponding taxes under the ancient régime (contrôle, insinuation
centième denier, formule) was very much lower; the principal one, or
tax of centieme denier, took only 1 per 100, and on the mutations of
real-estate. This mutation tax is the only one rendered worse; it was
immediately aggravated by the Constituent Assembly, and it is rendered
all the more exorbitant on successions in which liabilities are not
deducted from assets. (That is to say, the inheritor of an indebted
estate in France must pay a mutation tax on its full value. He has the
privilege, however, of renouncing the estate if he does not choose to
accept it along with its indebtedness.) - The taxpayer's resignation
to this tax is explained by the exchequer collecting it at a unique
moment, when proprietorship just comes into being or is just at the
point of birth. In effect, if property changes hands under inheritance
or through free donation it is probable that the new owner, suddenly
enriched, will be only too glad to enter into possession of it, and
not object to an impost which, although taking about a tenth, still
leaves him only a little less wealthy. When property is transferred by
contract or sale, neither of the contracting parties, probably, sees
clearly which pays the fiscal tax; the seller may think that it is the
buyer, and the buyer that it is the seller. Owing to this illusion
both are less sensible of the shearing, each offering his own back in
the belief that it is the back of the other.
[37] See "The Ancient Régime," pp.358-362. (Ed. Laff. I. 266-268.)
[38] See "The Revolution," vol. I., pp. 16, 38. (ED. Laff. I. pp. 326,
342.)
[39] Decree of Oct. 31 - Nov. 5, 1789, abolishing the boundary taxes
between the provinces and suppressing all the collection offices in
the kingdom. - Decree of 21-30 March 1790, abolishing the salt-tax.
Decree of 1-17 March 1791, abolishing all taxes on liquors, and decree
of 19-25 Feb. 1791, abolishing all octroi taxes. - Decree of 20-27
March 1791, in relation to freedom of growing, manufacturing and
selling tobacco; customs-duties on the importation of leaf-tobacco
alone are maintained, and give but an insignificant revenue, from
1,500,000 to 1,800,000 francs in the year V.
[40] Gaudin, Duc de Gaëte, "Mémoires," I., 215-217. - The advantages
of indirect taxation are well explained by Gaudin. "The taxpayer pays
only when he is willing and has the means. On the other hand, when the
duties imposed by the exchequer are confounded with the price of the
article, the taxpayer, in paying his due, thinks only of satisfying a
want or of procuring an enjoyment." - Decrees of March 16 and 27, and
May 4, 1806 (on salt), of February 25, 1804, April 24, 1806, Nov. 25,
1808 (on liquors), May 19, 1802, March 6, 1804, April 24, 1806, Dec..
29, 1810 (on tobacco).
[41] Letrosne, "De l'administration des finances et de la réforme de
1'impôt" (1779) pp.148, 162. - Laboulaye, "De l'administration
française sous Louis XVI." (Revue des cours littéraires, 1864-1865,
p.677). "I believe that, under Louis XIII., they took at least five
and, under Louis XIV, four to get two."
[42] Paul Leroy-Bealieu, "Traité de la science des finances," I., 261.
(In 1875, these costs amount to 5.20 %.) - De Foville, ibid. (Cost of
customs and salt-tax, in 1828, 16.2 %; in 1876, 10.2 %. - Cost of
indirect taxation, in 1828, 14.90 %; in 1876, 3.7 %.) - De Calonné,
"Collection des mémoires présentés à l'assemblée des notables," 1787,
p.63.
[43] See "The Ancient Régime," P.23, 370. - " The Revolution," I., 10,
16, 17. (Ed. Laff. I. pp. 23-24, 274, 322, 326-327.)
[44] See "The Ancient Régime," p.361. (Ed. Laff. I. p.268.)
[45] Leroy-Beaulieu, ibid., I., 643.
[46] Decrees of November 25, 1808, and December 8, 1824.
[47] Certain persons under the ancient régime enjoyed an exemption
from the tax on salt.
[48] Stourm, I., 360, 389. - De Foville, 382, 385, 398.
[49] These figures are given by Gaudin.
[50] Thiers, XIII., pp.20 to 25.
[51] Lafayette, "Mémoires." (Letter of October 17, 1779, and notes
made in Auvergne, August 1800.) "You know how many beggars there were,
people dying of hunger in our country. We see no more of them. The
peasants are richer, the land better tilled and the women better
clad." - "The Ancient Régime," 340, 34, 342. - " The Revolution,"
III., p.366, 402.
[52] "The Ancient Régime," P.340. (ED. Laff. I. pp. 254, 256.)-" The
Revolution," III., 212. (Ed. Laff. II. p. 271, 297.)
[53] These two famines were due to inclement seasons and were
aggravated, the last one by the consequences of invasion and the
necessity of supporting 150,000 foreign troops, and the former by the
course taken by Napoleon who applies the maximum afresh, with the same
intermeddling, the same despotism and the same failure as under the
Convention.( "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc),
chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.) "I
do not exaggerate in stating that our operations in the purchase and
transport (of grain) required a full quarter of the time, and often
one-third, more than would have been required in commerce." -
Prolongation of the famine in Normandy. "Bands of famished beggars
overran the country. . . . Riots and pillaging around Caen; several
mills burnt. . . . Suppression of these by the imperial guard. In the
executions which resulted from these even women were not spared." -
The two principal guarantees at the present day against this public
danger are, first, easier circumstances, and next the multiplication
of good roads and of railroads, the dispatch and cheapness of
transportation, and the superabundant crops of Russia and the United
States.
[54] J. Gebelin, "Histoire des milices provinciales" (1882), p.87,
143, 157, 288. - Most of the texts and details may be found in this
excellent work. - Many towns, Paris, Lyons, Reims, Rouen, Bordeaux,
Tours, Agen, Sedan and the two generalities of Flanders and Hainault
are examples of drawing by lot; they furnished their contingent by
volunteers enlisted at their own expense; the merchants and artisans,
or the community itself, paying the bounty for enlistment. Besides
this there were many exemptions in the lower class. - Cf. "The
Ancient Régime," p.390. (Ed. Laff. p. 289.)
[55] J. Gebelin, ibid., 239, 279, 288. (Except the eight regiments of
royal grenadiers in the militia who turned out for one month in the
year.)
[56] Example afforded by one department. ("Statistics of Ain," by
Rossi, prefect, 1808.) Number of soldiers on duty in the department,
in 1789, 323; in 1801, 6,729; in 1806, 6,764. - " The department of
Ain furnished nearly 30,000 men to the armies, conscripts and those
under requisition." - It is noticeable, consequently, that in the
population of 1801, there is a sensible diminution of persons between
twenty and thirty and, in the population of 1806, of those between
twenty-five and thirty-five years of age. The number between twenty
and thirty is as follows: in 1789, 39,828; in 1801, 35,648; in 1806,
34,083.
[57] De Dampmartin. "Evénemens qui se sont passés sous mes yeux
pendant la révolution française," V. II. (State of the French army,
Jan. 1, 1789.) Total on a peace footing, 177,890 men. - This is the
nominal force; the real force under arms was 154,000; in March 1791,
it had fallen to 115,000, through the multitude of desertions and the
scarcity of enlistments, (Yung, "Dubois-Crancé et la Révolution," I.,
158. Speech by Dubois-Crancé.)
[58] "The Ancient Régime," P 390, 391. - "The Revolution," p. 328-330.
(Ed. Laff. I. 289 and 290, pp. 542-543) - Albert Babeau, "le
Recrutement militaire sous 1'ancien Régime." (In "la Réforme sociale"
of Sept. I, 1888, p. 229, 238.)- An officer says, "only the rabble are
enlisted because it is cheaper." - Yung, ibid., I., 32. (Speech by M.
de Liancourt in the tribune.) "The soldier is classed apart and is too
little esteemed." - Ibid., p. 39. ("Vices et abus de la constitution
actuelle française," memorial signed by officers in most of the
regiments, Sept. 6, 1789.) "The majority of soldiers are derived from
the offscourings of the large towns and are men without occupation."
[59] Gebelin, p. 270. Almost all the cahiers of the third-estate in
1789 demand the abolition of drafting by lot, and nearly all of those
of the three orders are for volunteer service, as opposed to
obligatory service; most of these demand, for the army, a volunteer
militia enlisted through a bounty; this bounty or security in money to
be furnished by communities of inhabitants which, in fact, was already
the case in several towns.
[60] Albert Babeau, ibid., 238. "Colonels were allowed only 100
francs per man; this sum, however, being insufficient, the balance was
assessed on the pay of the officers."
[61] This principle was at once adopted by the Jacobins. (Yung, ibid.,
19, 22, 145. Speech by Dubois-Crancé at the session held Dec.12,
1789.) "Every citizen will become a soldier of the Constitution." No
more casting lots nor substitution. "Each citizen must be a soldier
and each soldier a citizen." - The first application of the principle
is a call for 300,000 men (Feb. 26, 1793), then through a levy on the
masses which brings 500,000 men under the flag, nominally volunteers,
but conscripts in reality. (Baron Poisson, "l'Armée et la Garde
Nationale,"III, 475.)
[62] Taine wrote this in 1888, after the end of the second French
Empire, after the transformation of Prussia into the Empire of
Germany. Taine apparently had a premonition of the terrible wars of
the 20th century, of Nazism, Communism and their death and
concentration camps. (SR.)
[63] Baron Poisson, "l'Armée et la Garde nationale," III., 475.
(Summing up.) "Popular tradition has converted the volunteer of the
Republic into a conventional personage which history cannot accept. .
. . 1st. The first contingent of volunteers demanded of the country
consisted of 97,000 men (i1791). 60,000 enthusiasts responded to the
call, enlisted for a year and fulfilled their engagement; but for no
consideration would they remain longer. 2nd. Second call for
volunteers in April 1792. Only mixed levies, partial, raised by money,
most of them even without occupation, outcasts and unable to withstand
the enemy. 3rd. 300,000 men recruited, which measure partly fails; the
recruit can always get off by furnishing a substitute. 4th. Levy in
mass of 500,000 men, called volunteers, but really conscripts."
[64] "Mémorial" (Speech by Napoleon before the Council of State). "I
am inflexible on exemptions; they would be crimes; how relieve one's
conscience of having caused one man to die in the place of another ?"
- "The conscription was an unprivileged militia: it was an eminently
national institution and already far advanced in our customs; only
mothers were still afflicted by it, while the time was coming when a
girl would not have a man who had not paid his debt to his country."
[65] Law of Fructidor 8, year XIII, article 10. - Pelet de La Lozère,
229. (Speech by Napoleon, Council of State, May 29, 1804.) - Pelet
adds: "The duration of the service was not fixed. . . . As a fact in
itself, the man was exiled from his home for the rest of his life,
regarding it as a desolating, permanent exile. . . . Entire sacrifice
of existence. . . . An annual crop of young men torn from their
families and sent to death." - Archives nationales, F7, 3014. (Reports
of prefects, 1806.) After this date, and even from the beginning,
there is extreme repugnance which is only overcome by severe means. .
. . (Ardeche.) "If the state of the country were to be judged of by
the results of the conscription one would have a poor idea of it." -
(Ariège.) "At Brussac, district of Foix, four or five individuals arm
themselves with stones and knives to help a conscript escape, arrested
by the gendarmes. . . . A garrison was ordered to this commune." - At
Massat, district of Saint-Girons, on a few brigades of gendarmes
entering this commune to establish a garrison, in order to hasten the
departure of refractory conscripts, they were stoned; a shot even was
fired at this troop. . . . A garrison was placed in these hamlets as
in the rest of the commune. - During the night of Frimaire 16-17 last,
six strange men presented themselves before the prison of Saint-Girons
and loudly demanded Gouazé, a deserter and condemned. On the jailor
coming down they seized him and struck him down." - (Haute-Loire.)
"'The flying column is under constant orders simultaneously against
the refractory and disobedient among the classes of the years IX, X,
XI, XII, and XIII, and against the laggards of that of year IV, of
which 134 men yet remain to be supplied." - (Bouches-du-Rhône.) "50
deserter sailors and 84 deserters or conscripts of different classes
have been arrested." - (Dordogne.) "Out of 1353 conscripts, 134 have
failed to reach their destination; 124 refractory or deserters from
the country and 41 others have been arrested; 81 conscripts have
surrendered as a result of placing a garrison amongst them; 186 have
not surrendered. Out of 892 conscripts of the year XIV on the march,
101 deserted on the road." - (Gard.) "76 refractory or deserters
arrested." - (Landes.) "Out of 406 men who left, 51 deserted on the
way," etc. - This repugnance becomes more and more aggravated. (Cf.
analogous reports of 1812 and 1813, F7, 3018 and 3019, in "Journal
d'un bourgeois d'Evreux," p. 150 to 214, and "Histoire de 1814," by
Henry Houssaye, p.8 to 24.)
[66] Law of Fructidor, year VI.
[67] Decree of July 29, 1811 (on the exemption of pupils in the École
Normale). - Decree of March 30, 1810, title II., articles 2, 4, 5, 6
(on the police and system of the École Normale). - Decree on the
organization of the University, titles 6 and 13, March 7, 1808.
[68] Law of Ventôse 17, year VIII, title III., articles I and 13. -
Law of Fructidor 8, year XIII, articles 50, 54, and 55.
[69] Law of Fructidor 8, year XIII, article 51
[70] Law of Ventôse 17, year VIII, title 3, article I.
[71] Thibaudeau, p. 108. (Speech of the First Consul before the
Council of State.) "Art, science and the professions must be thought
of. We are not Spartans. . . . As to substitution, it must be allowed.
In a nation where fortunes are equal each individual should serve
personally; but, with a people whose existence depends on the
inequality of fortunes, the rich must be allowed the right of
substitution; only we must take care that the substitutes be good, and
that conscripts pay some of the money serving to defray the expense of
a part of the equipment of the army of reserve."
[72] Pelet de La Lozère, 228.
[73] Archives nationales, F7, 3014. (Reports of prefects, 1806.)
Average price of a substitute: Basses Alpes, from 2,000 to 2,500
francs; Bouches-du-Rhône, from 1,800 to 3,000; Dordogne, 2,400; Gard,
3,000; Gers, 4,000; Haute-Garonne, from 2,000 to 3,000; Hérault,
4,000; Vaucluse, 2,500; Landes, 4,000. Average rate of interest
(Ardèche): "Money, which was from 11/4 to 11/2 %, has declined; it is
now at 3 1/4 % a month or 10 % per annum." - (Basses Alpes): "The rate
of money has varied in commerce from 1 to 3/4 % per month." - (Gard):
"Interest is at 1 % a month in commerce; proprietors can readily
borrow at 9 or 10 % per annum." - (Hérault): "The interest on money is
1 1/4 % per month." - (Vaucluse): "Money is from 3/4 to 11/4 % per
month."
[74] Thiers, VII., p.23 and 467. In November 1806, Napoleon orders the
conscription of 1807; in March 1807, he orders the conscription of
1808, and so on, always from worse to worse. - Decrees of 1808 and
1813 against young men of family already bought off or exempted. -
"Journal d'un Bourgeois d'Evreux," 214. Desolate state of things in
1813, "general depression and discouragement." - Miot de Mélito, III.,
304. (Report of Miot to the Emperor after a tour in the departments in
1815.) "Everywhere, almost, the women are your declared enemies."
[75] Law of Ventôse 17, year VIII, title 3, articles 6, 7, 8, 9. -
Exemption is granted as a favor only to the ignorantin brothers and to
seminarians assigned to the priesthood. - Cf. the law of March 10,
1818, articles 15 and 18.
CHAPTER III. Ambition and Self-esteem.
I. Rights and benefits.
The assignment of right. - Those out of favor and the preferred under
former governments. - Under the Ancient Regime. - During the
Revolution. - French conception of Equality and Rights. - Its
ingredients and its excesses. - The satisfaction it obtains under the
new regime. - Abolition of legal incapacity and equality in the
possession of rights. - Confiscation of collective action and equality
in the deprivation of rights. - Careers in the modern State. - Equal
right of all to offices and to promotion. - Napoleon's distribution of
employments. - His staff of officials recruited from all classes and
parties.
Now that the State has just made a new allotment of the burdens and
duties which it imposes it must make a new assignment of the rights
and benefits it confers. Distributive justice, on both sides, and long
before 1789, was defective, and, under the monarchy, exclusions had
become as obnoxious as exemptions; all the more because, through a
double iniquity, the ancient Régime in each group distinguished two
other groups, one to which it granted every exemption, and the other
which it made subject to every exclusion. The reason is that, from the
first, the king, in the formation and government of the kingdom, in
order to secure the services, money, collaboration or connivance which
he needed, was obliged to negotiate always with corporations, orders,
provinces, seignories, the clergy, churches, monasteries,
universities, parliaments, professional bodies or industrial guilds
and families, that is to say with constituted powers, more or less
difficult to bring under subjection and which, to be kept in
subjection, stipulated conditions. Hence, in France, so many different
conditions: each distinct body had yielded through one or several
distinct capitulations and possessed its own separate statute. Hence,
again, such diversely unequal conditions: the bodies, the best able to
protect themselves, had, of course, defended themselves the best.
Their statutes, written or unwritten, guaranteed to them precious
privileges which the other bodies, much weaker, could neither acquire
nor preserve. These were not merely immunities but likewise
prerogatives, not alone alleviations of taxation and militia
dispensations, but likewise political and administrative liberties,
remnants of their primitive sovereignty, with many other positive
advantages. The very least being precedence, preferences, social
priority, with an incontestable right to rank, honors, offices, and
favors. Such, notably, were the regions-states possessing their own
government (pays d'états), compared with those which elected the
magistrates who apportioned taxation (pays d'élection),[1] the two
highest orders, the clergy and the nobles, compared with the third-
estate, and the bourgeoisie, and the town corporations compared with
the rest of the inhabitants. On the other hand, opposed to these
historical favorites were the historical disinherited, the latter much
more numerous and counting by millions - the taxable commons, all
subjects without rank or quality, in short, the ordinary run of men,
especially the common herd of the towns and particularly of the
country, all the more ground down on account of their lower status,
along with the Jews lower yet, a sort of foreign class scarcely
tolerated, with the Calvinists, not only deprived of the humblest
rights but, again, persecuted by the State for the past one hundred
years.
All these people, who have been transported far outside of civic
relationships by historic right, are brought back, in 1789, by
philosophic right. After the declarations of the Constituent Assembly,
there are no longer in France either Bretons, Provençals, Burgundians
or Alsatians, Catholics, Protestants or Israelites, nobles or
plebeians, bourgeois or rurals, but simply Frenchmen,
* all with the one title of citizens,
* all endowed with the same civil, religious and political rights,
* all equal before the State,
* all introduced by law into every career, collectively, on an equal
footing and without fear or favor from anybody;
* all free to follow this out to the end without distinction of rank,
birth, faith or fortune;
* all, if they are good runners, to receive the highest prizes at the
end of the race, any office or rank, especially the leading honors and
positions which, thus far reserved to a class or coterie, had not been
allowed previously to the great multitude.
Henceforth, all Frenchmen, in theory, enjoy rights in common;
unfortunately, this is only the theory. In reality, in all state
relationships (dans la cité), the new-comers appropriate to themselves
the offices, the pretensions, and more than the privileges of their
predecessors; the latter, consisting of large and small land-owners,
gentlemen, parliamentarians, officials, ecclesiastics, notables of
every kind and degree, are immediately deprived of the rights of man.
Surrendered to rural jacqueries and to town mobs, they undergo, first,
the neglect and, next, the hostility of the State: the public gendarme
has ceased to protect them and refuses his services; afterwards, on
becoming a Jacobin, he declares himself their enemy, treats them as
enemies, plunders them, imprisons them, murders them, expels or
transports them, inflicts on them civil death, and shoots them if they
dare return; he deprives their friends or kindred who remain in France
of their civil rights; he deprives the nobles or the ennobled of their
quality as Frenchmen, and compels them to naturalize themselves afresh
according to prescribed formalities ; he renews against the Catholics
the interdictions, persecutions and brutalities which the old
government had practiced against the Calvinist minority. - Thus, in
1799 as in 1789, there are two classes of Frenchmen, two different
varieties of men, the first one superior, installed in the civic fold,
and the second, inferior and excluded from it; only, in 1799, the
greatest inequality consigned the inferior and excluded class to a
still lower, more remote, and much worse condition.
The principle (of equalite) , nevertheless, subsists. Since 1789 it is
inscribed at the top of every constitution; it is still proclaimed in
the new constitution. It has remained popular, although perverted and
disfigured by the Jacobins; their false and gross interpretation of it
could not bring it into discredit; athwart the hideous grotesque
caricature, all minds and sentiments ever recur to the ideal form of
the cité to the veritable social contract, to the impartial, active,
and permanent reign of distributive justice. Their entire education,
all the literature, philosophy and culture of the eighteenth century,
leads them onward to this conception of society and of rights; more
profoundly still, they are predisposed to it by the inner structure of
their intelligence, by the original cast of their sensibility7 by the
hereditary defects and qualities of their nature and of their race.-
The Frenchman easily and quickly grasps some general trait of objects
and persons, some characteristic in common; here, this characteristic
is the inherent quality of man which he dexterously makes prominent,
clearly isolates, and then, stepping along briskly and confidently,
rushes ahead on the high-road to consequences.[2] He has forgotten
that his summary notion merely corresponds to an extract, and a very
brief one, of man in his completeness; his decisive, precipitate
process hinders him from seeing the largest portion of the real
individual; he has overlooked numerous traits, the most important and
most efficacious, those which geography, history, habit, condition,
manual labor, or a liberal education, stamp on intellect, soul and
body and which, through their differences, constitute different local
or social groups. Not only does he overlook all these characteristics,
but he sets them aside; they are too numerous and too complex; they
would interfere with and disturb his thoughts; however fitted for
clear and comprehensive logic he is so much the less fitted for
complex and comprehensive ideas; consequently, he avoids them and,
through an innate operation of which he is unconscious, he
involuntarily condenses, simplifies and curtails henceforth, his idea,
partial and superficial as it is, seems to him adequate and complete;
in his eyes the abstract quality of man takes precedence of and
absorbs all others; not only has this a value, but the sole value. One
man, therefore, is as good as another and the law should treat all
alike. - Here, amour-propre (self-esteem, pride or arrogance), so keen
in France, and so readily excited, comes in to interpret and apply the
formula:[3]
"Since all men equal each other, I am as good as any man; if the law
confers a right on people of this or that condition, fortune or birth,
it must confer the same right on me. Every door that is open to them
must be open to me; every door that is closed to me must be closed to
them. Otherwise, I am treated as an inferior and wounded in my deepest
feelings. When the legislator places a ballot in their hands he is
bound to place another just like it in my hands, even if they know how
to use it and I do not, even if a limited suffrage is of use to the
community and universal suffrage is not. So much the worse if I am
sovereign only in name, and through the imagination; I consent to my
sovereignty being illusory, but with the understanding that the
sovereignty of others is regarded likewise; so I prefer servitude and
privation for all, rather than liberties and advantages for a few,
and, provided the same level is passed over all heads, I submit to the
yoke for all heads, including my own."
Such is the internal composition of the instinct of' equality, and
such is the natural instinct of Frenchmen. It is beneficial or
mischievous according as one or the other of its ingredients
predominates, at one time the noble sentiment of equity and at another
time the low envy of foolish vanity;[4] healthy or unhealthy, however,
its power in France is enormous, and the new Régime gratifies it in
every possible way, good or bad. No more legal disqualifications! On
the one hand, the republican laws of proscription or of exception were
all repealed: we have seen an amnesty and the return of the émigrés,
the Concordat, the restoration of Catholic worship, the compulsory
reconciliation of the constitutionalists with the orthodox; the First
Consul admits no difference between them; his new clergy are recruited
from both groups and, in this respect, he forces the Pope to yield.[5]
He gives twelve of the sixty episcopal thrones to former schismatics;
he wants them to take their places boldly; he relieves them from
ecclesiastical penitence and from any humiliating recantation; he
takes care that, in the other forty-eight dioceses, the priests who
formerly took the civic oath shall be employed and well treated by
their superiors who, at the same epoch, refused to take the civic
oath. On the other hand, all the exclusions, inequalities and
distinctions of the monarchy remain abolished. Not only are the
Calvinist and even Israelite cults legally authorized, the same as the
Catholic cult, but, again, the Protestant consistories and Jewish
synagogues[6] are constituted and organized on the same footing as the
Catholic churches. Pastors and rabbis likewise become functionaries
under the same title as bishops and cure's; all are recognized or
sanctioned by the government and all equally benefit by its patronage:
it is an unique thing in Europe to find the small churches of the
minority obtaining the same measure of indifference and good will from
the State as the great church of the majority, and, henceforth, in
fact as in law, the ministers of the three cults, formerly ignored,
tolerated or proscribed, enjoy their rank, titles and honors in the
social as well as in the legal hierarchy, equally with the ministers
of that cult which was once the only one dominant or allowed
Similarly, in the civilian status, no inferiority or discredit must
legally attach to any condition whatever, either to plebeian,
villager, peasant or poor man as such, as formerly under the monarchy;
nor to noble, bourgeois, citizen, notable or rich man, as recently
under the Republic. Each of these two classes is relieved of its
degradation; no class is burdened by taxation or by the conscription
beyond its due; all persons and all property find in the government,
in the administration, in the tribunals, in the gendarme, the same
reliable protection. - So much for equity and the true spirit of
equality. - Let us now turn around and consider envy and the bad
spirit of equality. The plebiscite, undoubtedly, as well as the
election of deputies to the Corps Legislatif are simply comedies; but,
in these comedies, one rôle is as good as another and the duke of the
old or new pattern, a mere figurant among hundreds and thousands of
others, votes only once like the corner-grocer. Undoubtedly, the
private individual of the commune or department, in institutions of
charity, worship or education, is deprived of any independence, of any
initiation, of any control, as the State has confiscated for itself
all collective action; but the classes deprived of this are especially
the upper classes, alone sufficiently enlightened and wealthy to take
the lead, form projects and provide for expenditure: in this
usurpation, the State has encroached upon and eaten deeper into the
large body of superior existences scattered about than into the
limited circle where humbler lives clamber and crawl along; nearly the
entire loss, all perceptible privation, is for the large landed
proprietor and not for his hired hands, for the large manufacturer or
city merchant and not for their workmen or clerks,[7] while the clerk,
the workman, the journeyman, the handicraftsman, who grumble at being
the groundlings, find themselves less badly off since their masters or
patrons, fallen from a higher point, are where they are and they can
elbow them.
Now that men are born on the ground, all on the same level, and are
confined within universal and uniform limits, social life no longer
appears to them other than a competition, a rivalry instituted and
proclaimed by the State, and of which it is the umpire; for, through
its interference, all are comprised within its enclosure and shut up
and kept there; no other field is open to run on; on the contrary,
every career within these bounds, indicated and staked out beforehand,
offers an opportunity for all runners: the government has laid out and
leveled the ground, established compartments, divided off and prepared
rectilinear lists which converge to the goal; there, it presides, the
unique arbiter of the race, exposing to all competitors the
innumerable prizes which it proposes for them. - These prizes consist
of offices, the various employments of the State, political, military,
ecclesiastical, judiciary, administrative and university, all the
honors and dignities which it dispenses, all the grades of its
hierarchy from the lowest to the highest, from that of corporal,
college-regent, alderman, office - supernumerary, assistant priest up
to that of senator, marshal of France, grand master of the university,
cardinal, and minister of State. It confers on its possessor,
according to the greater or lesser importance of the place, a greater
or lesser portion of the advantages which all men crave and seek for
money, power, patronage, influence, consideration, importance and
social pre-eminence; thus, according to the rank one attains in the
hierarchy, one is something, or of some account; outside of the
hierarchy, one is nothing.
Consequently, the faculty for getting in and advancing one's self in
these lists is the most precious of all: in the new Régime it is
guaranteed by the law as a common right and is open to all Frenchmen.
As no other outlet for them is allowed by the State it owes them this
one; since it invites them and reduces everybody to competing under
its direction it is bound to be an impartial arbiter; since the
quality of citizen, in itself and through it alone, confers the right
to make one's way, all citizens indifferently must enjoy the right of
succeeding in any employment, the very highest, and without any
distinction as to birth, fortune, cult or party. There must be no more
preliminary exclusions; no more gratuitous preferences, undeserved
favors, anticipated promotions; no more special favors. - Such is the
rule of the modern State: constituted as it is, that is to say,
monopolizer and omnipresent, it cannot violate this rule for any
length of time with impunity. In France, at least, the good and bad
spirits of equality agree in exacting adherence to it: on this point,
the French are unanimous; no article of their social code is more
cherished by them; this one flatters their amour-propre and tickles
their imagination; it exalts hope, nourishes illusion, intensifies the
energy and enjoyment of life. - Thus far, the principle has remained
inert, powerless, held in suspension in the air, in the great void of
speculative declarations and of constitutional promises. Napoleon
brings it down to the ground and renders it practical; that which the
assemblies had decreed in vain for ten years he brings about for the
first time and in his own interest. To exclude a class or category of
men from offices and promotion would be equivalent to depriving one's
self gratuitously of all the talents it contains, and, moreover, to
incurring, besides the inevitable rancor of these frustrated talents,
the sullen and lasting discontent of the entire class or category. The
First Consul would do himself a wrong were he to curb his right to
choose: he needs every available capacity, and he takes them where he
finds them, to the right, to the left, above or below, in order to
keep his regiments full and enroll in his service every legitimate
ambition and every justifiable pretension.
Under the monarchy, an obscure birth debarred even the best endowed
men from the principal offices. Under the Consulate and the Empire the
two leading personages of the State are Lebrun, Maupeou's old
secretary, a productive translator,[8] a lawyer, formerly councilor in
a provincial court of justice, then third-consul, then Duc de
Plaisance and arch-chancellor of the Empire and Cambacérès, second-
consul, then Duc de Parme and arch-chancellor of the Empire, both of
them being princes. Similarly, the marshals are new men and soldiers
of fortune, a few of them born in the class of inferior nobles or in
the ordinary bourgeois class, mostly among the people or even amongst
the populace, and, in its lowest ranks, Masséna, the son of a wine-
dealer, once a cabin-boy and then common soldier and non-commissioned
officer for fourteen years; Ney, son of a cooper, Lefebvre, son of a
miller, Murat, son of a tavern-keeper, Lannes, son of an hostler, and
Augereau, son of a mason and a female dealer in fruit and vegetables.
- Under the Republic, noble birth consigned, or confined, the ablest
and best qualified men for their posts to a voluntary obscurity, only
too glad when their names did not condemn them to exile, imprisonment
or to the guillotine. Under the Empire, M. de Talleyrand is prince of
Benevento, minister of foreign affairs and vice-grand-elector with a
salary of five hundred thousand francs. We see personages of old
nobility figuring in the first ranks: among the clergy M. de
Roquelaure, M. de Boisgelin, M. de Broglie, M. Ferdinand de Rohan; in
the magistracy, M. Séguier, M. Pasquier, M. Molé; on the domestic and
decorative staff of the palace, Comte de Ségur, grand-master of
ceremonies, Comte de Montesquiou-Fézensac, grand-chamberlain, also as
chamberlains, Comtes d'Aubusson de la Feuillade, de Brigode, de Croy,
de Coutades, de Louvois, de Brancas, de Gontaut, de Grammont, de
Beauvau, de Lur-Saluces, d'Haussonville, de Noailles, de Chabot, de
Turenne,[9] and other bearers of historic names. - During the
Revolution, at each new parliamentarian, popular or military coup
d'état the notabilities of the vanquished party were always excluded
from office and generally outlawed. After the coup d'état of Brumaire,
not only are the vanquished of the old parties all brought back under
the protection of the law, but, again, their notables are promoted to
the highest offices. Among the monarchists of the Constituent Assembly
Mabuet is made councilor of State, and Maury archbishop of Paris;
forty-seven other ecclesiastics who, like himself, refused to take the
oath to the civil constitution of the clergy, are appointed, like him,
to episcopal thrones. Among the Feuillants of the Legislative
Assembly, Vaublanc is made prefect, Beugnot a councilor of State and
minister of the finances in the grand-duchy of Berg, Matthieu Dumas a
brigadier-general and director of reviews, Narbonne becomes the aid-
de-camp and the intimate interlocutor of Napoleon, and then ambassador
to Vienna; if Lafayette had been willing, not to ask for but to accept
the post, he would have been made a marshal of France. - Among the few
Girondists or Federalists who did not perish after the 2nd June,
Riouffe is prefect and baron, Lanjuinais is senator and count; among
others proscribed, or half proscribed, the new Régime restores to and
places at the head of affairs the superior and special employees whom
the Reign of Terror had driven away, or singled out for slaughter,
particularly the heads of the financial and diplomatic services who,
denounced by Robespierre on the 8th Thermidor, or arrested on the
morning of the 9th already felt their necks under the blade of the
guillotine; Reinhart and Otto are ambassadors, Mollien is count and
treasury minister, Miot becomes councilor of state, Comte de Melito
minister of finances at Naples, while Gaudin is made minister of
finances in France and Duc de Gaëte. Among the transported or
fugitives of Fructidor, Barthélemy becomes senator, Barbé-Marbois
director of the Treasury and first president of the Cour des Comptes;
Siméon, councilor of State and then minister of justice in Westphalia;
Portalis is made minister of worship, and Fontanes grand-master of the
University. The First Consul passes the sponge over all political
antecedents: not only does he summon to his side the moderates and
half-moderates of the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies, of the
Convention and of the Directory, but again he seeks recruits among
pure royalists and pure Jacobins, among the men the most devoted to
the ancient Régime and amongst those most compromised by the
Revolution, at both extremities of the most extreme opinions. We have
just seen, on the one side, what hereditary favorites of a venerable
royalty, what born supporters of the deposed dynasty, are elevated by
him to the first of his magisterial, clerical and court dignities. On
the other hand, apart from Chasset, Roederer and Grégoire, apart from
Fourcroy, Bérlier and Réal, apart from Treilhard and Boulay de La
Meurthe, he employs others branded or noted for terrible acts, Barère
himself, at least for a certain period, and in the sole office he was
fitted for, that of a denunciator, gazetteer and stimulator of public
opinion; everybody has a place according to his faculties, and each
has rank according to his usefulness and merit. Barère, consequently,
becomes a paid spy and pamphleteer; Drouet, the postmaster, who
arrested the royal family at Varennes, becomes sub-prefect at Sainte-
Menehould; Jean-Bon Saint-André, one of the Committee of Public
Safety, is made prefect at Mayence; Merlin de Douai, reporter of the
law against suspects, is prosecuting attorney in the court of
cassation; Fouché, whose name tells all, becomes minister of state and
Duke of Otranto; nearly all of the survivors of the Convention are
made judges of première instancc or of appeal, revenue-collectors,
deputies, prefects, foreign consuls, police commissioners, inspectors
of reviews, head-clerks in the post-offices, custom-houses and tax-
offices, while, in 1808, among these functionaries, one hundred and
thirty were regicides.[10]
II. Ambitions during the Ancient Regime.
The need of success. - Initiation and conditions of promotion under
the old monarchy. - Effect on minds. - Ambitions are limited. - The
external outlets open to them. -
To make one's way, get ahead, and succeed in the world is now the
dominant thought in the minds of men. Before 1789, this thought had
not acquired sovereign control in their minds; it found that there
were rival ideas to contend with, and it had only half-developed
itself; its roots had not sunk down deep enough to monopolize the
activity of the imagination, to absorb the will and possess the mind
entirely; and the reason is that it lacked both air and victuals.
Promotion, under the old monarchy, was slow, and in the first place,
because the monarchy was old and because in every order which is not
new each new generation finds that every office is filled, and next,
because, in this old order founded on tradition and heredity, future
vacancies were supplied long beforehand. The great social staircase
led to several stories ; each man could ascend every step of his own
flight, but he could not mount above it; the landing reached, he found
closed doors and nearly insurmountable barriers. The story above was
reserved to its own inhabitants; they occupied it now and were still
to occupy it in time to come; the inevitable successors of the titular
possessor were seen around him on each step, his equals, peers and
neighbors, one or the other often designated by name as his legal
heir, the purchaser of his survivorship. In those days, not only was
the individual himself considered, his merits and his services, but
likewise his family and ancestry, his state and condition, the society
he entered into, the "salon" he maintained, his fortune and his
followers; these antecedents and surroundings composed the quality of
the personage; without this requisite quality, he could not go beyond
the landing-place. Strictly speaking, a personage born on the upper
steps of one story might sometimes succeed in mounting the lowest
steps of the next story, but there he stopped. In short, it was always
considered by those on the lower story that the upper story was
inaccessible and, moreover, uninhabitable.
Accordingly, most of the public offices, in the finances, in the
administration, in the judiciary, in the parliaments, in the army, at
court, were private property as is now the case with the places of
advocates, notaries and brokers; they had to be bought to enable one
to follow these pursuits, and were very dear; one had to possess a
large capital and be content beforehand to derive only a mediocre
revenue from it, 10, 5 and sometimes 3 % on the purchase-money.[11]
The place once acquired, especially if an important one, involved
official parade, receptions, an open table, a large annual outlay;[12]
it often ran the purchaser in debt ; he knew that his acquisition
would bring him more consideration than crowns. On the other hand, to
obtain possession of it, he had to secure the good-will of the body of
which he became a member, or of the patron who bestowed the office.
That is to say, he must be regarded by his future colleagues as
acceptable, or by the patron as a guest, invited, and feasible friend,
in other words, provide sponsors for himself, furnish guarantees,
prove that he was well-off and well-educated, that his ways and
manners qualified him for the post, and that, in the society he was
about to enter, he would not turn out unsuitable. To maintain one's
self in office at court one was obliged to possess the tone of
Versailles, quite different from that of Paris and the provinces.[13]
To maintain one's self in a high parliamentary position, one was
expected to possess local alliances, moral authority, the traditions
and deportment handed down from father to son in the old magistrate
families, and which a mere advocate, an ordinary pleader, could not
arrive at.[14] In short, on this staircase, each distinct story
imposed on its inmates a sort of distinct costume, more or less
costly, embroidered and gilded, I mean a sum of outward and inward
habits and connections, all obligatory and indispensable, comprising
title, particle and name: the announcement of any bourgeois name by a
lackey in the ante-chamber would be considered a discord;
consequently, one had one's self ennobled in the current coin, or
assumed a noble name gratis. Caron, son of a watchmaker, became
Beaumarchais; Nicolas, a foundling, called himself M. de Champfort;
Danton, in public documents, signed himself d'Anton; in the same way,
a man without a dress-coat hires or borrows one, no matter how, on
going out to dine; all this was tolerated and accepted as a sign of
good behavior and of final conformity with custom, as in testimony of
respect for the usages of good society.
Through this visible separation of stories, people had acquired the
habit of remaining in the condition in which they were placed; they
were not irritated by being obliged to stay in it ; the soldier who
enlisted did not aspire to become an officer; the young officer of the
lower noblesse and of small means did not aspire to the post of
colonel or lieutenant-general; a limited perspective kept hopes and
the imagination from fruitlessly launching forth into a boundless
future: ambition, humbled to the ground at the start, walked instead
of flying; it recognized at the outset that the summits were beyond
its reach; to be able to mount upward one or two steps was enough. -
In general, a man obtained promotion on the spot, in his town,
corporation or parliament. The assistant-counselor who pleaded his
first case in the court of Grenoble or of Rennes calculated that, in
twenty years, he would become first judge at Grenoble or at Rennes,
rest twenty years or more in office, and he aimed at nothing better.
Alongside of the counselor of a (court) presidency, or of an
"election" magistrate, of a clerk in the salt-tax bureau, or in the
frontier custom-house, or in the bureau of "rivers and forests,"
alongside of a clerk in the treasury or ministry of foreign affairs,
or of a lawyer or prosecuting attorney, there was always some son,
son-in-law or nephew, fitted by domestic training, by a technical
apprenticeship, by moral adaptation, not only to perform the duties of
the office, but to be contented in it, pretend to nothing beyond it,
not to look above himself with regret or envy, satisfied with the
society around him, and feel, moreover, that elsewhere he would be out
of his element and uncomfortable.
Life, thus restricted and circumscribed, was more cheerful then than
at the present day; souls, less disturbed and less strained, less
exhausted and less burdened with cares, were healthier. The Frenchman,
exempt from modern preoccupations, followed amiable and social
instincts, inclined to take things easily, and of a playful
disposition owing to his natural talent for amusing himself by amusing
others, in mutual enjoyment of each other's company and without
calculation, through easy and considerate intercourse, smiling or
laughing, in short, in a constant flow of inspiration, good-humor and
gayety.[15] It is probable that, if the Revolution had not intervened,
the great parvenus of the time and of the Empire would, like their
forerunners, have submitted to prevailing necessities and readily
accommodated themselves to the discipline of the established Régime.
Cambacérès, who had succeeded to his father as counselor at the bar of
Montpellier, would have become president (of the tribunal) in his
turn; meanwhile, he would have composed able jurisprudential treatises
and invented some new pâté de becfigues; Lebrun, former collaborator
with Maupeou, might have become counselor in the court of excise at
Paris, or chief-clerk in the Treasury department; he would have kept
up a philosophical salon, with fashionable ladies and polished men of
letters to praise his elegant and faulty translations. Amongst the
future marshals, some of them, pure plebeians, Masséna, Augereau,
Lannes, Ney, Lefebvre, might have succeeded through brilliant actions
and have become "officers of fortune," while others, taking in hand
specially difficult services, like commandant Fischer who undertook
the destruction of Mandrin's band, and again, like the hero Chevert,
and the veteran Lückner, might have become lieutenant-generals. Rough
as these men were, they would have found, even in the lower ranks, if
not full employment for their superior faculties, at least sufficient
food for their strong and coarse appetites; they would have uttered
just the same oaths, at just as extravagant suppers, with mistresses
of just the same caliber.[16] Had their temperament, character and
genius been indomitable, had they reared and pranced to escape bridle
and harness and been driven like ordinary men, they need not have
broken out of the traces for all that; there were plenty of openings
and issues for them on either side of the highway on which others were
trotting along. Many families often contained, among numerous
children, some hot-headed, imaginative youth, some independent nature
rebellious in advance, in short, a refractory spirit, unwilling or
incapable of being disciplined; a regular life, mediocrity, even the
certainty of getting ahead, were distasteful to him; he would abandon
the hereditary homestead or purchased office to the docile elder
brother, son-in-law or nephew, by which the domain or the post
remained in the family; as for himself, tempted by illimitable
prospects, he would leave France and go abroad; Voltaire says[17] that
"Frenchmen were found everywhere," in Canada, in Louisiana, as
surgeons, fencing-masters, riding-masters, officers, engineers,
adventurers especially, and even filibusters, trappers and
backwoodsmen, the supplest, most sympathetic and boldest of colonizers
and civilizers, alone capable of bringing the natives under
assimilation by assimilating with them, by adopting their customs and
by marrying their women, mixing bloods, and forming new and
intermediary races, like Dumas de La Pailleterie, whose descendants
have furnished original and superior men for the past three
generations, and like the Canada half-breeds by which the aboriginal
race succeeds in transforming itself and in surviving. They were the
first explorers of the great lakes, the first to trace the Mississippi
to its mouth, and found colonial empires with Champlain and Lasalle in
North America and with Dupleix and La Bourdonnais in Hindustan. Such
was the outlet for daring, uncontrollable spirits, restive
temperaments under constraint and subject to the routine of an old
civilization, souls astray and unclassed from their birth, in which
the primitive instincts of the nomad and barbarian sprouted afresh, in
which insubordination was innate, and in which energy and capacity to
take the initiative remained intact. - Mirabeau, having compromised
his family by scandals, was on the point of being dispatched by his
father to the Dutch Indies, where deaths were common; it might happen
that he would be hanged or become governor of some large district in
Java or Sumatra, the venerated and adored sovereign of five hundred
thousand Malays, both ends being within the compass of his merits. Had
Danton been well advised, instead of borrowing the money with which to
buy an advocate's place in the Council at about seventy thousand
livres, which brought him only three cases in four years and obliged
him to hang on to the skirts of his father-in-law, he would have gone
to Pondicherry or to the palace of some indigenous rajah or king as
agent, councilor or companion of his pleasures; he might have become
prime-minister to Tippoo Sahib, or other potentate, lived in a palace,
kept a harem and had lacs of rupees; undoubtedly, he would have filled
his prisons and occasionally emptied them by a massacre, as at Paris
in September, but it would have been according to local custom, and
operating only on the lives of Sheikhs and Mahrattas. Bonaparte, after
the fall of his protectors, the two Robespierres, finding his career
arrested, wanted to enter the Sultan's service; accompanied by Junot,
Muiron, Marmont and other comrades, he could have carried to
Constantinople rarer commodities, much better compensated in the
Orient than in the Occident, namely military honor and administrative
talent; he would have dealt in these two products, as he did in Egypt,
at the right time and in the right place, at the highest price,
without our conscientious scruples and without our European
refinements of probity and humanity. No imagination can picture what
he would have become there: certainly some pasha, like Djezzar in
Syria, or a khedive like Mahomet-Ali, afterwards at Cairo; he already
saw himself in the light of a conqueror, like Ghengis-Khan,[18] a
founder like Alexander or Baber, a prophet like Mahomet; as he himself
declares, "one could work only on a grand scale in the Orient," and
there he would have worked on a grand scale; Europe, perhaps, would
have gained by it, and especially France.
III. Ambition and Selection.
The Revolution provides an internal outlet and an unlimited career. -
Effect of this. - Exigencies and pretensions of the modern man. -
Theoretical rule of selection among rivals. - Popular suffrage raised
to be lord and judge. - Consequence of its verdict. - Unworthiness of
its choice.
But the Revolution arrived and the ambitions which, under the ancient
Régime, found a field abroad or cooled down at home, arose on the
natal soil and suddenly expanded beyond all calculation. After 1789,
France resembles a hive in a state of excitement; in a few hours, in
the brief interval of an August morning, each insect puts forth two
huge wings, soars aloft and "all whirl together pell-mell;" many fall
to the ground half cut to pieces and begin to crawl upward as before;
others, with more strength or with better luck, ascend and glitter on
the highways of the atmosphere. - Every great highway and every other
road is open to everybody through the decrees of the Constituent-
Assembly, not only for the future, but even immediately. The sudden
dismissal of the entire ruling staff, executive, or consultative,
political, administrative, provincial, municipal, ecclesiastical,
educational, military, judicial and financial, summon to take office
all who covet it and who have a good opinion of themselves. All
previously existing conditions, birth, fortune, education, old family
and all apprenticeships, customs and ways which retard and limit
advancement, are abolished: There are no longer any guarantees or
sponsors; all Frenchmen are eligible to all employments; all grades of
the legal and social hierarchy are conferred by a more or less direct
election, a suffrage becoming more and more popular, by a mere
numerical majority. Consequently, in all branches of the government
under central or local authority and patronage, there is the
installation of a new staff of officials. The transposition which
everywhere substitutes the old inferior to the old superior, is
universal,[19] "lawyers for judges, bourgeois for statesmen, former
plebeians for former nobles, soldiers for officers, officers for
generals, curés for bishops, vicars for curés, monks for vicars,
stock-jobbers for financiers, self-taught persons for administrators,
journalists for publicists, rhetoricians for legislators, and the poor
for the rich." A sudden jump from the bottom to the top of the social
ladder by a few, from the lowest to the highest rung, from the rank of
sergeant to that of major-general, from the condition of a pettifogger
or starving newspaper-hack to the possession of supreme authority,
even to the effective exercise of omnipotence and dictatorship - such
is the capital, positive, striking work of the Revolution.
At the same time, and as an after-effect, a revolution is going on in
minds and the moral effect of the show is greater and more lasting
than the events themselves. The minds have been stirred to their very
depths; stagnant passions and slumbering pretensions are aroused. The
multitude of offices presented and expected vacancies "has excited the
thirst for power, stimulated self-esteem, and fired the hopes of men
the most inept. An fierce, gross presumption has freed the ignorant
and the foolish of any feeling of modesty or incompetence; they have
deemed themselves capable of everything because the law awards public
office simply to the able. Everybody had a perspective glimpse of
gratified ambition; the soldier dreamt only of displacing the officer,
the officer of becoming general, the clerk of supplanting the head
administrator, the lawyer of yesterday of the supreme court, the curé
of becoming bishop, the most frivolous littérateur of seating himself
on the legislative bench. Places and positions, vacant due to the
promotion of so many parvenus, provided in their turn a vast career to
the lower classes. Seeing a public functionary issue out of
nothingness, where is the shoeblack whose soul would not stir with
ambition?" - This new sentiment must be taken into account: for,
whether reasonable or not, it is going to last, maintain its energy,
stimulate men with extraordinary force[20] and become one of the great
incentives of will and action. Henceforth, government and
administration are to become difficult matters; the forms and plans of
the old social architecture are no longer applicable; like
construction is not possible with materials of a different kind,
whether with stable or unstable materials, with men who do not dream
of quitting their condition or with men who think of nothing but that.
In effect, whatever vacancy may occur, each aspirant thinks himself
fit for it, and only one of the aspirants can obtain it. Accordingly
some rule of preference must be adopted outside of the opinion that
each candidate entertains of himself. Accordingly, at a very early
date, one was established, and there could be no better one, namely,
that, among the competitors for the place, the most competent to fill
it should be chosen. Unfortunately, the judge, ordinary, extraordinary
and supreme, instituted to decide in this case, was the plurality of
male, adult Frenchmen, counted by heads, that is to say a collective
being in which the small intelligent, élite body is drowned in the
great rude mass; of all juries, the most incompetent, the easiest
duped and misled, the least able to comprehend the questions laid
before it and the consequences of its answer; the worst informed, the
most inattentive, the most blinded by preconceived sympathies or
antipathies, the most willingly absent, a mere flock of enlisted sheep
always robbed or cheated out of their vote, and whose verdict, forced
or simulated, depended on politicians beforehand, above and below,
through the clubs as well as through the revolutionary government, the
latter, consequently, maneuvering in such a way as to impose itself
along with their favorites on the choice of the French people. Between
1792 and 1799, the republican official staff just described is thus
obtained. - It is only in the army where the daily and keen sense of a
common physical and mortal danger ends in dictating the choice of the
best, and raises tried merit to the highest rank; and yet it must be
noted that Jacobin infatuation bore down as rigorously on the army as
elsewhere and on two occasions: at the outset through the election of
a superior officer conferred on subordinates, which handed rank over
to the noisy disputants and intemperate intriguers of the mess-room;
and again during the Reign of Terror, and even later,[21] in the
persecution or dismissal of so many patriotic and deserving officers,
which led Gouvion-Saint-Cyr and his comrades, through disgust, to
avoid or decline accepting high rank, in the scandalous promotion of
club brawlers and docile nullities, in the military dictatorship of
the civil proconsuls, in the supremacy conferred on Léchelle and
Rossignol, in the subordination forced on Kléber and Marceau, in the
absurd plans of a demagogue with huge epaulettes like Cartaux,[22] in
the grotesque orders of the day issued by a swaggering inebriate like
Henriot,[23] in the disgrace of Bonaparte, and in the detention of
Hoche. - In the civil order of things, it was worse. Not only was the
rule of regulating promotion by merit not recognized but it was
applied in an inverse sense. In the central government as in the local
government, and from top to bottom of the hierarchy, from the post of
minister of foreign affairs down to that of president of a petty
revolutionary committee, all offices were for the unworthy. Their
unfitness kept on increasing inasmuch as incessant weeding out worked
against them, the functionary, degraded by his work, growing worse
along with his function. - Thus the constitutional rights of merit and
capacity ended in the practical privilege of incapacity and demerit.
And in the allotment of grades and social advantages, distributive
justice had given way to distributive injustice, while practice,
contrary to theory, instituted permanently, on the one hand, the
exclusion or retirement of competent, instructed, expert, well-bred,
honorable and respected men and, on the other hand, brought forward
illiterate, inept and rude novices, coarse and vulgar brutes, common
blackguards, men used up or of tarnished reputations, rogues ready for
anything, fugitives from justice, in short the adventurers and
outcasts of every kind and degree.[24] The latter, owing their success
to perversion or lack of conscientiousness, derived their principal
title from their vigorous fists and a fixed determination to hold on
to their places as they had obtained them, that is to say by main
force and by the murder or exile of their rivals. - Evidently, the
staff of officials which the Declaration of Human Rights had promised
was not the staff on duty ten years later there was a lack of
experience.[25] In 1789, careers were open to every ambition; down to
1799, the rivalry of ambitions had simply produced a wild uproar and a
brutal conquest. The great modern difficulty remained: how to
discipline the competition and to find an impartial judge, an
undisputed arbitrator of the competition.
IV. Napoleon, Judge-Arbitrator-Ruler.
Napoleon as judge of competition. - Security of his seat. -
Independence of his decisions. - Suppression of former influences and
end of monarchical or democratic intrigues. - Other influences against
which he is on guard. - His favorite rule. - Estimate of candidates
according to the kind and amount of their useful labor. - His own
competency. - His perspicacity. - His vigilance. - Zeal and labor of
his functionaries. - Result of competition thus viewed and of
functions thus exercised. - Talents utilized and jealousies disarmed.
Behold him, at last, this judge-arbitrator. On the 8th November, 1799,
he appears and takes his seat, and that very evening he goes to work,
makes his selections among the competitors and gives them their
commissions. He is a military chieftain and has installed himself;
consequently he is not dependent on a parliamentary majority, and any
insurrection or gathering of a mob is at once rendered abortive by his
troops before it is born. Street sovereignty is at an end; Parisians
are long to remember the 13th of Vendémaire and the way General
Bonaparte shot them down on the steps of Saint-Roch. All his
precautions against them are taken the first day and against all
agitators whatever, against all opponents disposed to dispute his
jurisdiction. His arm-chair as first Consul and afterwards his throne
as Emperor are firmly fixed; nobody but himself can undermine them; he
is seated definitively and will stay there. Profound silence reigns in
the public crowd around him; some among them dare whisper, but his
police has its eye on them. Instead of conforming to opinion he rules
it, masters it and, if need be, he manufactures it. Alone by himself
from his seat on high, in perfect independence and security, he
announces the verdicts of distributive justice. Nevertheless he is on
his guard against the temptations and influences which have warped the
decisions of his predecessors; in his tribunal, the schemes and
intrigues which formerly obtained credit with the people, or with the
king, are no longer in vogue; from now on, the profession of courtier
or of demagogue is a poor one. - On the one hand, there is no success,
as formerly under the monarchy, through the attentions of the ante-
chamber, through elegant manners, delicate flattery, fashionable
drawing-rooms, or valets and women on an intimate footing; mistresses
here enjoy no credit and there are neither favorites nor the favored;
a valet is regarded as a useful implement; great personages are not
considered as extra-ornamental and human furniture for the palace. Not
one among them dare ask for a place for a protégé which he is
incapable of filling, an advancement which would derange the lists of
promotions, a pass over the heads of others; if they obtain any
favors, these are insignificant or political; the master grants them
as an after-thought, to rally somebody, or a party, to his side; they
personally, their ornamental culture, their high-bred tone, their wit,
their conversational powers, their smiles and bows - all this is lost
on him, or charged to account. He has no liking for their insinuating
and discreet ways;[26] he regards them as merely good domestics for
parade; all he esteems in them is their ceremonial significance, that
innate suppleness which permits them to be at once servile and
dignified, the hereditary tact which teaches them how to present a
letter, not from hand to hand, but on the rim of a hat, or on a silver
plate, and these faculties he estimates at their true worth. - On the
other hand, nobody succeeds, as lately under the Republic, through
tribunal or club verbosity, through appeals to principles, through
eloquent or declamatory tirades; "glittering generalities," hollow
abstractions and phrases made to produce an impression have no effect;
and what is better, political ideology, with a solicitor or pleader,
is a bad note. The positive, practical mind of the judge has taken in
at a glance and penetrated to the bottom of arguments, means and valid
pretensions; he submits impatiently to metaphysics and pettifoggery,
to the argumentative force and mendacity of words. - This goes so far
that he distrusts oratorical or literary talent; in any event when he
entrusts active positions or a part in public business then he takes
no note of it. According to him, "the men who write well and are
eloquent have no solidity of judgment; they are illogical and very
poor in discussion,"[27] they are mere artists like others, so many
word-musicians, a kind of special, narrow-minded instrument, some of
them good solo players, like Fontanes, and who the head of a State can
use, but only in official music for grand cantatas and the decoration
of his reign. Wit in itself, not alone the wit which gives birth to
brilliant expressions and which was considered a prime accomplishment
under the old regime, but general intelligence, has for him only a
semi-value.[28] "I am more brilliant[29], you may say? Eh, what do I
care for your intelligence? What I care for is the essence of the
matter. There is nobody so foolish that is not good for something -
there is no intelligence equal to everything." In fact, on bestowing
an office it is the function which delegates; the proper execution of
the function is the prime motive in determining his choice; the
candidate appointed is always the one who will best do the work
assigned him. No factitious, party popularity or unpopularity, no
superficial admiration or disparagement of a clique, of a salon, or of
a bureau, makes him swerve from his standard of preference.[30] He
values men according to the quality and quantity of their work,
according to their net returns, and he estimates them directly,
personally, with superior perspicacity and universal competency. He is
special in all branches of civil or military activity, and even in
technical detail; his memory for facts, actions, antecedence and
circumstances, is prodigious; his discernment, his critical analysis,
his calculating insight into the resources and shortcomings of a mind
or of a soul, his faculty for gauging men, is extraordinary; through
constant verifications and rectifications his internal repertory, his
biographical and moral dictionary, is kept daily posted; his attention
never flags; he works eighteen hours a day; his personal intervention
and his hand are visible even in the appointment of subordinates.
"Every man called to take part in affairs was selected by him;"[31] it
is through him that they retain their place; he controls their
promotion and by sponsors whom he knows. "A minister could not have
dismissed a functionary without consulting the emperor, while the
ministers could all change without bringing about two secondary
changes throughout the empire. A minister did not appoint even a
second-class clerk without presenting a list of several candidates to
the emperor and, opposite to it, the name of the person recommending
him." All, even at a distance, felt that the master's eyes were on
them. "I worked," says Beugnot,[32] "from night to morning, with
singular ardor; I astonished the natives of the country who did not
know that the emperor exercised over his servitors, however far from
him they might be, the miracle of the real presence. I thought I saw
him standing over me as I worked shut up in my cabinet." - "Under
him," writes Roederer, "there is no man of any merit who, as a reward
for long and difficult labor, does not feel himself better compensated
by a new task than by the most honorable leisure." Never did positions
less resemble sinecures. Never was the happiness of successful
candidates or the misery of unsuccessful candidates better justified.
Never the compliance, the difficulty, the risks of a required task
have been compensated more fairly by the enjoyment of the allocated
rewards nor moderated the bitterness of the frustrated
pretensions.[33] Never were public functions assigned or fulfilled in
a way to better satisfy the legitimate craving for advancement, the
dominant desire of democracy and of the century, and in a way to
better disarm the bad passions of democracy and of the century,
consisting of an envious leveling, anti-social rancor and the
inconsolable regrets of the man who has failed. Never did human
competition encounter a similar judge, so constant, so expert and so
justified. - He is himself conscious of the unique part he plays. His
own ambition, the highest and most insatiate of all, enables him to
comprehend the ambition of others; to place everywhere the man who
suits the post in the post which suits the man - this is what he has
done for himself and what he does for others. He knows that in this
lies his power, his deep-seated popularity, his social utility.
"Nobody," says Napoleon,[34] "is interested in overthrowing a
government in
which all the deserving are employed."
Then, again, comes his significant exclamation at the end, his summary
of modern society, a solemn grandiose figure of speech found in the
legendary souvenirs of a glorious antiquity, a classic reminiscence of
the noble Olympian games,
"Henceforth, all careers are open to talent!"
IV. The Struggle for Office and Title.
Competition and prizes. - Multitude of offices. - How their number is
increased by the extension of central patronage and of the French
territory. - Situation of a Frenchman abroad. - It gives him rank. -
Rapidity of promotion. - Constant elimination and multiplicity of
vacancies in the army. - Preliminary elimination in the civil service.
- Proscription of cultivated men and interruption of education during
the Revolution. - General or special instruction rare in 1800.- Small
number of competent candidates. - Easy promotion due to the lack of
competitors. - Importance and attraction the prizes offered. - The
Legion of Honor. - The imperial nobility. - Dotations and majorities.
- Emulation.
Let us now consider the career which he thus opens to them and the
prizes he offers. These prizes are in full view, ranged along each
racecourse, graduated according to distances and more and more
striking and magnificent. Every ambition is provided for, the highest
as well as the lowest, and these are countless; for they consist of
offices of every grade in the civil and military hierarchies of a
great centralized State whose intervention is universal, under a
government which systematically tolerates no authority or influence
outside of itself and which monopolizes every species of social
importance for its own functionaries.[35] - All these prizes, even the
smallest and most insignificant, are awarded by it. In the first
place, Napoleon has two or three times as many offices to bestow, on
the soil of old France alone, as the former kings; for, even in the
choice of their staff of officials, the latter were not always free;
in many places they did not have, or no longer had the right of
appointment. At one time, this right be longed from time immemorial to
provincial or municipal corporations, laic or ecclesiastic, to a
certain chapter, abbey or collegiate church, to a bishop in his
diocese, to the seignior in his seignory. At another time the king,
once possessing the right, had surrendered or alienated it, in whole
or in part through gratuitous favor and the concession of a
survivorship or for money and through the sale of an office; in brief,
his hands were tied fast by hereditary or acquired privileges There
are no privileges now to fetter the hands of the First Consul. The
entire civil organization dates from him. The whole body of officials
is thus of his own selection, and under him it is much more numerous
than that of the ancient Régime; for he has extended the attributions
of the State beyond all former bounds. Directly or indirectly, he
appoints by hundreds of thousands the mayors and councilors of
municipalities and the members of general councils, the entire staff
of the administration, of the finances, of the judicature, of the
clergy, of the University, of public works and of public charity.
Besides all this, myriads of ministerial and notarial officials
lawyers, ushers, auctioneers, and by way of surplus, or as a natural
result, the members of every great private association since no
collective enterprise, from the Bank of France and the press to stage
lines and tontines, may be established without his permission, nor
exist without his tolerance. Not counting the latter, and after
deducting likewise the military or active duty and the functionaries
who draw pay, the prefect from the earliest years report that, since
1789, the number of people "employed or under government pay" has more
than doubled: In Doubs, in the year IX, instead of 916 there are 1820;
in Meurthe in the year XIII, instead of 1828 there are 3091; in Ain,
in 1806 instead of 955 there are 1771[36]. As to the army, it has
tripled, and according to the First Consul's own calculations, instead
of 9,000 or 10,000 officers as in 1789, there are more than 20,000. -
These figures go on increasing on the old territory through the very
development of the new organization, through the enormous increase of
the army, through the re-establishment of religious worship, through
the installation of droits réunis, through the institution of the
University, owing to the increasing number of officials, curés and
assistant-priests, of professors and school-teachers, and of retired
and pensioned invalids.[37]
And these figures, which already swell of themselves, are to swell an
additional half through the extension of the ancient territory.
Instead of 86 departments with a population of 26 millions, France
ends in comprising 130 departments with 42 million inhabitants -
Belgium and Piedmont, then Hanover, Tuscany, Central Italy, Illyria,
Holland and the Hanseatic provinces, that is to say 44 departments and
16 millions of annexed Frenchmen;[38] affording another large outlet
for little and big ambitions. - Add still another, as a surplus and
not less extensive outlet, outside of France: for the subject princes
and the vassal kings, Eugène, Louis, Jerome, Murat, and Joseph, each
with their governments, import into their realms a more or less
numerous body of French officials, familiars, court dignitaries,
generals, ministers, administrators, even clerks and other
indispensable subalterns, if for no other purpose than to bring the
natives within the military and civil compartments of the new Régime
and teach them on the spot the conscription, the administration, the
civil code, and systems of accounts like those of Paris. Even in the
independent or allied States, in Prussia, in Poland, in the
confederation of the Rhine, there are, at intervals or permanently,
Frenchmen in position and in authority to command contingent forces,
to garrison fortresses, to receive supplies and secure the payment of
war contributions. Even with the corporal and custom-house inspector
on duty on coast at Dantzig and at Reggio, the sentiment of victorious
priority equals the possession of rank; in their eyes the natives of
the country are semi-barbarians or semi-savages, a backward or
prejudiced lot, not even knowing how to speak their language; they
feel themselves superior, as formerly the señor soldado of the
sixteenth century, or the civis romanus. Never since the great Spanish
monarchy and the Old Roman empire has a conquering State and
propagator of a new régime afforded its subjects such gratifications
of self-esteem, nor opened so vast a career to their ambitions.
For, having once adopted their career, they know better than the
Spaniards under Charles V. or the Romans under Augustus, how far they
can go and how fast they can get ahead. No obstacle impedes them;
nobody feels himself confined his post; each considers the one he
occupies as provisional, each takes it only to await a better one,
anticipating another at a very early date; he dashes onward, springs
aloft and occupies in advance the superior post which he means to
secure on the first vacancy, and, under this Régime, the vacancies are
numerous. - These vacancies, in the military service and in the grade
of officers, may be estimated at nearly four thousand per annum;[39]
after 1808 and 1809, but especially after the disaster of 1812 and
1813, places are no longer lacking but subjects fill them; Napoleon is
obliged to accept youths for officers as beardless as his conscripts,
eighteen-year-old apprentices who, after a year or six months in the
military academy, might finish their apprenticeship on the battle-
field, pupils taken from the philosophy or rhetoric classes, willing
children (de bonne volonté): On the 13th of December 1808, he draws 50
from his lycées, who don the gold-lace of under-officers at once; in
1809, he calls out 250, to serve in the depot battalions; in 1810, he
calls out 150 of the age of nineteen who "know the drill," and who are
to be sent on distant expeditions with the commission of second-
lieutenant; in 1811, 400 for the school of noncommissioned officers at
Fontainebleau, 20 for the Ile-de-Ré and 84 who are to be
quartermasters; and, in 1812, 112 more and so on. Naturally, thanks to
annually increasing gaps made by cannon and bayonet, the survivors in
this body of youth mount the faster; in 1813 and 1814, there are
colonels and lieutenant-colonels of the age of twenty-five.
In the civil service, if fewer are killed everybody is almost equally
over tasked. Under this reign one is soon used up, physically and
morally, even in pacific employments, and this also supplies
vacancies. Besides, in default of deaths, wounds and violent
elimination, there is another elimination, not less efficacious,
operating in this direction, and for a long time, in favor of men of
ability, preparing places for them and accelerating their advancement.
Napoleon accepts none but competent candidates; now, in 1800, there is
a dearth of acceptable candidates for places in the civil service and
not, as in 1789, or at the present time, a superabundance and even too
great a crowd. - In the military service especially, capacity is
innate; natural endowments, courage, coolness, quick perception,
physical activity, moral ascendancy, topographical imagination form
its principal elements; men just able to read, write and cipher
became, in three or four years, during the Revolution, admirable
officers and conquering generals. - It is not the same in relation to
civil capacity; this requires long and continuous study. To become a
priest, magistrate, engineer, professor, prefect or school-teacher,
one must have studied theology or law, mathematics or Latin,
administration or the finances. If not, the functionary is not
qualified to serve: he must, at the very least, know how to spell, be
able to write French, examine a law-case, draw up a report, keep
accounts, and if needs be, comprehend a plan, make an estimate and
read off a map. Men of this stamp are rare at the beginning of the
Consulate. As notables,[40] the Revolution mowed them down first.
Among all their sons and so many well-bred youth who have become
soldiers through patriotism, or who have left their families to
prevent these from becoming suspect, one half repose on the
battlefield or have left the hospital only for the cemetery; "the
muscadin[41] died from the first campaign." In any event, for them and
their younger brothers, for the children beginning to learn Latin and
mathematics, for all who hoped to pursue liberal professions, for the
entire generation about to receive either a superior, a common, or
even a primary instruction, and hence to furnish brains prepared for
intellectual work, there was a lack of this for ten years. Not only
were the endowments which provided for instruction confiscated but the
educational staff, nearly all ecclesiastic, was one of the most
proscribed among those proscribed. Whilst military requisition and the
closing of the schools suppressed the pupils, massacres, banishment,
imprisonment, destitution and the scaffold suppressed the teachers.
Whilst the ruin of universities and colleges did away with theoretical
apprenticeship, the ruin of manufactures and of trade abolished
practical apprenticeship. Through the long interruption of all
studies, general instruction as well as special competency became rare
product in the market. - Hence it is that, in 1800, and during the
three or four following years, whoever brought to market either one
the other of these commodities was certain of a quick sale;[42] the
new government needed them more than anybody. The moment the seller
made up his mind, he was bought, and, whatever he may be, a former
Jacobin or a former émigré; he is employed. If he brings both
commodities and is zealous, he is promptly promoted; if, on trial, he
is found of superior capacity, he will, like Mollien, Gaudin,
Tronchet, Pasquier and Molé, attain to the highest posts, for he finds
scarcely any competitors. These he would have had had things followed
their usual course; it is the Revolution which has cleared the ground
around him; without that the road would have been obstructed;
competent candidates would have swarmed. Reckon, if possible, how many
men of talent who were destroyed, royalists, monarchists, feuillants,
Girondists and even Jacobins. They were the élite of the noblesse, of
the clergy, of the bourgeoisie, of the youth and those of riper age.
Thus rid of their most formidable rivals the survivors pursue their
way at top speed; the guillotine has wrought for them in advance; it
has effected openings in their own ranks, made by bullets in every
battle in the ranks of the army, and, in the civil hierarchy as in the
military hierarchy, merit, if demonstrated by services, or not
arrested by death, reaches the highest summit in very few years.
The prizes offered on these summits are splendid; no attraction is
lacking. The great trainer who displays them has omitted none of the
seductions which excite and stimulate an ordinary mind. He has
associated with the positive values of power and wealth every value
incident to imagination and opinion; hence his institution of
decorations and the Legion of Honor.[43]
"They call it a toy,"[44] said he, " but men are led by toys. . .
Frenchmen are not changed by ten years of revolution. . . . See how
the people prostrate themselves before foreign decorations: they have
been surprised by them and accordingly do not fail to wear them. . . .
The French cherish but one sentiment, honor: that sentiment, then,
requires nourishing - they must have honors."
A very few are satisfied with their own achievements; ordinary men
are not even content with the approbation they perceive in the eyes of
others: it is too intermittent, too reserved, too mute; they need fame
that is brilliant and noisy; they want to hear the constant hum of
admiration and respect whenever they appear or whenever their name is
mentioned. Even this does not suffice; they are unwilling that their
merit should rest in men's minds in the vague state of undefined
greatness, but that it should be publicly estimated, have its current
value, enjoy undisputed and measured rank on the scale above all other
lesser merits. - The new institution affords complete satisfaction to
all these exigencies of human and French nature. On the 14th of July,
1804,[45] the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, Napoleon
administers the oath to the legionaries and, after a solemn mass,
distributes the insignia under the dome of the Invalides in the
presence of the empress and the court; and again one month later,
August 16, 1804, on the anniversary of the Emperor's birth, in the
camp at Boulogne, facing the ocean and in full view of the flotilla
assembled to conquer England, before one hundred thousand spectators
and the entire army, to the roll of eighteen hundred drums. No
ceremony, probably, was ever more exciting. The eminent surgeon,
Larrey, then decorated, a man of austere virtue, spoke of it with
emotion to the end of his life and never alluded that unique day but
with a trembling voice. On that day, nearly all the men of superior
and tried merit and talent in France[46] are proclaimed, each with the
title proportionate his degree of eminence - chevaliers, officers,
commanders, grand-officers, and, later on, grand-eagles; each on the
same plane with his equals of a different class, ecclesiastics
alongside of laymen, civilians alongside of soldiers; each honored by
the company of his peers, Berthollet, Laplace and Lagrange alongside
of Kellermann, Jourdan and Lefebvre, Otto and Tronchet alongside of
Masséna, Augereau, Ney, Lannes, Soult and Davout ; four cardinals side
by side with eighteen marshals, and likewise even down to corporal,
and to Egyptian veterans blinded by ophthalmia on the banks of the
Nile, comprising common soldiers who, through some brilliant
achievement, had won a sword or a gun of honor, as, for instance,
Coignet,[47] who, dashing ahead with fixed bayonet, kills five
Austrian artillerymen and takes their cannon himself alone. Six years
before this he was a stable-boy on a farm and could neither read nor
write; he is now mentioned among the first of those promoted, a
colleague and almost a comrade of Monge, the inventor of descriptive
geometry, of de Fontanes, grand-master of the university, of marshals,
admirals, and the highest dignitaries, all sharing in common an
inestimable treasure, the legitimate heirs of twelve years'
accumulated glory by the sacrifice of so many heroic lives and all the
more glorified because so few,[48] and because, in these days, a man
did not obtain the cross by twenty years of plodding in a bureau, on
account of routine punctuality, but by wonderful strokes of energy and
audacity, by wounds, by braving death a hundred times and looking it
in the face daily.
Henceforth, legally as well as in public opinion, they form the staff
of the new society, its declared, verified notables, enjoying
precedences and even privi1eges. On passing along the street the
sentinel presents arms; a company of twenty-five soldiers attends
their funeral procession; in the electoral colleges of the department
or arrondissement they are electors by right and without being
balloted for, simply by virtue of their rank. Their sons are entitled
to scholarships in La Fléche, at Saint-Cyr, and in the lycées, and
their daughters at Ecouen or Saint-Denis. With the exception of a
title, as formerly, they lack nothing for filling the place of the old
nobility, and Napoleon re-creates this title for their benefit. The
title itself of chevalier, count, duke or prince carries along with an
idea of social superiority; when announced in a drawing room, when it
precedes the first sentence of an address, those who are present do
not remain inattentive; an immemorial prejudice inclines them to award
consideration or even deference. The Revolution tried in vain to
destroy this power of words and of history; Napoleon does better: he
confiscates it; he arrogates to himself the monopoly of it, he steals
the trade-mark from the ancient Régime; he himself creates 48,000
chevaliers, 1000t barons, 388 counts, 31 dukes and 4 princes.
Furthermore, he stamps with his own mark the old nobles whom he
introduces into his nobility: he coins them anew and often with an
inferior title; this or that duke is lowered a notch and becomes
simply a count: taken at par or at a discount the feudal coin must, in
order to pass, receive the imperial stamp which gives it its
recognized value in modern figures.
But, let the old-fashioned metal be what it may, whether gold, silver
or copper, even crude and plebeian, the new coin is of good alloy and
very handsome. Frequently, like the old currency, it displays coats of
arms in high relief, a heraldic crown and the name of a locality; it
no longer bears the name of territory, and it does not call to mind a
primitive sovereignty. On the contrary, it bears the name of a victory
or of a conquest and reminds one of recent exploits. Duc de Montebello
or a Prince de la Moskowa is equivalent in the imagination
contemporaries to a Duc de Montmorency or a Prince de Rohan; for, if
the prince or duke of the empire is without ancestors, he is or will
be an ancestor himself. To these prizes coveted by vanity Napoleon
tacks on every substantial and pecuniary advantage, in ready money or
landed property, not alone large salaries, adjunctive sénatoreries,
occasional munificent gifts,
* a million at one time to General Lasalle, but likewise vast revenues
from the extraordinary domain[49],
* 32,463,817 francs a year divided amongst 4970 persons,
* pensions from 250 to 5000 francs for all legionaries,
* villas, large estates, private incomes, distinct and superb
endowments for those of the highest rank, a fortune of 100,000 livres
income and more to 34 of these,
* a fortune of 450,000 livres in the public funds to Cambacérès, of
683,000 livres in the public funds to Masséna, of 728,000 livres in
the public funds to Ney, of 910,000 livres in the public funds to
Davout, of 1,354,000 livres in the public funds to Berthier,
* and besides all this, three "sovereign principalities," Neufchatel
to Berthier, Benevento to Talleyrand, and Ponte-Corvo to Bernadotte. -
This last attraction which, in these times of violent and premature
death, is of no little account. Napoleon opens out hereditary and
undefined prospects beyond the perspectives of life and of inferior
interests. Each of the titles conferred by him, that of prince, duke,
count, baron, and even that of chevalier, is transmissible in direct
descent, according to primogeniture from father to son, and sometimes
from uncle to nephew, under specified conditions which are very
acceptable, and of which the first is the institution of an
inalienable majority, inattackable, consisting of this or that income
or real property, of bank stock or state securities, from 3000 francs
for common chevaliers up to 200,000 francs for the dukes, that is to
say, a certain fortune in perpetuity due to the sovereign's
liberality, or to the prudence of the founder, and intended to support
the dignity of the title from male to male and from link to link
throughout the future chain of successive inheritors. Through this
supreme reward, the subtle tempter has a hold on the men who care not
alone for themselves but for their family: henceforth, the work as he
does, eighteen hours a day, stand fire, and say to themselves, while
sinking at their desks or facing cannon-ball that their pre-eminence
survives them in their posterity:
"In any event my son will succeed me and even become greater by my
death."
All the temptations which serve to overcome the natural lethargy of
human matter are simultaneously united and; with the exception of
personal conscience and the desire for personal independence, all
other internal springs are strained to the utmost. One unusual
circumstance gives to eager ambitions a further increase of energy,
impulse and enthusiasm. - All these successful or parvenu men are
contemporaries: all have started alike on the same line and from the
same average or low condition in life; each sees old comrades superior
to himself on the upper steps; he considers himself as good they are,
suffers because he is not on their level, and strives and takes risks
so as to mount up to them. But, however high he mounts, he still sees
higher yet others who were formerly his equals; consequently, no rank
obtained by them seems to him above his deserts, and no rank that he
obtains suffices for his pretensions.
"See that Masséna," exclaimed Napoleon,[50] a few days before the
battle of Wagram; "he has honors and fame enough, but he is not
satisfied ; he wants be a prince like Murat and Bernadotte: he will
risk getting shot to-morrow simply to be a prince." -
Above these princes who have only the rank, the title and the money,
come the grand-dukes and reigning viceroys like Murat, grand-duke of
Berg, and Eugene, viceroy of Italy. Above Eugene and Murat are the
vassal-kings, Louis, Joseph, Jerome, then Murat himself, who, among
these, is in a better place, and Bernadotte, the only sovereign that
is independent; all more or less envied by the marshals, all more or
less rivals of each other, the inferior aspiring to the superior
throne, Murat inconsolable at being sent to Naples and not to Spain,
and at having only five millions of subjects instead of thirteen
millions. From top to bottom of the hierarchy and even to the loftiest
places, comprising thrones, the steps rise regularly above each other
in continuous file, so that each leads to the following one, with
nothing to hinder the first-comer, provided he is lucky, has good legs
and does not fall on the way, from reaching the top of the staircase
in twenty or thirty years. "It was commonly reported in the army - he
has been promoted king of Naples, of Holland, of Spain, of Sweden, as
formerly was said of the same sort of man, who had been promoted
sergeant in this or that company." - Such is the total and final
impression which lingers on in all imaginations; it is in this sense
that the people interpret the new Régime, and Napoleon devotes himself
to confirming the popular interpretation. Accordingly, the first duchy
he creates is for Marshal Lefebvre
"purposely," as he says,[51] because "this marshal had been a private
and everybody in Paris had known him as a sergeant in the French
guards."
- With such an example before them, and so many others like it, not
less striking, there is no ambition that does not become exalted, and
often to delirium.
"At this time," says Stendhal, who seized the master-idea of the
reign, "there was no apothecary's apprentice in his back shop,
surrounded by his drugs and bottles, filtering and pounding away in
his mortar, who did not say to himself that, if he chanced to make
some great discovery, he would be made a count with fifty thousand
francs a year."
In those days there was no under-clerk who, in his labored penmanship,
inscribed names on a piece of parchment, that did not imagine his own
name appearing some day on a senatorial or ministerial diploma. At
this time the youthful corporal who dons his first stripes of gold
braid already fancies that he hears the beating of the drums, the
blast of the trumpet, and the salvos of artillery which proclaim him
marshal of the Empire.[52]
V. Self-esteem and a good Reputation.
The inward spring from 1789 to 1815. - Its force. - Its decline. - How
it ends in breaking the machine down.
A new force, extraordinary, is just apparent in history, a spiritual
force analogous to that which formerly stimulated souls in Spain in
the sixteenth century, in European the time of the crusades, and in
Arabia in the time of Mahomet. It stimulates the faculties to excess,
increases energy tenfold, transports man beyond or above himself,
creates enthusiasts and heroes, blinding or rendering men crazy, and
hence the irresistible conquerors and rulers. It stamps its imprint
and leaves its memorials in ineffaceable characters on men and things
from Cadiz to Moscow. It overrides all natural barriers and transcends
all ordinary limits. "The French soldier," writes a Prussian officer
after Jena,[53] "are small and puny. One of our Germans could whip any
four of them. But, under fire, they become supernatural beings. They
are swept along by an indescribable ardor of which there is not a
trace among our soldiers. . . . What can you do with peasants whom
nobles lead into battle, but whose danger they share without any
interest in their passions or recompenses!" - Coupled with the
physical needs which requires a certain amount of ease and of daily
food, and which, if too strenuously opposed, produces passing
jacqueries, there is a still more potent longing which, on suddenly
encountering its object, seizes on it, clings to it, gorges it, and
produces revolutions that last: this longing is the desire to
contemplate one-self with satisfaction and complacency, forming of
one's self a pleasing, flattering image, and of trying to impress and
plant this image in the minds of others; in short, the ambition for a
great self-esteem and of becoming greatly esteemed by others.[54] This
sentiment, according to the quality of the person and according to
circumstances, gives birth sometimes to the noblest virtues and the
most sublime devotion, and at other times to the worst misdeeds and
the most dangerous delirium: the man becomes transfigured, the
sleeping god or demon which both live within him is suddenly aroused.
After 1789, both appear and both together; from this date onward, says
an eye-witness,[55] and, during one quarter of a century, "for most
Frenchmen and in whatever class," the object of life is displaced;
each has put it outside of himself; from now on, the essential thing
for everybody is "to have lived," or "to have died for something," for
an idea. A man becomes the slave of his idea, gives himself up to it;
consequently, he has experienced the intense satisfaction of
considering himself a noble being, of superior essence, foremost among
the first, and of seeing himself regarded in that light and proclaimed
and glorified as such. - This keen, profound and intense pleasure was
first enjoyed by the French on listening to the Declaration of the
Rights of Man; from then, and in good faith, they felt themselves
citizens, philosophers, the destroyers of prejudices and wrongs,
zealots in behalf of truth, liberty and equality, and then, when the
war of 1792 came, the defenders of the country, missionaries and
propagators of every grand principle.[56] - Towards 1796, principles
began to recede in the background;[57] in the ideal portrait which man
makes of himself the liberator and benefactor of mankind gradually
gives way to the admirable and admired hero capable of great
achievements. This inner portrait of himself suffices for his
happiness for some years to come: vanity[58] properly so called and a
calculating ambition are not the incentives of action; if he obtains
promotion it is without asking for it; his aspiration is simply to
display himself, to be lavish of himself and live or die courageously
and gaily[59] along with his comrade; to be considered, outside the
service, the equal, friend and brother of his subordinates and of his
chiefs.[60] Pillage, nevertheless, has begun; for, a long continuance
of war depraves the conqueror; brutality, indifference to property and
to life grows on him; if callous, or he wishes to become so, he eats,
drinks and enjoys the passing hour; if provident and wary, he scrapes
together what he can or levies contributions and hoards money. - Under
the Empire, and especially towards 1808 and 1809, the ideal figure
degenerates still more; from now on, it is the successful or the
coming officer, with his rank and its accouterments, his gold-
embroidered uniform and badges, exercising authority over so many
hundreds and thousands of men and enjoying a certain notable sum of
regular salaries, besides other gratifications bestowed on him by the
master, along with the profits he can make out of the vanquished.[61]
All that he now cares for is rapid promotion, and in any way, noble or
ignoble, at first, of course, on the main road, that is in straining
himself and risking his life, but likewise on a new road, in an
affectation of zeal, in practicing and professing blind obedience, in
abandoning all political ideas, in devoting himself no longer to
France, but to the sovereign: sympathy for his comrades gives way to
harsh rivalry; soldierly friendships, under the anticipation of
advancement, die out. A vacancy due to death is for the benefit of
survivors and they know it. "At Talavera," says Stendhal, "two
officers stood together at their battery, while a ball comes and the
captain falls. 'Good,' says the lieutenant, 'now François is dead and
I shall be captain.' 'Not yet,' says François, who was only stunned
and who gets up on his feet. These two men were neither unfriendly nor
inimical, only the lieutenant wanted to rise a step higher in rank."
And this shrewd observer adds: "Such was the furious egoism then
styled love of glory and which, under this title, the Emperor had
communicated to the French."
On this slope the slide is rapid and abject. Each, at first, thinks of
himself; the individual makes of himself a center. The example,
moreover, comes from above. Is it for France or for himself that
Napoleon works?[62] So many immense enterprises, the conquest of
Spain, the expedition into Russia, the installation of his brothers
and relations on new thrones, the constant partition and rearrangement
of Europe, all those incessant and more and more distant wars, is it
for the public good and common safety that he accumulates them? What
does he himself desire if not to push his fortunes still farther? - He
is too much ambitious (trop ambitionnaire), say his own soldiers;[63]
and yet they follow him to the last. "We have always marched along
with him," replied the old grenadiers,[64] who had traversed Poland to
penetrate into Russia; "we couldn't abandon him this time and leave
him alone by himself." - But others who see him nearer by, those who
stand first and next to him, do as he does; and, however high these
have mounted, they want to mount still higher, or, otherwise, to keep
their places, or, at least, provide for themselves and hold on to
something substantial. Masséna has accumulated forty millions and
Talleyrand sixty;[65] in case of a political crash the money remains.
Soult tried to have himself elected king of Portugal,[66] and
Bernadotte finds means to have himself elected king of Sweden. After
Leipsic, Murat bargains with the allies, and, to retain his Neapolitan
kingdom, he agrees to furnish a contingent against France; before the
battle of Leipsic, Bernadotte is with the allies and fights with them
against France. In 1814, Bernadotte and Joseph, each caring for
himself, the former by intrigues and with the intriguers of the
interior, also by feeling his way with the foreign sovereigns while
the latter, in the absence of Napoleon, by "singular efforts" and
"assiduities" beforehand with Marie Louise thinks of taking the place
of the falling emperor.[67] Prince Eugene alone, or almost alone,
among the great personalities of the reign, is really loyal, his
loyalty remaining always intact exempt from concealed motives and
above suspicion. Everywhere else, the coming crash or sinister rumors
are heard or anticipated; alarm descends from high places, spreads
through the army and echoes along the lines of the lowest ranks. In
1815, the soldier has full confidence in himself and in Napoleon; "but
he is moody, distrustful of his other leaders. . . . Every march
incomprehensible to him makes him uneasy and he thinks himself
betrayed."[68] At Waterloo, dragoons that pass him with their swords
drawn and old corporals shout to the Emperor that Soult and Vandamme,
who are at this moment about going into battle, are haranguing their
troops against him or deserting him; that General Dhénin, who has
repulsed a charge of the enemy and whose thigh is fractured by a
cannon-ball, has just passed over to the enemy. The mechanism which,
for fifteen years, has worked so well, breaks down of itself through
its own action; its cog-wheels have got out of gear; cracks show
themselves in the metal which seemed so sound; the divinations of
popular instinct verify this; the exaggerations of the popular
imagination expand it and suddenly the whole machine rattles down to
the ground.
All this is due to Napoleon having introduced into it the craving for
success as central motor, as the universal main-spring, unscrupulous
ambition, in short, a crude egoism, and in the first place his own
egoism, [69] and this incentive, strained to excess,[70] puts the
machine out of order and then ruins it. After him, under his
successors, the same machinery is to work in the same manner, and
break down in the same way, at the expiration of a more or less
extensive period. Thus far, the longest of these periods has lasted
less than twenty years.
_____________________________________________________________________
Notes:
[1] Most of the French provinces down to the time of Richelieu still
possessed a special representative body which consented to and levied
the taxes; most of these bodies were supported by the all-powerful
minister and replaced by intendants who, from that time on,
administered, or rather exhausted, the country, divided into thirty-
two generalities. A few provinces, however, Brittany, Burgundy,
Languedoc, a part of Provence, Flanders, Artois, and some small
districts in the Pyrenees kept their old representative body and were
called pays d'état, whilst other provinces were designated, by a
strange abuse of language, under the name of pays d'élection."
(Translated from" Madame de Staël et son Temps," vol. I., p. 38.) TR.
[2] Cf. on the antiquity of this sort of mind, evident from the
beginning of society and of French literature, my "History of English
Literature," vol. I., and "La Fontaine et ses fables," pp.10 to 13.
[3] In relation to this sentiment, read La Fontaine's fable of "The
Rat and the Elephant." La Fontaine fully comprehended its social and
psychological bearing. "To believe one's self an important personage
is very common in France. . . . A childish vanity is peculiar to us.
The Spaniards are vain, but in another way. It is specially a French
weakness."
[4] Beugnot, "Mémoires," I., 317. "This equality which is now our
dominant passion is not the noble kindly sentiment that affords
delight by honoring one's self in honoring one's fellow, and in
feeling at ease in all social relationships; no, it is an aversion to
every kind of superiority, a fear lest a prominent position may be
lost; this equality tends in no way to raise up what is kept down, but
to prevent any elevation whatever."
[5] D'Haussonville, "l'Église romaine et le Premier Empire," I., chs
X. and XI.
[6] Decree of March 17, 1808, on the organization of the Israelite
cult. The members of the Israelite consistories and the rabbis must
be accepted by the government the same as the ministers of the other
cults; but their salary, which is fixed, must be provided by the
Israelites of the conscription; the State does not pay this, the same
as with curés or pastors. This is not done until under the monarchy of
July, when the assimilation of the Israelite with the other Christian
cults is effected.
[7] "Travels in France during the years 1814 and 1815 "(Edinburgh,
1806) I., 176. "The nobility, the great landed proprietors, the
yeomanry, the lesser farmers, all of the intermediate ranks who might
oppose a check to the power of a tyrannical prince, are nearly
annihilated." - Ibid., 236. "Scarcely an intermediate rank was to be
found in the nation between the sovereign and the peasant." - Ibid.,
II. 239. "The better class of the inhabitants of the cities, whether
traders and manufacturers or the bourgeoisie of France, are those who
were the most decided enemies of Bonaparte."
[8] Napoleon, desirous of forming an opinion of him, said to Roederer,
"Send me his books." "But," said Roederer, "he is only a translator."
"No matter," replied Napoleon, "I will read his prefaces,"
[9] Cf. the "Dictionnaire biographique," published at Leipsic, 1806-
1808 (by Eymory) 4 vols., and the "Almanach impérial" for 1807 to
1812; many other historic names are found there, and among these the
ladies of the palace. In 1810, Comte de la Rochefoucauld is ambassador
to Holland and Comte de Mercy-Argenteau ambassador to Bavaria.
[10] The Revolution," II., 323. (Ed. Laffont I. 773, note 1)
[11] "The Revolution," vol. III., PP. 318~322. (Ed. Laff. II. pp. 237-
240.)-
[12] "The Ancient Régime," pp. 116-119, 128. (Ed. Laff. I. pp. 90-92,
100-101.)
[13] De Tilly, "Mémoires," I., 153. "The difference between the tone
and language of the court and that of the city was about as great as
that between Paris and the provinces."
[14] Hence the lack of success of the Maupeou parliament.
[15] See the collections of songs previous to the Revolution,
especially military songs such as " Malgré la bataille," - "Dans les
gardes françaises," etc. - At the time of the Restoration, the
pastoral or gallant songs of Florian, Bouffiers and Berquin were still
sung in bourgeois families, each person, young or old, man or woman,
singing one at the dessert. This undercurrent of gayety, geniality and
amiability lasted throughout the Revolution and the Empire. ("Travels
through the South of France, 1807 and 1808," p.132, by Lieutenant-
Colonel Pinkney, of the United States.) "I must once for all say that
the Memoirs of Marmontel are founded in nature." He cites a great many
facts in proof of this, and testifies in all classes to a prompt and
social nature, a natural benevolence or habitual civility which leads
them instinctively, and not unfrequently impertinently, into acts of
kindness and consideration." - The same impression is produced on
comparing the engravings, fashion-plates, light subjects and
caricatures of this period with those of the present epoch. The
malicious sentiment begins only with Béranger; and yet his early
pieces ("Le Roi d'Yvetot," "le Sénateur") display the light air,
accent and happy, instead of venomous, malice of the old song. Nobody
now sings in the lower bourgeoisie or in gatherings of clerks or
students, while, along with the song, we have seen the other traits
which impressed foreigners disappear, the gallantry, the jesting
humor, the determination to regard life as so many hours (une serie de
quarts d'heures, each of which may be separated from the others, be
ample in themselves and agreeable to him who talks and to him or her
who listens.
[16] Read the novels of Pigault-Lebrun: books of the epoch the best
adapted to the men of the epoch, to the military parvenus, swift,
frank, lusty and narrow-minded.
[17] Candide (Récit de la Vieille).
[18] "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de
France, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. "I am sure that his imagination
was more taken with Ghengis-Khan than with Caesar."
[19] "The Revolution," II., 12, 22. (Laff. I. pp. 574, 582.) (Articles
by Mailet-Dupan, "Mercure de France," Dec. 30, 1791, and April 7,
1792.) - Napoleon, "Mémorial" (Sept. 3, 1816), thinks so too and
states the essential characteristic of the Revolution. This consisted
in "telling everybody who held office, every one who had a place or a
fortune: 'Get out.'"
[20] Roederer, III., 534 (January 1809, on Normandy), "Children in
every situation think of becoming soldiers to get the cross (legion of
honor), and the cross secures the chevalier. The desire of
distinction, of passing ahead of some one else, is a national
sentiment."
[21] "The Revolution," II., 248. (Laff. I. p. 747.)
[22] Napoleon, "Mémoires "(edited by M. de Montholon, III., 11-19), on
the extraordinary ignorance of Cartaux. - Ibid., 23, on Doppet's
incapacity, the successor of Cartaux.
[23] "The Revolution," III., 310. (Laff. II. pp. 178-179.)
[24] They called themselves exclusives under the Directory. - Cf. "The
Revolution, II., 23, 187, 196, 245, 297-303, 340-351, 354; book III.,
ch, 2 and 3, and book IV. (Ed. Laff. I. pp. 582, 701, pp. 709-710,
745, 782-787, 821-823 and in Vol. II. pp. 131-167, pp. 167-215 and pp
311-357.)
[25] The declaration of Human Rights in 1789 stated that: "art. 1st,
§ 5. Tous les citoyens sont egalement admissible aux emplois publics.
Les peuples ne connaissent d'autres motifs de préference, dans
élections, que les vertus et les talents." Virtue in French is virtue
in English while talent in French must be translated as being both
talent and skill. (SR.)
[26] Madame de Rémusat, passim. - Roederer, III., 538 (January 1809).
(Words of Napoleon) "I took a few of the old court into my
household. They remained two years without speaking to me and six
months without seeing me . . . I don't like them - they are no good
for anything - their conversation is disagreeable to me."
[27] Napoléon, "Mémoires."
[28] Roederer, "Mémoires."
[29] Taine uses the French expression "esprit" which might both mean
spirit, wit, mind or sense.
[30] Roederer, "Mémoires, "III., 281. "Men, under his government, who
had hitherto been considered incapable are made useful; men hitherto
considered distinguished found themselves mixed in with the crowd; men
hitherto regarded as the pillars of the State found themselves useless
. . . An ass or a knave need never be ambitious to approach Bonaparte,
they will make nothing out of him."
[31] Fiévée, "Correspondance," III., 33. - Roederer, III., 381.
[32] Beugnot, "Mémoires," II., 372.
[33] Lefebvre, a former sergeant in the French guards, who became
marshal of the empire and Duc de Dantzig, with 150,000 francs a year,
received the visit of a comrade who, instead of having mounted the
ladder as he had done, had remained at the bottom of it. The marshal,
a fine fellow, welcomed his comrade heartily, and showed him over his
hotel. The visitor's face gradually grew somber, and bitter words
escaped from his lips; he often murmured, "Ah, how lucky you are!" -
At last, the marshal, impatient, said to him, "Well, I will make all
this over to you on one condition." - "What is it?" - "You must go
down into the court. I will post two grenadiers at the window with
their guns, and they shall fire at you. If they miss, you shall have
the hotel and everything in it." - "Ah, no, thanks!" - "My friend,
more shots than these have been fired at me and nearer by!"
[34] Roederer, III., 332 (Aug. 2, 1800).
[35] Papers of Maine de Biran. (Note communicated by M. Naville.)
Letter of Baron Maurice, prefect of Dordogne, to M. Maine de Biran,
sub-prefect of Bergerac, transmitting to him by order of the minister
of the interior a blank form to be filled up by him presenting the
"Statistics of young ladies belonging to the most notable families of
the arrondissement." The form annexed contained several columns, one
for names and given names, others for the future inheritance of real
and personal estate, etc. A clever or energetic prefect, provided with
this list, was able and was expected to take an active part in
marriages and see that all the large dowries were appropriated on the
right side. - "Memoires de Madame de -------," part 3rd, ch. VIII., p.
154. (These very instructive memoirs by a very sincere and judicious
person are still unpublished. I am not authorized to give the name of
the author.) "It was at this time that the emperor took it into his
head to marry as he saw fit the young girls who had more than 50,000
livres rental." A rich heiress of Lyons, intended for M. Jules de
Polignac, is thus wedded to M. de Marbœuf. M. d'Aligre, by dint of
address and celerity, evades for his daughter first M. de Caulaincourt
and then M. de Faudoas, brother-in-law to Savary, and in stead weds
her to M. de Pommereu. - Baron de Vitrolles, Mémoires, I. 19. (His
daughter was designated by the prefect of the Basses-Alpes.) - Comte
Joseph d'Estourmel, "Souvenirs de France et d'Italie," 239. (Details
of this description of the young ladies to be married and the circular
from the duke de Rovigo, minister of police.) the eight column of the
form was "reserved to describe the physical charms and deformities,
the talents, the conduct and the religious principles of each of the
young ladies."
[36] "Statistiques des Préfets." (Doubs, by Debry, p. 60; Meurthe, by
Marquis, p. 115, Ain, by Bossi, p.240.)
[37] "Statistique de l'Ain," by Bossi, p. 1808. From 1140 in 1801, the
number of employees and others under state pay amounts to 1771 in
1806. This increase is attributed by the prefect to causes just
stated.
[38] Napoleon, "Correspondance." (Note of April 11, 1811.) "There will
always be at Hamburg, Bremen and Lubeck from 8,000 to 10,000 French,
either employees or gendarmes, in the customs and depots."
[39] One officer may be counted to every 50 men in the infantry; in
the cavalry 1 officer to every 25 or 30 men, - This ratio of one
officer to every fifty men indicates that, among the 1,700,000 men who
perished between 1804 and 1815, there were 24,000 officers, which
gives about 3,000 vacancies per annum, to which must be added the
vacancies due to the wounded, disabled and and retired. It must be
noted, moreover, that the death or retirement of an officer above the
grade of second-lieutenant makes several vacancies, vacancies which
are more numerous the higher the rank. When a captain is killed
there are three promotions and so on.
[40] "The Revolution" III., 335. (Laff. II. p. 250) - Already, in
1795, the need of competent and specialized men was so great that the
government sought, even among royalists, for financial and diplomatic
heads of these services; it made offers to M. Dufresne and to M. de
Rayneval. -Ib. 406. - (Cf. "Mémoires" by Gaudin, Miot de Melito and
Mollien.)
[41] Words of Bouquier, reporter of the law on education (session of
the Convention, Frimaire 22, year II).
[42] The reader is recommended to do as I have done and consult
biographies on point, also the souvenirs of his grandparents.
(H.A.Taine.)
[43] Thibaudeau, "Mémoires sur la Consulat," p.88. (Exposition of
motives by Roederer to the corps Législatif, Floréal 25, year X.)
"After all, it is the creation of a new currency of quite different
value from that which issues from the public treasury, a currency of
unchangeable worth and of an inexhaustible mine, since it lies in
French honor; a currency which can solely reward actions regarded as
above any recompense."
[44] Thibaudeau, ibid., 83. (Address by the First Consul to the
council of State, Floréal 14, year X.) - Also "Mémorial": "Old and
corrupt nations are not governed the same as young and virtuous ones;
sacrifices have to be made to interest, to enjoyments, to vanity. This
is the secret of the return to monarchical forms, to titles. crosses,
ribbons, harmless baubles suited to exciting the respect of the
multitude while at the same time enforcing self-respect."
[45] "La Légion d'honneur," by M. Mazas, passim. Details on the
nomination ceremonials. "The veritable date was July 15th, as the 14th
was Sunday. Augereau and about sixty officers, "bad fellows" who
disliked the mass, refused to go into the chapel and remained outside
in the court.
[46] Several generals, Lecourbe, Souham , etc., were excluded as being
too republican or suspect and hostile. Lemercier, Ducis, Delille, and
Lafayette refused. Admiral Truguet, through pique and discontent, had
at first declined the grade of grand-officer, but finally changed his
mind and became at first commander and then grand-officer.
[47] "Les Cahiers du capitaine Coignet," passim and pp. 95, 145. "When
the ceremony was over, handsome women who could get at me to examine
my cross, asked me if they might give me a kiss." - At the Palais
Royal the proprietor of a café says to him: "Order whatever you want,
the Legion of Honor is welcome to anything."
[48] Mazas, ibid., p. 413. - Edmond Blanc, "Napoléon, ses institutions
civiles et administratives," p. 279. - The number of decorated, at
first, was to be 6,000. In 1806, the emperor had nominated 14,500, and
taking his entire reign, until his fall, about 48,000. The real force
of legionaries, however, then living does not surpass at this time
30,000, of which only 1,200 are in civil careers. At the présent time,
December 1, 1888 (documents furnished by the records of the Légion
d'honneur), there are 52.915 decorated persons, of which 31,757 are
soldiers and 21,158 civilians. Under the empire there was in all 1
cross to every 750 Frenchmen; at that time, out of 50 crosses there
were 2 for civil services, while in our day there are nearly 20. (QUID
informs us that on 30-11-1994 the strength amounted to 207,390
persons. SR.)
[49] Edmond Blanc, ibid., 276-299, 325 and 326. (List of titles of
prince and duke conferred by the emperor, and of gifts of 100,000
francs rental or of above that sum.)
[50] Mathieu Dumas, "Mémoires," III., 363.
[51] Napoleon, "Mémoires."
[52] Compare with the Brothers Grimm's fairytale: "The Fisherman and
his Wife."
[53] Thiers, "Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire," V. III., p. 210.
[54] Thiers, ibid., p.195 (October 1806). Napoleon, in one of his
bulletins, had mentioned Murat's cavalry alone, omitting to mention
the infantry of Lannes, which behaved as well. Lannes, disappointed,
did not dare read this bulletin to his men, and spoke to the emperor
about it. 'What reward can they look for if they don't find their
names published by the hundred-tongued voice of Fame which is under
your control!" Napoleon replies: "You and your men are children -
glory enough for all! . . . One of these days your turn will come in
the bulletins of the grand army." Lannes reads this to his troops on
the great square of Stettin and it is received with outbursts of
enthusiasm.
[55] Madame de Rémusat. III., 129.
[56] The Revolution," pp. 356-358. (Laff. I. pp. 825-826.) - Marmont,
"Mémoires," I. 122. (Letter to his mother, January 12, 1795.) "Behold
your son zealously fulfilling his duties, deserving of his country and
serving the republic. . . . We should not be worthy of liberty if we
did nothing to obtain it."
[57] Compare the "Journal du sergent Fricasse," and "les Cahiers du
capitaine Coignet." Fricasse is a volunteer who enlists in the defence
of the country; Coignet is a conscript ambitious of distinguishing
himself, and he says to his masters: "I promise to come back with the
fusil d'honneur or I shall be dead."
[58] Marmont, I., 186, 282, 296. (In Italy, 1796.) "At this epoch, our
ambition was quite secondary; we were solely concerned about our
duties and amusements. The frankest and most cordial union existed
amongst us all. . . . No sentiment of envy, no low passion found room
in our breasts. (Then) what excitement, what grandeur, what hopes and
what gayety! . . . Each had a presentiment of an illimitable future
and yet entertained no idea of personal ambition or calculation." -
George Sand, "Histoire de ma vie." (Correspondence of her father,
Commander Dupin.) - Stendhal, "Vie de Napoléon." "At this epoch
(1796), nobody in the army had any ambition. I have known officers to
refuse promotion so as not to quit their regiment or their mistress.
[59] Roederer, III., 556. (Burgos, April 9, 1809, conversation with
General Lasalle written down the same evening.) " You pass through
Paris?" "Yes, it's the shortest way. I shall get there at five in the
morning; I shall order a pair of boots, get my wife with child and
then leave for Germany." - Roederer remarks to him that one risks
one's life and fights for the sake of promotion and to profit by
rising in the world. "No, not at all. One takes pleasure in it. One
enjoys fighting; it is pleasure enough in itself to fight! You are in
the midst of the uproar, of the action, of the smoke. And then, on
acquiring reputation you have had the fun of making it. When you have
got your fortune you know that your wife and children won't suffer.
That is enough. As for myself, I could die to-morrow." (The details of
this conversation are admirable; no document gives a better idea of
the officer of the epoch.)
[60] Compare with the idea of an ideal Chaver (kibbutznik).: Melford
E. Spiro, wrote "Kibbutz. Venture in Utopia." 60 and described how
the Israeli kibbutzim as early as 1917 wanted the ideal kibbutzim to
be:
Loyal to his people
A brother to his fellows
A man of truth
A helpful and dependable brother
A lover of nature
Obedient to the orders of his leaders
Joyful and gay
Economical and generous
A man of courage
Pure in thoughts, words, and deeds (opposition to drinking, smoking
and sexual relationships).
[61] Balzac has closely studied and admirably portrayed this type in a
"Ménage de Garçon." - See other similar characters in Mérimée ("Les
Mécontens," and "les Espagnols en Danemark"); in Stendhal ("le
Chasseur vert"). I knew five or six of them in my youth.
[62] Words of Marshal Marmont: "So long as he declared 'Everything for
France,' I served him enthusiastically; when he said, 'France and
myself' I served him zealously; when he said, 'myself and France,' I
served him with devotion. It is only when he said, 'Myself without
France,' that I left him."
[63] An expression found by Joseph de Maistre.
[64] An expression heard by Mickiewicz in his childhood.
[65] These sums are given, the former by Mérimée and the latter by
Sainte- Beuve.
[66] M. de Champagny "Souvenirs," III., 183. Napoleon, passing his
marshals in review, said to him (1811): "None of them can take my
place in the command of my armies; some are without the talent, and
others would carry on war for their own benefit. Didn't that burly
Soult want to be king of Portugal?" "Well, sire, war need not be
carried on any longer." "Yes, but how maintain my army? And I must
have an army."
[67] "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de
France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. IV., 112.
(According to the papers of Savary, many of Napoleon's letters and
statements by M. de Saint-Aignan.)
[68] "Mémorial," Aug.26, 1816.
[69] The driving motor of unlimited capitalism as well, a driving
force only to be tempered by the law and by a desire for social
admiration of different kinds. (SR.)
[70] "Travels in France during the years 1814 and 1815." (Edinburgh,
1816, 2 vols.) - The author, a very good observer, thus sums up the
principle of the system: "To give active employment to all men of
talent and enterprise." There is no other condition: "Birth,
education, moral character were completely set aside." - Hence the
general defect of the system. "The French have literally no idea of
any duties which they must voluntarily, without the prospect of
reward, undertake for their country. It never enters their heads that
a man may be responsible for the neglect of those public duties for
the performance of which he receives no regular salary."
BOOK FOURTH. Defect and Effects of the System.
CHAPTER I. Local Society.
I. Human Incentives.
The two Stimuli of human action. - The egoistic instinct and the
social instinct. - Motives for not weakening the social instinct. -
Influence on society of the law it prescribes. - The clauses of a
statute depend on the legislator who adopts or imposes them. -
Conditions of a good statute. - It favors the social instinct. -
Different for different societies. - Determined by the peculiar and
permanent traits of the society it governs. - Capital defect of the
statute under the new régime.
So long as a man takes an interest only in himself, in his own
fortune, in his own advancement, in his own success, his interests are
trivial: all that is, like himself, of little importance and of short
duration. Alongside of the small boat which he steers so carefully
there are thousands and millions of others of like it; none of them
are worth much, and his own is not worth more. However well he may
have provisioned and sailed it, it will always remain what it is,
slight and fragile; in vain will he hoist his flags, decorate it, and
shove ahead to get the first place; in three steps he has reached its
length. However well he handles and maintains it, in a few years it
leaks; sooner or later it crumbles and sinks, and with it goes all his
effort. Is it reasonable to work so hard for this, and is so slight an
object worth so great an effort?
Fortunately, man has, for a better placement of his effort, other
aims, more vast and more substantial: a family, a commune, a church, a
country, all the associations of which he is or becomes a member, all
the collective undertakings in behalf of science, education, and
charity, of local or general utility, most of them provided with legal
statutes and organized as corporations or even as a legal entity. They
are as well defined and protected as he is, but more precious and more
viable: for they are of service to a large number of men and last for
ever. Some, even, have a secular history, and their age predicts their
longevity. In the countless fleet of boats which so constantly sink,
and which are so constantly replaced by others, they last like top
rated liners. The men from the flotilla now and then sign on these
large vessels, and the result of their labor is not, as it is at home,
futile or short-lived; it will remain above the surface after he and
his boat have disappeared. It has entered into the common mass of work
which owes its protection to its mass; undoubtedly the portion he
contributes may be worked over again later on; but its substance
remains, and often also its form:
* like a precept of Jesus,
* like Archimedes' theorem
which rests a definite acquisition, intact and permanently fixed for
two thousand years, immortal from the first day. - Consequently, the
individual may take an interest, no longer merely in his own boat, but
again in some ship, in this or that particular one, in this or that
association or community, according to his preferences and his
aptitudes, according to attractiveness, proximity, and convenience of
access, all of which is a new motivation for his activities, opposing
his egoism, which, powerful as it may be, may still be overcome, since
a soul might be very generous or qualified by long and special
discipline. Out of this issues every sacrifice, the surrender of
one's-self to one's work or to a cause,
* the devotion of the sister of charity or of the missionary,
* the abnegation of the scientist who buries himself for twenty years
in the minutia of a thankless task,
* the heroism of the explorer who risks himself on a desert or among
savages,
* the courage of the soldier who stakes his life in defense of his
flag.
But these cases are rare; with the mass of men, and in most of their
actions, personal interest prevails against common interest, while
against the egoistic instinct the social instinct is feeble. Hence the
danger of weakening this. The temptation of the individual to prefer
his own boat to the large ship is only too great; if it is desirable
for him to go aboard and work there, he must be provided with the
facilities and motives which prompt him to go aboard and do the work;
at the very least, he must not be deprived of them. Now, that depends
on the State, a sort of central flag-ship, the only one that is armed,
and which has all subordinate vessels under its guns; for, whatever
the society may be, provincial or municipal, educational or
charitable, religious or laic, it is the State which sanctions or
adopts its statues, good or bad, and which, by its laws, tribunals,
and police, insures their execution, whether rigidly or carelessly.
Therefore, on this point, it is responsible; it must adopt or impose
the proper statute, the most suitable social form for strengthening
the social instinct, for maintaining disinterested zeal, for the
encouragement of voluntary and gratuitous labor.
This form, of course, differs according to different societies; the
same charter or constitution is not proper for a church system and a
commune, nor for a Protestant church and a Catholic church, nor for a
town of one hundred thousand inhabitants and a village of five
hundred. Each association has its own peculiar and distinctive
features, which grade it according to its kind, according to its
spiritual or temporal aims, according to its liberal or authoritative
spirit, according to is small or large dimensions, according to the
simplicity or complexity of its affairs, according to the capacity or
incapacity of its members: features which within it are both efficient
and permanent; whatever the legislator may do, these will remain and
will regulate all activity. Thus let him, in each case, keep this in
mind. But in all cases his office is the same; always, on drawing up
and countersigning a statute, he intervenes in the coming conflict
between the social instinct and the egoistic instinct; every provision
which he enacts will contribute, nearby or at a distance, to the final
ascendancy of the former or of the latter. Now, the legislator the
natural ally of the former, for the former is his indispensable
auxiliary. In every work or enterprise of public utility, if the
legislator is the external promoter, social instinct is the internal
promoter; and on the inner spring becoming weak or breaking, the
impulsion from outside remains without effect. Hence it is that, if
the legislator would accomplish anything, otherwise than on paper, he
must, before any object or interest, concern himself with the social
instinct[1]; thus preserving and humoring it; find room for it and its
usefulness; let it have full play; getting all the service it is
capable of rendering, and especially not twist or release it. - In
this respect, any blunder might prove disastrous; and in every statute
for each society, for each of the human vessels which gather together
and serve as a retinue of individual vessels, there are two capital
errors. On the one hand, if the statute, in fact and practically, is
or becomes too grossly unjust, if the rights and benefits which it
confers are not compensated by the duties and obligations it imposes;
if it multiplies excessive burdens for some and sinecures for others;
if, at last, the exploited individual discovers that he is overcharged
beyond his due, - thereafter he refuses on his own to add voluntarily
to his load. Let others, let the favored and the privileged bear the
gratuitous, extra weight. Far from stepping forward and offering his
shoulders, he gets out of the way, hides himself, and lightens his
load as much as he can; he even rebels when he has a chance, and
violently casts off every legal burden, be it tax or due of any kind.
Thus did the ancient régime perish. - On the other hand, if the
statute withdraws the management of the ship from those who are
concerned; if, on this vessel, which belongs to them, it permanently
installs a foreign crew, which assumes and exercises all command, then
the owner of the vessel, reduced to the humble condition of a mere
subject and quiescent taxpayer, will no longer feel concerned. Since
the intruders exercise all authority, let them have all the trouble;
the working of the ship concerns them and not him; he looks on as a
spectator, without any idea of lending a hand; he folds his arms,
remains idle, and becomes critical. - Against the first defect, the
new régime is on its guard: there must be neither the preferred nor
the disgraced, neither favors nor exemptions, neither exclusions nor
releases, no more misappropriation, embezzlement, or robbery, not
alone in the State, but elsewhere in any direction, - in the
department, in the commune, in the Church, or in educational and
benevolent institutions. It excels in practicing distributive justice.
The second defect is its hidden flaw: the legislator having introduced
this into all local and special statutes, its effects differ according
to different societies; but all these effects converge, paralyzing in
the nation the best half of the soul, and, worse still, to leading the
will astray and perverting the public mind, transforming generous
impulses into evil outbursts, and organizing lasting inertia, ennui,
discontent, discord, feebleness, and sterility.[2]
II. Local Community.
Local societies. - Their principal and distinctive character. - Their
type on a small scale. - A dwelling-house in Annecy or Grenoble. -
Compulsory association of its inmates. - Its object and limits. -
Private in character.
Let us first consider local society whether a province, a department,
or a county. For the past ten years (1789-99), the legislator has
unceasingly deformed and assaulted. On his side, he refuses to open
his eyes; preoccupied with theories, he will not recognize it for what
it is in reality, a society of a distinct species, different from the
State, with its own peculiar aims, its limits marked out, its members
prescribed, its statutes drawn up, everything formed and defined
beforehand. As it is local, it is founded on the greater or less
proximity of its habitations. Thus, to comprehend it, we must take a
case in which this proximity is greatest that of certain houses in
some of our southeastern towns, as, for example, Grenoble and Annecy.
Here, a house often belongs to several distinct owners, each
possessing his story, or apartment on a story, one owning the cellar
and another the attic, each enjoying all the rights of property over
his portion, the right of renting it, selling it, bequeathing it, and
mortgaging it, but all holding it in common for the maintenance of the
roof and the main walls. - Evidently, their association is not a free
one; willingly or not, each forms a member of it, for, willingly or
not, each benefits or suffers through the good or bad state of the
roof and the principal walls: therefore, all must furnish their quota
of the indispensable expenses; even a majority of votes would not rid
them of these; one claimant alone would suffice to hold them
responsible; they have no right to impose on him the danger which they
accept for themselves, nor to shirk expenses by which they profit as
well as himself. Consequently, on the report of an expert, the
magistrate interferes, and, willingly or not, the repairs are made;
then, willingly or not, both by custom and in law, each pays his
quote, calculated according to the locative value of the portion
belonging to him. - But here his obligations cease. In fact as in law,
the community (of property) is restricted; the associates take good
care not to extend this, not to pursue other aims at the same time,
not to add to their primitive and natural purpose a different and
supplementary purpose, not to devote one room to a Christian chapel
for the residents of the house, another room for a kindergarten for
the children that live in it, and a side room to a small hospital for
those who fall ill; especially, they do not admit that a tax may be
imposed for these purposes and each of them be subject to a
proportional increase of assessment at so many additional centimes per
franc.[3] For, if the proprietor of the ground-floor is an Israelite,
the proprietor of a room on the second story is a bachelor, the
proprietor of the fine suite of rooms on the first story is rich, and
has a doctor visit him at the house, these must pay for a service for
which they get no return. - For the same reason, their association
remains private; it does not form part of the public domain; they
alone are interested in it; if the State let us use its tribunals and
officials, it is the same as it is with ordinary private individuals.
It would be unjust both against it and against itself if it would
exclude or exempting it from common right, if it put it on its
administrative rolls. It would deform and disrupt its work if it
interfered with its independence, if added to its functions or to its
obligations. It is not under its tutelage, obliged to submit its
accounts to the prefect; it delegates no powers and confers no right
of justice, or police; in short, it is neither its pupil nor its
agent. Such is the lien which permanent proximity establishes between
men; we see that it is of a singular species: neither in fact, nor in
law, can the associates free themselves from it; solely because they
are neighbors, they form a community for certain indivisible or
jointly owned things, an involuntary and obligatory community. To make
amends, and even owing to this, I mean through institution and in the
natural order of things, their community is limited, and limited in
two ways, restricted to its object and restricted to its members,
reduced to matters of which proprietorship or enjoyment is forcibly in
common, and reserved to inhabitants who, on account of situation and
fixed residence, possess this enjoyment or this property.i
III. Essential Public Local Works.
Analysis of other local societies, commune, department, or province. -
Common interests which necessitate local action. - Two objects in
view: care of public roads and means of protection against spreading
calamities. - Why collaboration is an obligation. - Neighbors
involuntarily subject to a common bond on account of proximity. -
Willingly or not each shares in its benefits. - What portion of the
expense belongs to each. - Equal advantages for each. - The unequal
and proportionate advantages for each in his private expenses,
industrial or commercial gains, and in the locative value of his real
estate. - Each person's quota of expense according to his equal and
proportionate share in advantages.
All local societies are of this kind, each limited to a certain
territory and included with others like it inside a larger area, each
possessing two budgets depending on whether it is a distinct body or
member of a larger corporation, each, from the commune to the
department or province, instituted on a basis of interests which make
them jointly but involuntarily liable. - There are two of these
important interests which, as in the Annecy building, elude human
arbitrariness, which demand common action and distribution of the
expense, because, as in the Annecy building, they are the inevitable
results of physical proximity:
First, comes care for the public highways, by land or by water, river
navigation, canals, towing-paths, bridges, streets, public squares,
by-roads, along with the more or less optional and gradual
improvements which public roads demand or prescribe, such as their
laying-out, sidewalks, paving, sweeping, lighting, drainage, sewers,
rolling, ditches, leveling, embankments, and other engineering works,
which establish or increase safety and convenience in circulation,
with facilities for and dispatch in transportation.
Next, comes protection against the spread of calamities, such as
fires, inundations, contagious diseases, epidemics, along with the
more or less optional and remote precautions which this protection
exacts or recommends, night watchers in Russia, dikes in Holland,
levees in the valleys of the Po and the Loire, cemeteries and
regulations for interment, cleanliness of the streets, ventilation of
holes and corners, drainage of marshes, hydrants, and supplies of
drinkable water, disinfecting of contaminated areas, and other
preventive or necessary hygienic measures which remove or prevent
insalubrities growing out of neighborhood or contact.
All this has to be provided for, and the enterprise, if not wholly and
in its developments, at least in itself and in what is necessary,
imposes itself, collectively, on all the inhabitants of the
conscription, from the highest to the lowest. For, in the absence of a
public road, none of them can do his daily work, travel about, or even
leave his premises; while transportation ceases and trade is
suspended; hence, commerce and other pursuits languish, industry is
arrested, agriculture becomes impracticable or fruitless; the fields
are no longer cultivated; while provisions, food, including bread,[4]
everything is wanting; the dwellings becoming uninhabitable, more so
than the Annecy houses when the roofs fall in and let in the rain. -
On the other hand, for lack of protection against calamities, these
get a free rein: the day arrives when an equinoctial tide submerges
the flat coastal area, when the river overflows and devastates the
countryside, when the conflagration spreads, when small-pox and the
cholera reach a contagious point, and life is in danger, far more
seriously imperiled than when, in the Annecy domicile, the main walls
threaten to tumble down.[5]
Undoubtedly, I can personally accept this miserable condition of
things, resign myself to it, and consent, as far as I am concerned, to
shut myself up within my own walls, to fast there, and run the risk,
more or less imminent, of being drowned, burnt, or poisoned; but I
have no right to condemn another to do this, nor to refuse my
contribution to a protection by which I am to profit. As to my share
of the expense it is fixed beforehand, and fixed through my share in
the benefit:
Whoever receives, owes, and in proportion to what he receives;
such is an equitable exchange; no society is prosperous and healthy
without this; it is essential that, for each member of it, the duties
should exactly compensate the advantages, and that the two sides of
the scale should balance. In the local community, the care taken of
public roads and the precautions taken against natural calamities are
useful in two ways: one, which especially improves the condition of
persons, and the other, which especially improves the condition of
things. The first is equal and the same for all. The poor man, quite
as much as the rich one, needs to go and come and to look after his
affairs; he uses the street, pavement, sidewalks, bridges, highways,
and public fountains quite as much; he equally benefits by the
sweeping and lighting of the public gardens. It may be claimed that,
in certain respects, he derives more benefits from all this; for he
suffers sooner and more keenly when bad roads stop transportation,
arrest labor, and increase the cost of food; he is more subject to
contagion, to epidemics, to all physical ills; in case of a fire, the
risks of a workman in his garret, at the top of steep, narrow stairs,
are greater than those of the opulent proprietor on the first story,
in a mansion provided with a broad range of steps. In case of
inundation, the danger is more suddenly mortal for the humble
villager, in his fragile tenement, than for the gentleman farmer in
his massive constructions. Accordingly, under this heading, the poor
man owes as much as the rich one; the rich man, at least, owes no more
than the poor one; if, each year, the poor man cannot pay but one
franc, the rich one, each year, should not pay more than that sum
likewise. - The second advantage, on the contrary, is not equal for
all, but more or less great for each, according to what he spends on
the spot, according to his industrial or commercial gains, and
according to his local income. Indeed, the more perfect the public
highway is, the more are the necessities and conveniences of life;
whatever is agreeable and useful, even distant and remote, more within
reach, and at my disposition, in my very hands, I enjoy it to the
utmost, the measure of my enjoyment of it being the importance of my
purchases, everything I consume, in short, my home expenditure.[6] If
I am, besides, industrial or in commerce, the state of the public
highway affects me even more; for my transportation, more or less
costly, difficult and slow, depends on that, and next, the receipt of
my raw materials and goods, the sale of my manufactures, the dispatch
of my merchandise, bought and sold, while the measure of this special
interest, so direct and so intense, is the annual sum-total of my
business, or, more strictly speaking, the probable sum of my
profits.[7] If, finally, I own real estate, a house or land, its
locative value increases or diminishes according to the salubrity and
convenience of its site, together with its facilities for cultivating,
selling, and distributing its crops, for its various outlets, for its
security against floods and fires, and, after this, to improvements in
public transit, and to the collective works which protect both soil
and buildings against natural calamities.[8] It follows that the
inhabitant who benefits from these services, owes a second
contribution, greater or lesser according to the greater or lesser
advantage which he derives from them.
IV. Local associations.
Local society, thus constituted, is a collective legal entity. - The
sphere of its initiation and action. - Its relation to the State. -
Distinction between the private and the public domain.
Such is in itself local society and, with or without the legislator's
permission, we find it to be a private syndicate,[9] analogous to many
others.[10] Whether communal or departmental, it concerns, combines,
and serves none but the inhabitants of one circumscription; its
success or failure does not interest the nation, unless indirectly,
and through a remote reaction, similar to the slight effect which, for
good or ill, the health or sickness of one Frenchman produces on the
mass of Frenchmen. That which directly and fully affects a local
society is felt only by that society, the same as that which affects a
private individual is felt only by him; it is a close corporation, and
belongs to itself within its physical limits, the same as he, in his,
belongs to himself; like him, then, it is an individual, less simple,
but no less real, a human combination, endowed with reason and will,
responsible for its acts, capable of wronging and being wronged; in
brief, a legal entity. Such, in fact, it is, and, through the explicit
declaration of the legislator, who constitutes it a legal entity,
capable of possessing, acquiring, and contracting, and of prosecuting
in the courts of law: he likewise confers on the eighty-six
departments and on the thirty-six thousand communes all the legal
capacities and obligations of an ordinary individual. The State,
consequently, in relationship to them and to all collective persons,
is what it is with respect to a private individual, neither more nor
less; its title to intervene between them is not different. As
justiciary, it owes them justice the same as to private persons,
nothing more or less; only to render this to them, it has more to do,
for they are composite and complex. By virtue even of its mandate, it
is bound to enter their domiciles in the performance of its duty, to
maintain probity and to prevent disorder, to protect there not alone
the governed against the governors and the governors against the
governed, but again the community, which is lasting, against its
directors, who are temporary, to assign to each member his quota of
dues or of charges, and his quote of influence or of authority, to
regulate the way in which the society shall support and govern itself,
to decide upon and sanction the equitable statute, to oversee and
impose its execution, that is to say, in sum to maintain the right of
each person and oblige each to pay what he owes. - This is difficult
and delicate. But, being done, the collective personality is, as much
as any individual, complete and defined, independent and distinct from
the State; by the same title as that of the individual, it has its own
circle of initiation and of action, its separate domain, which is its
private affair. The State, on its side, has its own affairs too, which
are those of the public; and thus, in the nature of things, both
circles are distinct; neither of them should prey upon or encroach on
the other. - Undoubtedly, local societies and the State may help each
other, lend each other their agents, and thus avoid employing two for
one; may reduce their official staff, diminish their expenses, and,
through this interchange of secondary offices, do their work better
and more economically. For example, the commune and the department may
let the State collect and deposit their "additional centimes," borrow
from it for this purpose its assessors and other accountants, and thus
receive their revenues with no drawback, almost gratis, on the
appointed day. In the like manner, the State has very good reason for
entrusting the departmental council with the re-distribution of its
direct taxes among the districts, and the district council with the
same re-distribution among the communes: in this way it saves trouble
for itself, and there is no other more effective mode of ensuring an
equitable allocation. It will similarly be preferable to have the
mayor, rather than anybody else, handle petty public undertakings,
which nobody else could do as readily and as surely, with less
trouble, expense, and mistakes, with fewer legal document, registers
of civil status, advertisements of laws and regulations, transmissions
by the orders of public authorities to interested parties, and of
local information to the public authorities which they need, the
preparation and revision of the electoral lists and of conscripts, and
co-operation in measures of general security. Similar collaboration is
imposed on the captain of a merchant vessel, on the administrators of
a railway, on the director of a hotel or even of a factory, and this
does not prevent the company which runs the ship, the railway, the
hotel, or the factory, from enjoying full ownership and the free
disposition of its capital; from holding meetings, passing
resolutions, electing directors, appointing its managers, and
regulating its own affairs, preserving intact that precious faculty of
possessing, of willing and of acting, which cannot be lost or
alienated without ceasing to be a personality. To remain a
personality (i.e. a legal entity), such is the main interest and right
of all persons, singly or collectively, and therefore of local
communities and of the State itself; it must be careful not to
abdicate and be careful not to usurp. - It renounces in favor of local
societies when, through optimism or weakness, it hands a part of the
public domain over to them; when it gives them the responsibility for
the collection of its taxes, the appointment of its judges and police-
commissioners, the employment of its armed forces, when it delegates
local functions to them which it should exercise itself, because it is
the special and responsible director, the only one who is in a
suitable position, competent, well provided, and qualified to carry
them out. On the other side, it causes prejudice to the local
societies, when it appropriates to itself a portion of their private
domain, when it confiscates their possessions, when it disposes of
their capital or income arbitrarily, when it imposes on them excessive
expenses for worship, charity, education, and any other service which
properly belongs to a different association; when it refuses to
recognize in the mayor the representative of the commune and the
government official, when it subordinates the first of these two
titles to the second, when it claims the right of giving or taking
away, through with the second which belongs to it, the first which
does not belong to it, when in practice and in its grasp the commune
and department cease to be private companies in order to become
administrative compartments. - According to the opportunity and the
temptation, it glides downhill, now toward the surrender of its duty,
and now toward the meddlesome interference of an intruder.
V. Local versus State authority.
Case in which the State abdicates. - Anarchy during the Revolution. -
Case in which the State usurps. - Regime of the year VIII. - Remains
of local independence under the ancient regime. - Destroyed under the
new regime. - Local society after 1800.
From and after 1789, the State, passing through intermittent fits and
starts of brutal despotism, had resigned its commission. Under its
almost nominal sovereignty, there were in France forty-four thousand
small States enjoying nearly sovereign power, and, most frequently,
sovereignty in reality.[11] Not only did the local community manage
its private affairs, but again, in the circumscription, each exercised
the highest public functions, disposed of the national guard, of the
police force, and even of the army, appointed civil and criminal
judges, police commissioners,[12] the assessors and collectors of
taxes. In brief, the central State handed over, or allowed the seizure
of the powers of which it ought never to deprive itself, the last of
its means by which alone it acts effectively and on the spot,
* its sword, which it alone should wield,
* its scales of justice, which it alone should hold,
* its purse, for it to fill,
and we have seen with what harm to individuals, to the communes, and
to itself, with what a lamentable series of disastrous results:
* universal, incurable, persistent anarchy,
* impotence of the government,
* violation of the laws,
* complete stoppage of revenue, an empty treasury,
* despotism of the strong, oppression of the weak,
* street riots,
* rural brigandage,
* extortions and waste at the town halls,
* municipal usurpations and abdications,
* ruin of the highways, and all useful public works and buildings, and
* the ruin and distress of the communes.[13]
In contrast with this, and through disgust, the new Régime takes the
other side, and even goes to the other extreme; the central State, in
1800, no longer a party that has resigned, as formerly, becomes the
interloper. Not only does it take back from local communities the
portion of the public domain which had been imprudently conceded to
them, but, again, it lays its hand on their private domain; it
attaches them to it by way of appendices, while its systematic,
uniform usurpation, accomplished at one blow, spread over the whole
territory, again plunges them all, communes and departments alike,
into a chaos in which, under the old monarchy, they would never have
fallen.
Before 1789, collective legal entities (persons), provincial and
communal, still existed. On the one hand, five or six great local
bodies, represented by elective assemblies, full of life and
spontaneously active, among others those of Languedoc and Brittany,
still provided for and governed themselves. The other provinces, which
the central power had reduced to administrative districts, retained,
at least, their historic cohesion, their time-honored name, the lament
for, or at least the souvenir of, their former autonomy, and, here and
there, a few vestiges or fragments of their lost independence; and,
better yet, these old, paralyzed, but not mutilated bodies, had just
assumed new life, and under their renewed organism were striving to
give the blood in their veins a fresh start. Twenty-one provincial
assemblies, instituted over the entire territory, between 1778 and
1787, and provided with powers of considerable importance, undertook,
each in its own sphere, to direct provincial interests. Communal
interest, also, had its representatives in the urban or rural
communes. In the towns, a deliberative assembly, composed of the
leading notables and of delegates elected by all the corporations and
communities in the place, formed an intermittent municipal council the
same as to-day, but much more ample, which voted and passed
resolutions on important occasions; there was a board of management at
the head of it, "the town corps," comprising the various municipal
officials, the mayor, his lieutenant, sheriffs, prosecuting attorney,
treasurer, and clerk,[14] now elected by the deliberative assembly,
now the legal purchasers, heirs, and proprietors of their office, the
same as a notary or advocate of to-day owns his office, protected
against administrative caprices by a royal acquittance, and, for a
money consideration, titular in their towns, the same as a
parliamentarian in his parliament, and hence planted in, or grafted
upon, the commune like a parliamentarian among his peers, and, like
him, defenders of local interests against the central power. - In the
village, the heads of families met together on the public square,
deliberated in common over common affairs, elected the syndic,
likewise the collectors of the taille, and deputies to the intendant;
of their own accord, but with his approval, they taxed themselves for
the support of the school, for repairs to the church or fountain, and
for beginning or carrying on a suit in court. - All these remains of
the ancient provincial and communal initiative, respected or tolerated
by monarchical centralization, are crushed out and extinguished. The
First Consul very soon falls upon these local societies and seizes
them in his claws; in the eyes of the new legislator they scarcely
seem to exist; there must not be any local personalities for him. The
commune and department, in his eyes, are merely territorial districts,
physical portions of the public domain, provincial workshops to which
the central State transfers and uses its tools, in order to work
effectively and on the spot. Here, as elsewhere, he takes the business
entirely in his own hands; if he employs interested parties it is only
as auxiliaries, at odd times, for a few days, to operate with more
discernment and more economy, to listen to complaints and promises, to
become better informed and the better to apportion changes; but,
except this occasional and subordinate help, the members of the local
society must remain passive in the local society; they are to pay and
obey, and nothing more. Their community no longer belongs to them, but
to the government; its chiefs are functionaries who depend on him, and
not on it; it no longer issues its mandate; all its legal mandatories,
all its representatives and directors, municipal or general
councilors, mayors, sub-prefects or prefects, are imposed on it from
above, by a foreign hand, and, willingly or not, instead of choosing
them, it has to put up with them.
VI. Local Elections under the First Consul.
Lists of notables. - Sénatus-consultes of the year X. - Liberal
institution becomes a reigning instrument. - Mechanism of the system
of appointments and candidatures. - Decree of 1806 and suppression of
candidatures.
At the beginning, an effort was made to put in practice the
constitutional principle proposed by Sieyès: Power in future,
according the accepted formula, must come from above and confidence
from below. To this end, in the year IX, the assembled citizens
appointed one-tenth of their number, about 500,000 communal notables,
and these, likewise assembled, appointed also one-tenth of their
number, about 50,000 departmental notables. The government selected
from this list the municipal councilors of each commune, and, from
this second list, the general councilors of each department. - The
machine, however, is clumsy, difficult to set going, still more
difficult to manage, and too unreliable in its operation. According to
the First Consul, it is an absurd system, "a childish piece of
ideology; a great nation should not be organized in this way."[15] At
bottom,[16] "he does not want notables accepted by the nation. In his
system, he is to declare who the notables of the nation shall be and
stamp them with the seal of the State; it is not for the nation to
present them to the head of the State stamped with the national seal."
Consequently, at the end of a year, he becomes, through the
establishment of electoral colleges, the veritable grand-elector of
all the notables; he has transformed, with his usual address, a
liberal institution into a reigning instrumentality.[17]
Provisionally, he holds on to the list of communal notables, "because
it is the work of the people, the result of a grand movement which
must not prove useless, and because, moreover, it contains a large
number of names. . . . offering a wide margin from which to make good
selections.[18] He brings together these notables in each canton, and
invites them to designate their trusty men, the candidates from which
he will choose municipal councilors. But, as there are very few
cultivated men in the rural districts, "nearly always it is the old
seignior who would get himself designated";[19] it is essential that
the hand of the government should not be forced, that its faculty of
choosing should not be restricted. Thus, the presentation of municipal
councilors of that category must cease, there must no longer be any
preliminary candidates. Now, according the sénatus-consulte, this
category is a large one, for it comprises all communes of less than
5000 souls, and therefore over 35,000 municipal councils out of
36,000, whose members are appointed arbitrarily, without the citizens
whom they represent taking any part in their nomination. - Four or
five hundred average or large communes still remain, in which for each
municipal post, the cantonal assembly designates two candidates
between whom the government chooses. Let us see this assembly duly
installed and at work.
Its president, as a precautionary step, is imposed upon it. He is
appointed in advance by the government, and is well informed as to
what the government wants. He alone controls the police of the chamber
and the order of all deliberations. On opening the session, he draws a
list from his pocket, which list, furnished by the government,
contains the names of one hundred of the heaviest taxpayers of the
canton, from whom the assembly must select its candidates. The lists
lies spread out on the table, and the electors advance in turn, spell
the names, and try to read it over. The president would not be very
adroit and show but little zeal did he not help them in reading it,
and if he did not point out by some sign, a tone of the voice, or even
a direct word, what names were agreeable to the government. Now, this
government, which has five hundred thousand bayonets at command,
dislikes opposition: the electors know it, and look twice before
expressing any counter opinion; it is very probable that most of the
names suggested by the government are found on their ballots; were
only one-half of them there, these would suffice; of the two
candidates proposed for each place, if one is acceptable this one will
be elected; after making him a candidate the government makes sure
that he will become titular. The first act of the electoral comedy is
played, and it is not long before no trouble whatever is taken to play
it. After January, 1806, by virtue of a decree which has passed
himself, Napoleon is the only one[20] who will directly fill every
vacancy in the municipal councils; from now on these councils are to
owe their existence wholly to him. The two qualities which constitute
them, and which, according to Sieyès, are derived from two distinct
sources, are now derived from only one source. Only the Emperor can
confer upon them both public confidence and legal power.
The second act of the comedy begins; this act is more complicated, and
comprises several scenes which end, some of them, in the appointment
of the arrondissement councils, and others in that of the council-
general of the department. We will take only the latter, the most
important;[21] there are two, one following the other, and in
different places. - The first one[22] is played in the cantonal
assembly above described; the president, who has just directed the
choice of municipal candidates, draws from his portfolio another list,
likewise furnished to him by the prefect, and on which six hundred
names of those who pay the heaviest taxes in the department are
printed. It is from among these six hundred that the cantonal assembly
must elect ten or twelve members who, with their fellows, chosen in
the same way by the other cantonal assemblies, will form the electoral
college of the department, and take their seats at the chief town of
the prefecture. This time again, the president, who is the responsible
leader of the cantonal flock, takes care to conduct it; his finger on
the list indicates to the electors which names the government prefers;
if need be, he adds a word to the sign he makes, and, probably, the
voters will be as docile as before; and all the more because the
composition of the electoral college only half interests them. This
college, unlike the municipal council, does not touch or hold any of
them on their sensitive side; it is not obliged to tighten or loosen
their purse-strings; it does not vote the "additional centimes"; it
does not meddle with their business; it there only for show, to
simulate the absent people, to present candidates, and thus perform
the second electoral scene in the same way as the first one, but at
the chief town of the prefecture and by new actors. These extras are
also led by a head conductor, appointed by the government, and who is
responsible for their behavior, "a president who has in sole charge
the police of their assembled college," and must direct their voting.
For each vacancy in the council-general of the department, they are to
present two names; certainly, almost without any help, and with only a
discrete hint, they will guess the suitable names. For they are
smarter, more open-minded, than the backward and rural members of a
cantonal assembly; they are better informed and better "posted," they
have visited the prefect and know his opinion, the opinion of the
government, and they vote accordingly. It is certain that one-half, at
least, of the candidates whom they present on the list are good, and
that suffices, since twice the required number of candidates have to
be nominated. And yet, in Napoleon's eye, this is not sufficient. For
the nomination of general councilors,[23] as well as that of municipal
councilors, he suppresses preliminary candidature, the last remnant of
popular representation or delegation. According to his theory, he is
himself the sole representative and delegate of the people, invested
with full powers, not alone in the State, but again in the department
and commune, the prime and the universal motor of the entire machine,
not merely at the center, but again at the extremities, dispenser of
all public employments, not merely to suggest the candidate for these
and make him titular, but again to create directly and at once, both
titular and candidate.
VII. Municipal and general councillors under the Empire.
Quality of municipal and general councilors under the Consulate and
the Empire. - Object of their meetings. - Limits of their power. -
Their real role. - Role of the prefect and of the government.
Observe the selections which he imposes on himself beforehand; these
selections are those to which he has tied down the electoral bodies.
Being the substitute of these bodies, he takes, as they do, general
councilors from those in the department who pay the most taxes, and
municipal councilors from those most taxed in the canton. One the
other hand, by virtue of the municipal law, it is from the municipal
councilors that he chooses the mayor. Thus the local auxiliaries and
agents he employs are all notables of the place, the leading
landowners and largest manufacturers and merchants. He systematically
enrolls the distributors of labor on his side, all who, through their
wealth and residence, through their enterprises and expenditure on the
spot, exercise local influence and authority. In order not to omit any
of these, and be able to introduce into the general council this or
that rich veteran of the old régime, or this or that parvenu of the
new régime who is not rich, he has reserved to himself the right of
adding twenty eligible members to the list, "ten of which must be
taken from among citizens belonging to the Legion of Honor, or having
rendered important services, and ten taken from among the thirty in
the department who pay the most taxes." In this way none of the
notables escape him; he recuits them as he pleases and according to
his needs, now among men of the revolution who he does not want to see
discredited or isolated,[24] now among men of the old monarchy whom he
wants to rally to himself by favor or by force. Such is the Baron de
Vitrolles,[25] who, without asking for the place, becomes mayor of
Versailles and councilor-general in Basses-Alps, and then, a little
later, at his peril, inspector of the imperial sheepfolds. Such is the
Count de Villèle, who, on returning to his estate of Morville, after
an absence of fourteen years, suddenly, "before having determined
where he would live, either in town or in the country," finds himself
mayor of Morville. To make room for him, his predecessor is removed
and the latter, "who, since the commencement of the Revolution, has
performed the functions of mayor," is let down to the post of
assistant. Shortly after this the government appoints M. de Villèle
president of the cantonal assembly. Naturally the assembly, advised
underhandedly, presents him as a candidate for the general council of
Haute-Garonne, and the government places him in that office. -"All the
notable land-owners of the department formed part of this council, and
the Restoration still found us there seven years afterwards. General
orders evidently existed, enjoining the prefects to give preference in
their choice to the most important land-owners in the country."
Likewise, Napoleon everywhere selects the mayors from the rich and
well-to-do class"; in the large towns he appoints only "people with
carriages."[26] Many of them in the country and several in the towns
are legitimists[27], at least at heart, and Napoleon knows it; but, as
he says; "these folks do not want the earthquake"; they are too much
interested, and too personally, in the maintenance of order.[28]
Moreover, to represent his government, he needs decorative people; and
it is only these who can be so gratis, be themselves, look well, at
their own expense, and on the spot. Besides, they are the most
informed, the best able to supervise accounts, to examine article by
article the budgets of the department and commune, to comprehend the
necessity of a road and the utility of a canal, to offer pertinent
observations, to proclaim wise decisions, to obey orders as discreet
and useful collaborators. All this they will not refuse to do if they
are sensible people. In every form of government, it is better to be
with the governors than with the governed, and in this case, when the
broom is wielded from above and applied so vigorously and with such
meticulousness to everybody and everything, it is well to be as near
the handle as possible.
And what is still better, they will volunteer, especially at the
beginning, if they are good people. For, at least during the first
years, one great object of the new government is the re-establishment
of order in the local as well as in the general administration. It is
well-disposed and desires to mend matters; it undertakes the
suppression of robbery, theft, embezzlement, waste, premeditated or
unintentional arrogation of authority, extravagance, negligence and
failure.
"Since 1790,"[29] says the First Consul to the minister of the
interior, "the 36,000 communes represent, in France, 36,000 orphans .
. . girls abandoned or plundered during ten years by their municipal
guardians, appointed by the Convention and the Directory. In changing
the mayors, assistants, and councilors of the commune, scarcely more
has been done than to change the mode of stealing; they have stolen
the communal highway, the by-roads, the trees, and have robbed the
Church;[30] they have stolen the furniture belonging to the commune
and are still stealing under the spineless municipal system of year
VIII."
All these abuses are investigated and punished;[31] he thieves are
obliged to restore and will steal no more. The county budget, like of
the State, must now be prepared every year,[32] with the same method,
precision, and clearness, receipts on one side and expenses on the
other, each section divided into chapters and each chapter into
articles, the state of the liabilities, each debt, the state of the
assets and a tabular enumeration of distinct resources, available
capital and unpaid claims, fixed income and variable income, certain
revenue and possible revenue. In no case must "the calculation of
presumable expenditure exceed the amount of presumable income." In no
case must "the commune demand or obtain an extra tax for its ordinary
expenses." Exact accounts and rigid economy, such are everywhere
indispensable, as well as preliminary reforms, when a badly kept house
has to be transformed into one which is kept in good order. The First
Consul has at heart these two reforms and he adheres to them. Above
all there must be no more indebtedness; now, more than one-half of the
communes are in debt. "Under penalty of dismissal, the prefect is to
visit the communes at least twice a year, and the sub-prefect four
times a year.[33] A reward must be given to mayors who free their
commune of debt in two years, and the government will appoint a
special commissioner to take charge of the administration of a commune
which, after a delay of five years, shall not be liberated. The fifty
mayors who, each year, shall have most contributed to unencumber their
commune and assure that is has resources available, shall be summoned
to Paris at the expense of the State, and presented in solemn session
to the three consults. A column, raised at the expense of the
government and placed at the principal entrance of the town or
village, will transmit to posterity the mayor's name, and, besides,
this inscription: 'To the guardian of the commune, a grateful
country.' "
Instead of these semi-poetic honors adapted to the imaginations of the
year VIII, take the positive honors adapted to the imaginations of the
year XII, and the following years, brevets and grades, decorations of
the Legion d'Honneur, the titles of chevalier, baron, and count,[34]
presents and endowments, - the rewards offered to the representatives
of local society, the same as to the other functionaries, but on the
same condition that they will likewise be functionaries, that is to
say, tools in the hands of the government. In this respect, every
precaution is taken, especially against those who, forming a
collective body, may be tempted to consider themselves a deliberative
assembly, such as municipal and general councils, less easily handled
than single individuals and, at times, capable of not being quite so
docile. None of these can hold sessions of more than fifteen days in
the year; each must accept its budget of receipts and expenses, almost
complete and ready made, from the prefecture. In the way of receipts,
its powers consist wholly in voting certain additional and optional
centimes, more or less numerous, at will, "within the limits
established by law";[35] again, even within these limits, its decision
can be carried out only after an examination and approval at the
prefecture. There is the same regulation in regard to expenses; the
council, indeed, municipal or general, is simply consultative; the
government delegates the mayor, sub-prefect, or prefect, who
prescribes what must be done. As the preliminary steps are taken by
him, and he has constant direction of the local council for two weeks,
and finally the right of confirmation, he controls it, and then for
eleven months and a half, having sole charge of the daily and
consecutive execution of its acts, he reigns in the local community.
Undoubtedly, having received and expended money for the community, he
is accountable and will present his yearly accounts at the following
session; the law says[36] that in the commune, "the municipal council
shall listen to and may discuss the account of municipal receipts and
expenses." But read the text through to the end, and note the part
which the law, in this case, assigns to the municipal council. It
plays the part of the chorus in the antique tragedy: it attends,
listens, approves, or disapproves, in the background and subordinate,
approved or rebuked, the principal actors remain in charge and do as
they please; they grant or dispute over its head, independently, just
as it suits them. In effect, it is not to the municipal council that
the mayor renders his accounts, but "to the sub-prefect, who finally
passes them," and gives him his discharge. Whatever the council may
say, the approval is valid; for greater security, the prefect, if any
councilor proves refractory, "may suspend from his functions" a
stubborn fellow like him, and restore in the council the unanimity
which has been partially disturbed. - In the department, the council-
general must likewise "listen" to the accounts for the year; the law,
owing to a significant omission, does not say that is may discuss
them. Nevertheless, a circular of the year IX requests it to "make
every observation on the use of the additional centimes" which the
importance of the subject demands, to verify whether each sum debited
to expenses has been used for the purpose assigned to it, and even "to
reject expenses, stating the reasons for this decision, which have not
been sufficiently justified." And better still, the minister, who is a
liberal, addresses a systematic series of questions to the general
councils, on all important matters,[37] "agriculture, commerce, and
manufactures, asylums and public charities, public roads and other
works, public instruction, administration properly so called, state of
the number of population, public spirit and opinions," collecting and
printing their observations and desires. After the year IX, however,
this publication stops; it renders the general councils too important;
it might rally the entire population of the department to them and
even of all France that could read; it might hamper the prefect and
diminish his ascendancy. From now on, it is the prefect alone who
replies to these questions, and of which the government gives an
analysis or tables of statistics;[38] then, the publication of these
ceases; decidedly, printing always has its drawbacks - manuscript
reports are much better; local affairs are no longer transacted
outside the bureaus, and are managed with closed doors; any report
that might spread outside the prefect's cabinet or that of the
minister, is carefully toned down or purposely stifled, and, under the
prefect's thumb, the general council becomes an automaton.
In private, dealing directly with the Emperor's representative, it
appears as if one is dealing directly with the Emperor. Consider these
few words - in the presence of the Emperor; they carry an immeasurable
weight in the scales of contemporaries. For them, he has every
attribute of Divinity, not only omnipotence and omnipresence, but
again omniscience, and, if he speaks to them, what they feel far
surpasses what they imagine. When he visits a town and confers with
the authorities of the place on the interests of the commune or
department, his interlocutors are bewildered; they find him as well
informed as themselves, and more clear-sighted; it is he who explains
their affairs to them. On arriving the evening before, he calls for
the summaries of facts and figures, every positive and technical
detail of information, reduced and classified according to the method
taught by himself and prescribed to his administrators.[39] During
the night he has read all this over and mastered it; in the morning,
at dawn, he has taken his ride on horseback; with extraordinary
promptness and accuracy, his topographical glance has discerned "the
best direction for the projected canal, the best site for the
construction of a factory, a harbor, or a dike."[40] To the
difficulties which confuse the best brains in the country, to much
debated, seemingly insoluble, questions, he at once presents the sole
practical solution; there it is, ready at hand, and the members of the
local council had not seen it; he makes them touch it with their
fingers. They stand confounded and agape before the universal
competence of this wonder genius. "He's more than a man" exclaimed the
administrators of Dusseldorf to Beugnot.[41] "Yes," replied Beugnot,
"he's the devil!" In effect, he adds to mental ascendancy the
ascendancy of force; we always see beyond the great man in him the
terror-striking dominator; admiration begins or ends in fear; the soul
is completely subjugated; enthusiasm and servility, under his eye,
melt together into one sentiment of impassioned obedience and
unreserved submission.[42] Voluntarily and involuntarily, through
conviction, trembling, and fascinated, men abdicate their freedom of
will to his advantage. The magical impression remains in their minds
after he has departed. Even absent, even with those who have never
seen him, he maintains his prestige and communicates it to all who
command in his name. Before the prefect, the baron, the count, the
councilor of state, the senator in embroidered uniform, gilded and
garnished with decorations, every municipal or general council loses
his free will and becomes incapable of saying no, only too glad if not
obliged to say yes "inopportunely," to enter upon odious and
disagreeable undertakings, to simulate at one's own expense, and that
of others, excessive zeal and voluntary self-sacrifice, to vote for
and hurrah at patriotic subscriptions of which it must contribute the
greatest portion and for supplementary conscriptions[43] which seize
their sons that are except or bought out of service.[44] It allows
itself to be managed; it is simply one of the many wheels of our
immense machine, one which receives its impulsion elsewhere, and from
above, through the interposition of the prefect. - But, except in rare
cases, when the interference of the government applies it to violent
and oppressive schemes, it is serviceable; fixed in position, and
confining itself to turning regularly and noiselessly in its little
circle, it may, in general, still render the double service demanded
of it in the year IX, by a patriotic minister. According to the
definition which Chaptal then gave the general councils, fixing their
powers and competence, they exist for two purposes and only two:[45]
they must first "insure to the governed impartiality in the assessment
of taxes along with the verification of the use of the latest levies
in the payment of local expenses," and next, they must, with
discretion and modesty, "obtain for the government the information
which alone enables it to provide for the necessities of each
department and improve the entire working of the public
administration."
VIII. Excellence of Local Government after Napoleon.
The institution remains intact under the Restoration. - Motives of the
governors. - Excellence of the machine. - Abdication of the
administrator.
Such is the spirit of the institution and such is its form. After 1814
and 1815, after the fall of the Empire and the Restoration, the
institution subsists and remains as it was before in form and in
spirit: it is always the government which appoints and directs all the
representatives of local society, in the department, in the commune,
and in the intermediate circumscriptions, the prefect, sub-prefects,
mayors and assistants, the councilors of the department, of the
arrondissement and of the commune. Whatever the ruling power may be it
is repugnant to any change; never does it voluntarily restrict itself
in its faculty of bestowing or withholding offices, authority,
consideration, influence, or salaries, every desirable and every
desired good thing; as far as it can, it retains these in its own
hands to distribute them as it pleases, and in its own interest to
bestow them on its partisans and to deprive its adversaries of them,
to attract clients and create minions. The four thousand offices of
prefect, sub-prefect, and councilors of the prefecture, department,
and arrondissement, the four hundred thousand offices of mayor,
assistants, and municipal councilors, and added to these, the
innumerable salaried employments of auxiliary or secondary agents,
from the secretary-general of the prefecture down to the secretary of
the mayor, from the scribes and clerks of the prefecture and sub-
prefecture down to the staff of the municipal police and of the octroi
in the towns, from the city or department architect down to the lowest
road-surveyor, from the watchmen and superintendents of a canal or
harbor down to the field-guards and stone-breakers or the highway,
directly or indirectly, the constitutional government disposes of them
in the same fashion as the imperial government, with the same
interference in the most trifling details and in the most trifling
affair. Commune or department, such local society remains under the
second Régime what it was under the first one, an extension of the
central society, an appendix of the State, an adjunct of the great
establishment of which the seat is at Paris. In these adjuncts,
controlled from above, nothing is changed, neither the extent and
limits of the circumscription, nor the source and hierarchy of powers,
nor the theoretic framework, nor the practical mechanism, not even the
names.[46] After the prefects of Empire come the prefects of the
Restoration, the same in title and uniform, installed in the same
mansion, to do the same work, with equal zeal, that is to say, with
dangerous zeal, to such an extent that, on taking leave of their final
audience, on setting out for their department, M. de Talleyrand, who
knows men and institutions profoundly, gives them, as his last
injunction, the following admirable order: "And, especially, no zeal!
" - According to the recommendation of Fouché, "the Bourbons slept in
the bed of Napoleon," which was the bed of Louis XIV., but larger and
more comfortable, widened by the Revolution and the Empire, adapted to
the figure of its latest occupant, and enlarged by him so as to spread
over the whole of France. When, after twenty-five years of exile, one
returns home, it is pleasant to find such a bed in the house ready
made, taking down and remaking the old one would give double trouble;
moreover, in the old one, one was less at his ease; let us profit by
all that rebels and the usurper have done that was good. In this
particular, not alone the king, but again the most antiquated of the
Bourbons are revolutionaries and Bonapartists; despotic traditionally,
and monopolists through their situation, they accept with no regrets
the systematic demolition effected by the Constituent Assembly, and
the systematic centralization instituted by the First Consul. The Duc
d'Angoulême, when, in 1815, he was paraded about the country, among
the bridges, canals, and splendid roads of Languedoc, on being
reminded that these fine works were formerly executed by the "Ètats"
of the province, dryly replied "We prefer the departments to the
provinces."[47]
With the exception of a few antiquarian and half-rustic royalists,
nobody objects; there is no thought of reconstructing the machine on
another plan; in sum, nobody is dissatisfied with the way it works. It
works well, most effectively; under the Restoration as under the
Empire, it renders to those who are interested the service demanded of
it; it goes on providing better and better for the two grand objects
of local society, care for the public highways and protection against
natural calamities. In 1814, its net results are already admirable and
do it credit - reparation of the ruins accumulated by the
Revolution,[48] the continuation and completion of former projects,
new and striking enterprises, dikes against the sea and the rivers,
basins, moles, and jetties in the harbors, quays, and bridges, locks
and canals, public edifices, 27,200 kilometers of national roads and
18,600 kilometers of departmental roads,[49] without counting the
district roads just laid out; all this done regularly, exactly, and
economically, Charles Nicolas, "Les Budgets de la France depuis le
commencement du XIXe siècle." In 1816, the four direct contributions
returned, in principal, 249 millions, and, in additional centimes, 89
millions only. For a long time the additional centimes applied to the
local service and voted by the department or by the commune are not
many and do not exceed 5 %. of the principal. by competent
functionaries, employed and superintended, who at first through fear
are compelled to be prudent, and then through habit and honor have
become honest accountants; there is no waste, no underhand stealing,
no arbitrary charges; no sum is turned aside between receipts and
expenses to disappear and be lost on the road, or flow out of its
channel in another direction. The sensitive taxpayer, large or small,
no longer smarts under the painful goad which formerly pricked him and
made him jump. Local taxation, annexed to the general tax, is found to
be reformed, lightened, and duly proportioned. Like the principal, the
"additional centimes" are an equitable charge, graduated according to
the sum of net revenue; like the principal, they are assessed
according to the assumed sum of this net revenue by the councils of
the arondissements among the communes, and by the communal assessors
among the inhabitants. They are collected by the same collector, with
the same formalities, and every taxpayer who thinks himself taxed too
heavily finds a court of appeal in the council of the prefecture,
before which he can make his claim and obtain the release or reduction
of his quota. - Thus no crying iniquity exists, nor keen suffering; on
the other hand, there are the infinite conveniences and daily
enjoyment of possessions, the privation of which, to the modern man,
is equal to the lack of fresh, pure air, physical security and
protection against contagion, facilities for circulation and
transport, pavements, light, the salubrity of healthy streets purged
of their filth, and the presence and vigilance of the municipal and
rural police. All these benefits, the objects of local society, are
due to the machine which works with little cost, without breaking down
or stopping for any long time, as lately under the Republic, and
without any extortion and clashing, as in the times of the ancient
Régime. It works by itself, almost without the help of the parties
interested, and which, in their eyes, is not its least merit; with it,
there is no bother, no responsibility, no elections to attend to, no
discussions to maintain, no resolutions to pass. There is only one
bill to be settled, not even a specified bill, but a surplus of
centimes added to each franc, and included with the principal in the
annual quota. Just like an owner who, by his correct, exact, and
somewhat slow although punctual and capable supervisors, are relieved
of the care of his property. He may dismiss the head steward of his
domain in a fit of ill-humor, but, if he changes his stewards, he does
not change the system; he is too accustomed to it, and his indolence
demands it; he is not tempted to take care and trouble on himself, nor
is he qualified to become his own intendant.
And what is worse, in the present case the master has forgotten that
he is the owner of his domain, he hardly remembers that he is a
personality. Whether large or small, department or commune, local
society has no longer the consciousness of being a natural body,
composed of involuntarily united members with common interests; this
sentiment, already weakened and drooping at the end of the ancient
régime, lost under the multiplied attacks of the Revolution and under
the prolonged compression of the Empire. During twenty-five years it
has suffered too much; it has been too arbitrarily manufactured or
mutilated, too frequently recast, and made and unmade. - In the
commune, everything has been upset over and over again, the
territorial circumscription, the internal and external system, all
collective property. To the 44,000 municipalities improvised by the
Constituent Assembly, there succeeded under the Directory 6000 or 7000
cantonal municipalities, a sort of local syndicate, represented in
each commune by a subaltern agent, and then, under the Consulate,
36,000 distinct and permanent communes. Sovereign at the start,
through the improvidence and abdication of the Constituent Assembly,
the communes become, in the hands of the Convention, so many timorous
subjects surrendered to the brutality of perambulating pashas and
resident agas, imposed upon them by Jacobin tyranny; then under the
Empire, a docile herd governed in a correct way from above, but
possessing no authority of their own, and therefore indifferent to
their own affairs and utterly wanting in public spirit. Other more
serious blows affect of the them still more deeply and acutely.
Through a decree of the Legislative Assembly, in every commune where a
third of the inhabitants demand a partition of the communal property,
the commune is stripped, and its time-honored patrimony is set off in
equal lots, in portions according to families or per head, and
converted into small private holdings. (Page 319/584)Through a decree
of the Convention, the whole of the communal fortune, its debts and
assets, are swallowed up by the public fortune and engulfed along with
that in the sale of real property, in the discredit of the assignats,
and in the final bankruptcy. After this prolonged process, communal
property, even when disgorged and restored by the exchequer, is not
what it was before; once out of the monster's stomach, the remains of
it, dismembered, spoilt, half-digested, are no longer held sacred and
inviolable; a settlement of accounts intervenes; "there are a good
many communes," says Napoleon[50] "whose debts have been paid and
whose property was not sold; there are many others whose property has
been sold and whose debts are not paid . . . . The result is that many
pieces of property in certain communes are not considered reputable."
Consequently, he first deprives these of one-tenth of their income
from land, and then one-quarter of the produce of their extra cuttings
of timber,[51] and finally, their capital. the whole of their real
property,[52] estimated at 370 millions ; in exchange, he gives them
138 millions in the rentes; the loss to them as well as the gain to
him, is thus 232 millions, while the sale of communal properties at
auction, begun in 1813, continues under the Restoration in 1814, 1815,
and even in 1816. A human community treated in this way for one
quarter of a century, ceases to be a personality, and becomes a mere
material object; as far as this is concerned, its members have come to
believe, that it is and must be so and cannot be otherwise.
Above the commune, nearly dead, is the department, completely dead;
here local patriotism is stamped out at the beginning by the
destruction of the provinces. Among so many political crimes and other
outrages committed by the Revolution against France, this is one of
the worst. The Constituent Assembly has dismantled long-established
associations, the accumulated work of ten centuries, historic and
powerful names, each of which aroused enthusiasm in thousands of
breasts and cemented together thousands of wills, centers of
spontaneous co-operation, firesides warm with generous feeling, zeal,
and devotion, a practical school of high political education, an
admirable theater for available talent, noble careers open to
legitimate ambition, in short, the small patrimony whose instinctive
cult forms the first step out of egoism and a march onward toward
thoughtful devotion to the large patrimony. Cut apart by geometrical
shears, and designated by an entirely new geographical term, small
sections of the province became so many factitious agglomerations of
juxtaposed inhabitants, human assemblages without any soul; and, for
twenty years, the legislator fails to communicate to them that
semblance of spirit, the judicial quality of which it disposes; it is
only after 1811 that the departments arrive at civil proprietorship
and personality: this dignity, besides, the State confers only to
disburden itself and to burden them, to impose expenses on them which
hardly concern them but which do concern it, to compel them in its
place to support the costly maintenance of its prisons, police
quarters, courts of justice, and prefectorial mansions; even at this
late date, they are not yet, in the eyes of jurisconsults or before
the Council of State, incontestable proprietors and complete
personalities;[53] they are not to be fully qualified in this sense
until the law of 1838.
Local society, accordingly, proves abortive over the whole 27,000
square leagues of territory; it is simply a legal figment, an
artificial grouping together of neighbors who do not find themselves
bound and incorporated together by neighborhood; in order that their
society might become viable and stimulating would require both commune
and department to have in mind and at heart the following idea, which
they no longer entertained:
"We are all aboard the same ship, it is ours and we are its crew. We
are here to manage it ourselves, with our own hands, each according to
his rank and position, each taking his part, little or big, in doing
his own work."
_____________________________________________________________________
Notes:
[1] My understanding, today in 1999, that all people other animals by
nature are 'built' as egoists, that is to look out for themselves, to
preserve their life, protect their property and family. As far as the
social (or gregarious) instincts are concerned then there are several
which manifest themselves in the correct and timely order during our
entire existence. Some will regulate falling in love, others
procreation, others relationship between man and woman, others between
parents and children, at yet others the group and its choice and
submission to a leader. One of the results is that everyone wants to
be important and accepted, another that a mob has drives or instincts
which may galvanize it into compassion, anger, fear and action. To
this must be added that all people can remember, not only what they
have tried, but also what they have seen or heard about. They also
tend to imagine that others react in the same way as they themselves
do. This allows them to look ahead and imagine various possible
scenarios. They are also aware of how they would want to be dealt with
by others. (SR.)
[2] That is what has happened during communism where men worked as
little as possible since the principle of equality made most effort
rest without reward.
[3] The so-called "Centimes additionels" was an increase in certain
taxes to be paid to the communes and departments.
[4] Rocquain, "L'État de la France au 18 Brumaire" (report by
Fourcroy, pp. 138, 166)": A sack of wheat worth 18 francs at Nantes
costs an equal sum for its cartage to Brest. I have seen carters
plodding along, seven or eight in a line, each with six or eight
strong horses dragging their vehicles and alternately helping each
other, their horses hauling their carts out of ruts into which they
had got stuck . . . In many places, I was grieved to see carts and
wagons leaving the high-road and traversing, in spaces from 100 to 200
yards wide, the plowed ground, when each made his own road . . . . The
carters sometimes make only three or four leagues from morning to
night." - Hence, a dearth of provisions at Brest. "We are assured that
the people have long been on half-rations, or even quarter rations." -
And yet, " There is now in the river, at Nantes, from four to five
hundred boats loaded with grain; they have been there for months, and
their number increases daily. Their cargoes are deteriorating and
becoming damaged."
[5] Ibid., preface and summary, p.41 (on the dikes and works of
protection against inundations at Dol in Brittany, at Fréjus, in
Camargue, in Lower Rhine, in Nord, in Pas-de-Calais, at Ostende and
Blankenberg, at Rochefort, at La Rochelle, etc.). At Blankenberg, a
gale sufficed to carry away the dike and let in the sea. "The dread of
some disaster which would ruin a large portion of the departments of
the Lys and of the Escaut kept the inhabitants constantly in a state
of frightful anxiety."
[6] Hence the additional centimes to the tax on doors and windows, the
number of which indicates approximately the value of the rent. Hence
also the additional centimes to the personal tax, which is
proportionate to the rent, this being considered as the most exact
indication of domestic expenditure.
[7] Hence the communal "additional centimes" to the tax on business
licenses.
[8] Hence the " additional centimes" to the land tax.
[9] Today, in 1999, we may in Denmark observe how the contemporary
oligarchy of non-violent Jacobins, have transformed the local
authorities into tools of the central government which through an all
permeating administration, has replaced the authority of the father
and the solidarity of the family with a communal care and
supervision.(SR.).
[10] Syndicates of this kind are instituted by the law of June 25,
1865, "between proprietors interested in the execution and maintenance
of public works: 1st, Protection against the sea, inundations,
torrents, and navigable or non-navigable rivers; 2d, Works in
deepening, repairing, and regulating canals and non-navigable water-
courses, and ditches for draining and irrigation; 3d, Works for the
drainage of marshes; 4th, Locks and other provisions necessary in
working salt marshes; 5th, Drainage of wet and unhealthy ground." -
"Proprietors interested in the execution of the above-mentioned works
may unite in an authorized syndical company, either on the demand of
one or of several among them, or on the initiative of the prefect." -
(Instead of authorized, we must read forced, and we then find that the
association may be imposed on all interested parties, on the demand of
one alone, or even without any one's demand.) - Like the Annecy
building, these syndicates enable one to reach the fundamental element
of local society. Cf. the law of September 26, 1807 (on the drainage
of marshes), and the law of April 21, 1810 (on mines and the two
owners of the mine, one of the surface and the other of the subsoil,
both likewise partners, and no less forcibly so through physical
solidarity.)
[11] See "The Revolution," vol. I., passim. (Ed. Laff. I. pp. 315-
445).
[12] Two kinds of police must be distinguished one from the other. The
first is general and belongs to the State: its business is to repress
and prevent, outside and inside, all aggression against private and
public property. The second is municipal, and belongs to the local
society: its business is to see to the proper use of the public roads,
and other matters, which, like water, air, and light, are enjoyed in
common; it undertakes, also, to forestall the risks and dangers of
imprudence, negligence, and filth, which any aggregation of men never
fails to engender. The provinces of these two police forces join and
penetrate each other at many points; hence, each of the two is the
auxiliary, and, if need be, the substitute of the other.
[13] Rocquain, "l'État de la France au 18 Brumaire," passim.
[14] Raynouard, "Histoire du droit municipal,"II., 356, and Dareste,
"Histoire de l'administration en France," I., 209, 222. (Creation of
the posts of municipal mayor and assessors by the king, in 1692, for a
money consideration.) "These offices were obtained by individuals,
along with hereditary title, now attached to communities, that is to
say, bought in by these," which put in their possession the right of
election. - The king frequently took back these offices which he had
sold, and sold them over again. In 1771, especially, he takes them
back, and, it seems, to keep them forever; but he always reserves the
right of alienating them for money. For example (Augustin Thierry,
"Documens sur l'histoire du tiers État," III., 319), an act of the
royal council, dated October 1, 1772, accepts 70,000 francs from the
town of Amiens for the repurchase of the installment of its
magistracies, and defining these magistracies, as well as the mode of
election according to which the future incumbents shall be appointed.
Provence frequently bought back its municipal liberties in the same
fashion, and, for a hundred years, expended for this purpose
12,500,000 livres. In 1772, the king once more established the
venality of the municipal offices: but, on the Parliament of Aix
remonstrating, in 1774, he returned their old rights and franchises to
the communities. - Cf. Guyot, "Répertoire de jurisprudence" (1784),
articles, Echevins, Capitouls, Conseillers.
[15] Thibaudeau, p.72 (words of the First Consul at a meeting of the
Council of State, Pluviôse 14, year X).
[16] Roederer, III., 439 (Note of Pluviôse 28, year VIII), ib., 443
"The pretended organic sénatus-consulte of Aug. 4, 1802, put an end to
notability by instituting electoral colleges. . . The First Consul was
really recognized as the grand-elector of the notability,"
[17] Any dictator or dictator's draftsman will, upon reading this
understand how easy it is to make a sham constitution and sham
electoral systems for a de facto dictatorship.(SR.)
[18] Thibaudeau, 72, 289 (words of the First Consul at a meeting of
the Council of State, Thermidor 16, year X).
[19] Ibid., p. 293. Sénatus-consulte of Thermidor 16, year X, and of
Fructidor 19, year X.
[20] Decree of January 17, 1806, article 40.
[21] Aucoc, " Conférence sur l'administration et le droit
administratif," §§ 101, 162, 165. In our legislative system the
council of the arrondissement has not become a civil personality, while
it has scarcely any other object than to apportion direct taxes among
the communes of the arrondissement
[22] Sénatus-consulte of Thermidor 16, year X.
[23] Decree of May 13, 1806, title III., article 32.
[24] Thibaudeau, ibid., 294 (Speech of the First Consul to the Council
of State, Thermidor 16, year X). "What has become of the men of the
Revolution? Once out of place, they have been entirely neglected: they
have nothing left; they have no support, no natural refuge. Look at
Barras, Reubell, etc." The electoral colleges are to furnish them
with the asylum they lack. "Now is the time to elect the largest
number of men of the Revolution; the longer we wait, the fewer there
will be. . . . With the exception of some of them, who have appeared
on a grand stage, . . . who have signed some treaty of peace . . . the
rest are all isolated and in obscurity. That is an important gap which
must be filled up . . . . It is for this reason that I have instituted
the Legion of Honor."
[25] Baron de Vitrolles, "Memoires," preface, XXI. Comte de Villèle,
"Memoires et Correspondance," I., 189 (August, 1807).
[26] Faber, "Notice sur l'intérieur de la France" (1807), p.25.
[27] Supporters of the Sovereign king or of the legitimate royal
dynasty. (SR.)
[28] The following document shows the sense and aim of the change,
which goes on after the year VIII, also the contrast between both
administrative staffs. (Archives Nationales, F 7, 3219; letter of M.
Alquier to the First Consul, Pluviose 18, year VIII.) M. Alquier, on
his way to Madrid, stops at Toulouse and sends a report to the
authorities of Haute-Garonne: "I was desirous of seeing the central
administration. I found there the ideas and language of 1793. Two
personages, Citizens Barreau and Desbarreaux, play an active part
then. Up to 1792, the first was a shoemaker, and owed his political
fortune simply to his audacity and revolutionary frenzy. The second,
Desbarreaux, was a comedian of Toulouse, his principal role being that
of valets. In the month of Prairial, year III, he was compelled to go
down on his knees on the stage and ask pardon for having made
incendiary speeches at some previous period in the decadal temple. The
public, not deeming his apology sufficient, drove him out of the
theater. He now combines with his function of departmental
administrator the post of cashier for the actors, which thus brings
him in 1200 francs . . . The municipal councilors are not charged with
lack of probity: but they are derived from too law a class and have
too little regard for themselves to obtain consideration from the
public. . . The commune of Toulouse is very impatient at being
governed by weak, ignorant men, formerly mixed in with the crowd, and
whom, probably, it is urgent to send back to it. . . . It is
remarkable that, in a city of such importance, which provides so large
a number of worthy citizens of our sort of capacity and education,
only men are selected for public duties who, with respect to
instruction, attainments, and breeding, offer no guarantee whatever to
the government and no inducement to win public consideration."
[29] "Correspondance de Napoléon," No.4474, note dictated to Lucien,
minister of the interior, year VIII.
[30] Cf. "Procés-verbaux des conseil généraux" of the year VIII, and
especially of the year IX. "Many of the cross roads have entirely
disappeared at the hands of the neighboring owners of the land. The
paved roads are so much booty." (for example, Vosges, p.429, year IX.)
"The roads of the department are in such a bad state that the
landowners alongside carry off the stones to build their houses and
wall in their inheritance. They encroach on the roads daily; the
ditches are cultivated by them the same as their own property."
[31] Laws of February 29- March 9, 1804 And February 28 - March 10,
1805.
[32] Laws of July 23, 1802, and of February 27, 1811.
[33] "Correspondance de Napoléon," No. 4474 (note dictated to Lucien).
[34] Decree of March 1, 1808: "Are counts by right, all ministers,
senators, councilors of state for life, presidents of the corps
Legislatif, and archbishops. Are barons by right, all bishops. May
become barons, after ten years of service, all first presidents and
attorney generals, the mayors of the thirty-six principal towns. (In
1811, instead of 36, there are 52 principal towns.) May also become
barons, the presidents and members of the department electoral
colleges who have attended three sessions of these colleges."
[35] Decree of Thermidor 4, year X.
[36] Law of Pluviôse 28, year VIII.
[37] "Procés-verbaux des conseils généraux" of the years VIII and X.
(The second series drawn up after those propounded by the minister
Chaptal, is much more complete and furnishes an historical document of
the highest importance.)
[38] " Statistiques des préfets (from the years IX to XIII, about 40
volumes).
[39] Beugnot, "Mémoires," I., 363.
[40] Faber, ibid., 127. - Cf. Charlotte de Sohr, "Napoleon en 1811"
(details and anecdotes on Napoleon's journey through Belgium and
Holland).
[41] Beugnot, I., 380, 384. "He struck the good Germans dumb with
admiration, unable to comprehend how it was that their interests had
become so familiar to him and with what superiority he treated them."
[42] Beugnot, ibid., I., 395. Everywhere, on the Emperor's passage
(1811), the impression experienced was a kind of shock as at the
sight of a wonderful apparition.
[43] Thiers, " Histoire du Consulat et l'Empire," XVI., 246 (January,
1813). "A word to the prefect, who transmitted this to one of the
municipal councilors of his town, was enough to insure an offer from
some large town and have this imitated throughout the empire. Napoleon
had an idea that he could get towns and cantons to offer him troops of
horse, armed and equipped." - In fact, this offer was voted with
shouts by the Paris municipal council and, through contagion, in the
provinces. As to voting this freely it suffices to remark how the
annexed towns voted, which, six months later, are to rebel. Their
offers are not the least. For instance, Amsterdam offers 100 horsemen,
Hamburg 100, Rotterdam 50, the Hague 40, Leyden 24, Utrecht 20,
Dusseldorf 12. - The horsemen furnished are men enlisted for money;
16,000 are obtained, and the sum voted suffices to purchase
additionally 22,000 horses and 22,000 equipments. - To obtain this
money, the prefect himself apportions the requisite sum among those in
his department who pay the most taxes, at the rate of from 6oo to 1000
francs per head. On these arbitrary requisitions and a great many
others, either in money or in produce, and on the sentiments of the
farmers and landed proprietors in the South, especially after 1813,
cf. the " Mémoires de M. Villèle," vol. I., passim.
[44] Comte Joseph d'Estourmel, "Souvenirs de France et d'Italie, 240.
The general council of Rouen was the first to suggest the vote for
guards of honor. Assembled spontaneously (meetings are always
spontaneous), its members pass an enthusiastic address. "The example
was found to be excellent; the address was published in the Moniteur,
and sent to all the prefects . . . . The councils were obliged to
meet, which generously disposed of other people's children, and very
worthy persons, myself first of all, thought that they might join in
this shameful purpose, to such an extent had imperial fanaticism
fascinated them and perverted consciences!"
[45] Archives nationales (state of accounts of the prefects and
reports of the general police commissioners, F7, 5014 and following
records. - Reports of senators on their senatoreries, AF, IV., 1051,
and following records). - These papers disclose at different dates the
state of minds and of things in the provinces. Of all these reports,
that of Roederer on the senatorerie of Caen is the most instructive,
and gives the most details on the three departments composing it.
(Printed in his "Œuvres complètes," vol. III.)
[46] The reader will find in the Archives nationales, the fullest and
most precise information concerning local administration and the
sentiments of the different classes of society, in the correspondence
of the prefects of the first Restoration, of the hundred days, and of
the second Restoration from 1814 to 1823 (Cf. especially those of
Haute-Garonne, the Rhine, Côte d'Or, Ain, Loiret, Indre-et-Loire,
Indre, Loire-Inférieure and Aisne.) The letters of several prefects,
M. de Chabroe, M. de Tocqueville, M. de Remusat, M. de Barante, are
often worth publishing; occasionally, the minister of the interior has
noted with a pencil in the margin, " To be shown to the King."
[47] M. de Villèle, ibid., I., 248.
[48] Rocquam, "l'État de la France au 18 Brumaire," reports of the
councilors of state sent on missions, p.40.
[49] De Feville, "La France economique," 248 and 249.
[50] Pelet de la Lozère, "Opinions de Napoléon au conseil d'Etat," P.
277 (Session of March 15, 1806). - Decree of March 16, 1806, and of
September 15, 1807.
[51] Ibid., 276. "To those who objected that a tax could only be made
according to law, Napoleon replied that it was not a tax, since there
were no other taxes than those which the law established, and that
this one (the extra assessment of a quarter of the produce of timber)
was established by decree. It is only a master, and an absolute
master, who could reason in this way."
[52] Law of March 20, 1813. (Woods, meadows, and pasture-grounds used
by the population in common are excepted, also buildings devoted to
public use, promenades, and public gardens.) - The law takes rural
possessions, houses and factories, rented and producing an income.
Thiers, XVI., 279. The five percents at this time were worth 75
francs, and 138 millions of these gave a revenue of 9 millions, about
the annual income derived by the communes from their confiscated real
estate.
[53] Aucoc, ibid., §§ 55 and 135.
CHAPTER II. Local society since 1830.
I. Introduction of Universal suffrage.
Local society since 1830. - Introduction of a new internal motor. -
Subordinate to the external motor. - Advantageous under the system of
universal suffrage.
Neither lips nor heart are capable of pronouncing the above
invigorating and conclusive phrase after a silence of 30 years. That
local society ought to be a private association, does not interest
those who are concerned, while the legislator does not permit it.
Indeed, after the year VIII (1799), the State (Napoleon) introduces
into the machine the new motivation described above. After the
revolution of 1830,[1] the municipal and general councilors become
elective and are appointed by a limited suffrage; after the revolution
of 1848, they are elected by universal suffrage.[2] After the
revolution of 1870,[3] each municipal council elects its own mayor,
while the council-general, whose powers are enlarged, leaves in its
place, during its vacations, a standing committee who arrange with,
and govern along with, the prefect. Here, in local society, is a
superadded internal motor, working from below, whilst the first one is
external and works from above; from now on, both are to work together
and in accord. - But, in reality, the second (the council-general)
remains subordinate; moreover, it does not suit the machine[4] and the
machine does not suit it; it is only a superfluity, an inconvenient
and cumbersome intruder, nearly always useless, and often mischievous.
Its influence is feeble and of little effect; too many brakes are
attached to it; its force diminishes through the complexity of its
numerous wheels; it fails in giving action; it cannot but little more
than impede or moderate other impulses, those of the external motor,
sometimes as it should, and sometimes the contrary. Most frequently,
even nowadays (1889), it is of no efficiency whatever. Three-quarters
of the municipal councils, for three-fourths of their business, hold
sessions only to give signatures. Their pretended deliberations are
simply a parade formality; the incentive and direction continue to
come from without, and from above; under the third Republic, as under
the Restoration and the first Empire, it is always the central State
which governs the local society; amid all the wrangling and disputes,
in spite of passing conflicts it is, and remains, the initiator,
mover, leader, controller, accountant, and executor of every
undertaking, the preponderating power in the department as well as in
the commune, and with what deplorable results we all know. - There is
still another and more serious result. Nowadays, its interference is
an advantage, for should it renounce its preponderance this would pass
over to the other power which, since this has become vested in a
numerical majority, is mere blind and brutal force; abandoned to
itself and without any counter-weight, its ascendancy would be
disastrous, we would see reappearing along with the blunders of 1789,
the outrages, usurpations, and distress of 1790, 1791 and 1792.[5] -
In any event, there is this advantage in despotic centralization, that
it still preserves us from democratic autonomy. In the present state
of institutions and minds, the former system, objectionable as it may
be, is our last retreat against the greater evil of the latter.
II. Universal suffrage.
Application of universal suffrage to local society. - Two assessments
for the expenses of local society. - The fixed amount of one should in
equity be equal to the average sum of the other. - Practically, the
sum of one is kept too low. - How the new régime provides for local
expenditure. - The "additional centimes." - How the small taxpayer is
relieved in town and country. - His quota in local expenditure reduced
to the minimum. - His quota of local benefits remains intact. - Hence
the large or average taxpayer bears, beside his own burden, that of
the relieved small taxpayer. - Number of those relieved. - The extra
burden of the large and average taxpayer is alms-giving. - The relief
of the small taxpayer is a levy of alms.
In effect, direct universal suffrage, counted by heads, is in local
society a discordant element, a monstrous system, to which it is
adverse. Constituted as this is, not by human judgment, but by the
preponderance of numbers and their force, its mechanism is determined
beforehand; it excludes certain wheels and connections.[6] That is why
the legislator must write laws which reflect the nature of our
existence, or, at least, translate this as closely as he can, without
any gross contradiction. Nature herself presents him with ready-made
statutes.[7] His business is to read these properly; he has already
transcribed the apportionment of burdens; he can now transcribe the
apportionment of rights.
So, we have seen, local society renders two distinct services[8],
which, that the expenses of both may be met, require two distinct
assessments, one personal and the other real, one levied on everybody
and of which the amount is alike for all, and the other levied only on
those whose amount is based on what he spends, on the importance of
his business, and on the income from his real estate. - In strict
equity, the amount of the former should be equal to the average amount
of the latter; in effect, as has been shown, the services defrayed by
the former are as many, as diverse, and as precious, still more vital,
and not less costly than those of which the latter is the price. Of
the two interests which they represent, each, did it stand alone,
would be obliged to secure the same services, to take upon itself the
whole of the work; neither would obtain more in the dividend, and each
would have to pay the whole of the expense. Accordingly, each gains as
much as the other in the physical solidarity which binds them
together. Hence, in the legal bond which unites them they enter into
it on an equal footing, on condition that each is burdened or relived
as much as the other, on condition that if the latter assumes one-half
of the expense the former shall assume the other half, on condition
that if the latter quota on each one hundred francs expended against
calamities and for public roads is 50 francs, the former quota shall
also be 50 francs. - Practically, however, this is impossible. Three
times out of four the former levy with this apportionment would not be
returned; through prudence as well as humanity, the legislator is
bound not to overburden the poor. Recently, in organizing the general
tax and the revenue of the State, he has looked out for them; now, in
organizing the local tax and the revenue of the department or of the
commune, he looks out for them to a still greater extent.
In the new financial scheme, so many centimes, added to each franc of
direct tax, form the principal resource of the department and commune,
and it is through this extra charge that each taxpayer pays his quota
of local expenditure. Now, there is no surcharge on the personal tax,
no additional centimes. Under this heading, the laborer without any
property or income, the workman who lives in lodgings, on his wages,
and from day to day, contributes nothing to the expenses of his
commune or department. In vain do "additional centimes" pour down on
other branches of direct taxation; they are not grafted on this one,
and do not suck away the substance of the poor.[9] - There is the
same regard for the half poor, in relation to the artisan who
furnishes his own room, but who lodges in an upper story, and in
relation to the peasant whose hovel or cottage has but one door and
one window.[10] Their rate of taxation on doors and windows is very
low, purposely reduced, kept below one franc a year, while the rate of
their personal tax is scarcely higher. "Additional centimes" may be
imposed on so small a principal and be multiplied in vain, never will
they reach more than an insignificant amount.-Not only are the
destitute relieved of both principal and "additional centimes," the
verified poor, those who are registered and are helped, or should be,
that is to say 2,470,000 persons;[11] but, again, others, by hundreds
of thousands, whom the municipal council judges incapable of paying. -
Even when people possess but a small piece of land, they are also
relieved of the land tax and of the numerous additional centimes which
increase it. Such is the case with those who are infirm or burdened
with a family. The exchequer, so as not to convert them into beggars
and vagabonds, avoids expropriation, selling out their concrete hovel,
vegetable garden, and small field of potatoes or cabbages; it gives
them receipts gratis, or, at least, refrains from prosecuting
them.[12] In this way the poor peasant, although a land-owner, again
exempts himself, or is exempted from his local indebtedness. In truth,
he pays nothing, or nearly nothing, otherwise than by prestations
(payments) in money or in kind; that is to say, by three days' work on
the district roads, which, if he pays in kind, are not worth more than
50 sous.[13] Add to this his portion, very small and often null, of
the additional centimes on the tax on doors and windows, on the
personal tax, and on the tax on real estate, in all 4 or 5 francs a
year. Such is the amount by which the poor or half-poor taxpayer in
the villages liberates himself toward his department and commune. -In
the towns, he apparently pays more, owing to the octroi. But, at
first, there are only 1525 communes out of 36,000 in which the
octroi[14] has been established; while in the beginning, under the
Directory and Consulate, it was revived only on his account, for his
benefit, in behalf of public charity, to defray the expenses of
asylums and hospitals ruined by revolutionary confiscation. It was
then "an octroi for charity," in fact as well as in name, like the
surplus tax on theater seats and tickets, established at the same time
and for the same purpose; it still to-day preserves the stamp of its
first institution. Bread, the indispensable provision for the poor, is
not subjected to the octroi nor the materials for making it, either
grain or flour, nor milk, fruits, vegetables, or codfish, while there
is only a light tax on butcher's meat. Even on beverages, where the
octroi is heavier, it remains, like all indirect taxes, nearly
proportional and semi-optional. In effect, it is simply an increase of
the tax on beverages, so many additional centimes per franc on the sum
of indirect taxation, as warrantable as the impost itself, as
tolerable, and for the same motives.[15] For the greater the sobriety
of the taxpayer, the less is he affected by this tax. At Paris, where
the increase is excessive, and adds to the 6 centimes paid to the
state, on each quart of wine, 12 centimes paid to the city; if he
drinks but one quart a day, he pays, under this heading, into the city
treasury 43 francs 80 centimes per annum: but, as compensation for
this, he is free of personal tax of 11 3/4 %, which this adds to the
amount of each rental of the 11 3/4 %, whereby this would have added
to his rent, and therefore 47 francs per annum as a rent of 400
francs. Thus what he has paid with one hand he gets back with the
other. Now, at Paris, all rentals under 400 francs[16] are thus free
of any personal tax; all rentals between 400 and 1000 francs are more
or less free, and, in the other octroi towns, an analogous discharge
reimburses to the small taxpayers a portion more or less great of the
sum they pay to the octroi. - Accordingly, in the towns as in the
country, they are favored at one time through fiscal relief and at
another through administrative favor, now through compulsory deduction
and now through total or partial reimbursement. Always, and very
wisely, the legislator apportions the burden according to the strength
of the shoulders; he relieves them as much as he can, at first, of the
general tax, and next, which is still better, of the local tax. Hence,
in local expenditure, their quota diminishes out of all proportion and
is reduced to the minimum. Nevertheless, their quota of local benefit
remains full and entire; at this insignificant price they enjoy the
public highways and profit by all the precautions taken against
physical ills; each profits by this personally, equally with any
millionaire. Each personally receives as much in the great dividend of
security, health, and convenience, in the fruit of the vast works of
utility and enjoyment due to improved communications, which preserve
health, assist traffic, and beautify the locality, and without which,
in town as well as in the country, life would be impossible or
intolerable.
But these works which cost so much, these defensive operations and
apparatus against inundations, fires, epidemics, and contagions, these
500,000 kilometers of district and department roads, these dikes,
quays, bridges, public gardens, and promenades, this paving, drainage,
sweeping and lighting, these aqueducts and supplies of drinkable
water, all this is paid for by somebody, and, since it is not done by
the small taxpayer, it is the large or average taxpayer who pays for
it. The latter then, bears, besides his obligatory weight, a
gratuitous surplus burden, consisting of the weight of which the other
is relieved.
Evidently the greater the number of the relieved, the heavier will be
this overweight, and the relieved count by millions. Two millions and
a half of declared poor[17] are relieved of any direct tax, and,
therefore, of all the centimes which have just increased the burden.
Out of 8 millions of real-estate owners,[18] 3 millions, considered as
insolvent, pay neither the real estate tax nor the centimes which it
comprises. In the octroi towns, it is not the minority but the
majority of the inhabitants who are relieved in the way just described
; in Paris,[19] out of 685,000 rentals, 625,000, in other terms twelve
out of thirteen lodgings, are exempt, wholly or in part, from the
personal tax, the principal and "additional centimes." On each franc
of this principal there are 96 of these superadded centimes for the
benefit of the town and department and because the department and the
town expend a good deal, and because receipts are essential for the
settlement of these accounts, this or that sum is noted beforehand in
every chapter of receipts, and the main thing now is to have this paid
in, and it must be paid by somebody; it matters little whether the
peasants are few or numerous; if among thirteen taxable persons there
is only one that pays, so much the worse for him, for he must pay for
himself and the other twelve. Such is the case in Paris, which
accounts for the "additional centimes" here being so numerous,[20]
owing to there being less than 60,000 rentals for the acquittance of
the entire tax, and, besides paying their own debt, they must
discharge the indebtedness of 625,000 other rentals, the tax on which
is reduced or null.- Frequently, before the Revolution, some rich
convent or philanthropic seignior would pay the taxes of his poor
neighbors out of his own pocket; willingly or not, 60,000 Parisians,
more or less well lodged, now hand over the same sum, bestow the same
charity, on 625,000 thousand badly or only tolerably lodged Parisians;
among these 60,000 benefactors whom the exchequer obliges to be
benevolent, 34,800 who pay from 1000 to 3000 francs rent, bestow,
under this heading, a pretty large sum for charitable purposes, while
14,800, who pay more than 3000 francs rent, pay a very large one.
Other branches of direct taxation, in the country as well as in the
city, present the same spectacle: it is always the rich or the well-
to-do taxpayers who, through their over-tax, more or less completely
relieve the poor or straitened taxpayers; it is always the owners of
large or small properties, those who pay heavy or average licenses,
the occupants of lodgings with more than five openings,[21] and whose
locative value surpasses 1000 francs, who in local expenditure pay
besides their own dues the dues of others and, through their
additional centimes, almost entirely defray the expenses of the
department and commune.--This is nearly always the case in a local
society, except when it chances to possess an abundant income, arising
from productive real estate, and is able to provide for its wants
without taxing its members; apart from this rare exception, it is
forced to tax some in order to relieve others. In other words, the
same as with other enterprises, it manufactures and sells its product
but, just the reverse of other enterprises, it sells the product, an
equal quantity of the same product, that is to say, equal protection
against the same calamities, and the equal enjoyment of the same
public highway, at unequal prices, very dear to a few, moderately dear
to many, at cost price to a large number, and with a discount to the
mass; to this last class of consumers the discount goes on increasing
like the emptiness of their purse; to the last of all, extremely
numerous, the goods are delivered almost gratis, or even for nothing.
But to this inequality of prices may correspond the inequality of
rights, and compensation will come, the balance may be restored,
distributive justice may be applied, if, in the government of the
enterprise, the parts assigned are not equal, if each member sees his
portion of influence growing or diminishing along with the weight of
his charge, if the regulations, graduating authority according to the
scale of the levies, assigns few votes to those who pay the lowest
quotas of expense and receive alms, and many votes to those who give
alms and pay the largest quotas of the expenditure.
III. Equity in taxation.
Possible compensation in the other side of the scale. - What the
distribution of rights should be according to the principle of
distributive justice. - In every association of stock-owners. - In
local society confined to its natural object. - In local society
charged with supplementary functions. - The local statue in England
and Prussia. - The exchange equitable when burdens are compensated by
rights.
Such is the rule in every association of interests, even in stock
companies in which the distribution of charges allows of no favor or
disfavor to any associate. It must be noted that, in these companies,
co-operation is not compulsory, but voluntary; the associates are not,
as in the local society, conscripts enlisted under the constraint of
physical solidarity, but subscribers bound together under the
impulsion of a deliberate preference, each remaining in its of his own
free will just as he entered it; if he wishes to leave it he has only
to sell his stock; the fact of his keeping this confirms his
subscription, and, thus holding on to it, he daily subscribes anew to
the statute. Here, then, is a perfectly free association; its is
accordingly perfectly equitable, and its statute serves as a model for
others.
Now this statute always makes a distinction between the small and the
large stockholders; it always attributes a greater share of authority
and influence to those who share most largely in the risks and
expenses; in principle, the number of votes in confers on each
associate is proportionate to the number of shares of which he is the
owner or bearer. - All the stronger is the reason why this principle
should be embodied in the statutes of a society which, like the local
community, diminishes the burden of the small taxpayer through its
reductions, and increases by its extra taxation the burden of the
large or average taxpayer; when the appointment of managers is handed
over to universal suffrage, counted by heads, the large and average
taxpayers are defrauded of their dues and deprived of their rights,
more so by far and more deeply wronged than the bearer or owner of a
thousand shares in an omnibus or gas company if, on voting at a
meeting of stockholders, his vote did not count for more than that of
the owner or bearer of a single share. -
How is it then when a local society adds to its natural and
unavoidable purpose an optional and supplementary purpose;
* when, increasing its load, it undertakes to defray the cost of
public charity and of primary education;
* when, to support this additional cost, it multiplies the additional
centimes;
* when the large or average taxpayer pays alone, or nearly alone, for
this benevolent work by which he does not benefit;
* when the small taxpayer pays nothing, or next to nothing, to this
benevolent work by which he does benefit;
* when, in voting for the expense thus apportioned, each taxpayer,
whatever the amount of his contribution, has one vote and only one?
In this case, powers, benefits, reductions, and exemptions, all the
advantages are on one side, that of the poor and half-poor forming the
majority and who if not restrained from above, will persistently abuse
their numerical force to augment their advantages, at the increasing
expense of the rich or well-do-do minority. In the future, in the
local society, the average or large taxpayer is no longer an associate
but a victim; were he free to choose he would not enter into it; he
would like to go away and establish himself elsewhere; but were he to
enter others, near or remote, his condition would be no better. He
remains, accordingly, where he is, physically present, but absent in
feeling; he takes no part in deliberate meetings; his zeal has died
out; he withholds from public affairs that surplus of vigilant
attention, that spontaneous and ready collaboration which he would
have contributed gratis; he lets matters go along without him, just as
it happens; he remains there just what he is, a workable, taxable
individual in capricious hands, in short, a passive subject who gives
and has become resigned. - For this reason, in countries where an
encroaching democracy has not yet abolished or perverted the notion of
equity, the local statute applies the fundamental rule of an equitable
exchange; it lays down the principle that
he who pays commands, and in proportion to the sum he pays.[22]
In England, a surplus of votes is awarded to those most heavily taxed,
even six votes to one voter; in Prussia, local taxation is divided
into thirds, and, accordingly, the taxpayers into three groups, the
first one composed of heavy taxpayers, few in number, and who pay the
first third, the second composed of average taxpayers, average in
number, and who pay the second third, and the third composed of the
great number of small taxpayers, who pay the last third.[23] To each
of these groups is assigned the same number of suffrages in the
commune election, or the same number of representatives in the commune
representation. Through this approximate balance of legal burdens and
of legal rights, the two sides of the scales are nearly level, the
level which distributive justice demands, and the level which the
state, special interpreter, sole arbiter and universal minister of
distributive justice, should establish when, in the local community,
it imposes, rectifies, or maintains the articles in accordance with
which it derives its income and governs.
IV. On unlimited universal suffrage.
How unlimited universal suffrage found its way into local society. -
Object and mode of the French legislator.
If the government, in France, does just the opposite, it is at the
height of a violent and sudden revolution, forced by the party in
power and by popular prejudice, through deductive reasoning, and
through contagion. According to revolutionary and French usage, the
legislator was bound to institute uniformity and to make things
symmetrical; having placed universal suffrage in political society, he
was likewise determined to place it in local society. He had been
ordered to apply an abstract principle, that is to say, to legislate
according to a summary, superficial, and verbal notion which,
purposely curtailed and simplified to excess, did not correspond with
its aim. He obeyed and did nothing more; he made no effort outside of
his instructions. He did not propose to himself to restore local
society to its members, to revive it, to make it a living body,
capable of spontaneous, co-ordinate, voluntary action, and, to this
end, provided with indispensable organs. He did not even take the
trouble to imagine, how it really is, I mean by this, complex and
diverse and inversely to legislators before 1789, and adversely to
legislators before and after 1789 outside of France, against all the
teachings of experience, against the evidence of nature, he refused to
recognize the fact that, in France, mankind are of two species, the
people of the towns and the people of the country, and that,
therefore, there are two types of local society, the urban commune and
the rural commune. He was not disposed to take this capital difference
into consideration; he issued decrees for the Frenchman in general,
for the citizen in himself, for fictive men, so reduced that the
statute which suits them can nowhere suit the actual and complete man.
At one stroke, the legislative shears cut out of the same stuff,
according to the same pattern, thirty-six thousand examples of the
same coat, one coat indifferently for every commune, whatever its
shape, a coat too small for the city and too large for the village,
disproportionate in both cases, and useless beforehand, because it
could not fit very large bodies, nor very small ones. Nevertheless,
once dispatched from Paris, people had to put the coat on and wear it;
it must answer for good or for ill, each donning his own for lack of
another better adjusted; hence the strangest attitudes for each, and,
in the long run, a combination of consequences which neither governors
nor the governed had foreseen.
V. Rural or urban communes.
No distinction between the rural and the urban commune. - Effects of
the law on the rural commune. - Disproportion between the intelligence
of its elected representatives and the work imposed upon them. - The
mayor and the municipal council. - Lack of qualified members. - The
secretary of the mayoralty. - The chief or under chief of the
prefectorial bureau.
Let us consider these results in turn in the small and in the great
communes; clear enough and distinct at the two extremities of the
scale, they blend into each other at intermediate degrees, because
here they combine together, but in different proportions, according as
the commune, higher or lower in the scale, comes nearer to the village
or to the city. - On this territory, too, subdivided since 1789, and,
so to say, crumbled to pieces by the Constituent Assembly, the small
communes are enormous in number; among the 36,000, more than 27,000
have less than 1000 inhabitants, and of these, more than 16,000 have
less than 500 inhabitants.[24] Whoever has traveled over France, or
lived in this country, sees at once what sort of men compose such
purely rural groups; he has only to recall physiognomies and attitudes
to know to what extent in these rude brains, rendered torpid by the
routine of manual labor and oppressed by the cares of daily life, how
narrow and obstructed are the inlets to the mind; how limited is their
information in the way of facts; how, in the way of ideas, the
acquisition of them is slow; what hereditary distrust separates the
illiterate mass from the lettered class; what an almost insurmountable
wall the difference of education, of habits, and of manners interposes
in France between the blouse and the dress-coat; why, if each commune
contains a few cultivated individuals and a few notable proprietors,
universal suffrage sets them aside, or at least does not seek them out
for the municipal council or the mayoralty. - Before 1830, when the
prefect appointed the municipal councilors and the mayor, these were
always on hand; under the monarchy of July and a limited suffrage,
they were still on hand, at least for the most part; under the second
Empire, whatever the elected municipal council might be, the mayor,
who was appointed by the prefect, and even outside of this council,
might be one of the least ignorant and least stupid even in the
commune. At the present day (1889), it is only accidentally and by
chance that a noble or bourgeois, in a few provinces and in certain
communes, may become mayor or municipal councilor; it is, however,
essential that he should be born on the soil, long established there,
resident and popular. Everywhere else the numerical majority, being
sovereign, tends to select its candidates from among the average
people: in the village, he is a man of average rural intelligence,
and, mostly, in the village a municipal council which, as narrow-
minded as its electors, elects a mayor equally as narrow-minded as
itself Such are, from now on, the representatives and directors of
communal interests; except when they themselves are affected by
personal interests to which they are sensitive, their inertia is only
equaled by their incapacity[25]
Four times a year a bundle of elaborately drawn papers, prepared by
the prefecture, are submitted to these innately blind paralytics,
large sheets divided into columns from top to bottom, with tabular
headings from right to left, and covered with printed texts and
figures in writing - details of receipts and expenses, general
centimes, special centimes, obligatory centimes, optional centimes,
ordinary centimes, extra centimes, with their sources and employment;
preliminary budget, final budget, corrected budget, along with legal
references, regulations, and decisions bearing on each article. In
short, a methodical table as specific as possible and highly
instructive to a jurist or accountant, but perfect jargon to peasants,
most of whom can scarcely write their name and who, on Sundays, are
seen standing before the advertisement board[26] trying to spell out
the Journal Officiel, whose abstract phrases, beyond their reach, pass
over their heads in aerial and transient flight, like some confused
rustling of vague and unknown forms. To guide them in political life,
much more difficult than in private life, they require a similar guide
to the one they take in the difficult matters of their individual
life, a legal or business adviser, one that is qualified and
competent, able to understand the prefecture documents, sitting
alongside of them to explain their budget, rights and limits of their
rights, the financial resources, legal expedients, and consequences of
a law; one who can arrange their debates, make up their accounts,
watch daily files of bills, attend to their business at the county
town, throughout the entire series of legal formalities and attendance
on the bureaus, - in short, some trusty person, familiar with
technicalities, who they might choose to select. - Such a person was
found in Savoy, before the annexation to France, a notary or lawyer
who, practicing in the neighborhood or at the principal town, and with
five or six communes for clients, visited them in turn, helped them
with his knowledge and intelligence, attended their meetings and,
besides, served them as scribe, like the present secretary of the
mayoralty, for about the same pay, amounting in all to about the same
total of fees or salaries.[27] - At the present time, there is nobody
in the municipal council to advise and give information to its
members; the schoolmaster is their secretary, and he cannot be, and
should not be, other than a scribe. He reads in a monotonous tone of
voice the long financial enigma which French public book-keeping, too
perfect, offers to their divination, and which nobody, save one who is
educated to it, can clearly comprehend until after weeks of study.
They listen all agog. Some, adjusting their spectacles, try to pick
out among so many articles the one they want, the amount of taxes they
have to pay. The sum is too large, the assessments are excessive; it
is important that the number of additional centimes should be reduced,
and therefore that less money should be expended. Hence, if there is
any special item of expense which can be got rid of by a refusal, they
set it aside by voting No, until some new law or decree from above
obliges them to say Yes. But, as things go, nearly all the expenses
designated on the paper are obligatory; willingly or not, these must
be met, and there is no way to pay them outside of the additional
centimes; however numerous these are, vote them they must and sanction
the centimes inscribed. They accordingly affix their signatures, not
with trust but with mistrust, with resignation, and out of pure
necessity. Abandoned to their natural ignorance, the twenty-seven
thousand petty municipal councilors of the country are no more
passive, more inert, more constrained than ever; deprived of the light
which, formerly, the choice of the prefect or a restricted suffrage
could still throw into the darkness around them, there remains to them
only one safe tutor or conductor; and this final guide is the official
of the bureaus, especially this or that old, permanent chief, or under
clerk, who is perfectly familiar with his files of papers. With about
four hundred municipal councils to lead, one may imagine what he will
do with them: nothing except to drive them like a flock of sheep into
a pen of printed regulations, or urge them on mechanically, in lots,
according to his instructions, he himself being as automatic and as
much in a rut as they are.
VI. The larger Communes.
Effects of the law on the urban commune. - Disproportion between the
administrative capacity of its elected representatives and the work
imposed on them. - Lack of a special and permanent manager. - The
municipal council and the mayor. - The general council and the
intermediary committee. - The prefect. - His dominant rule. - His
obligatory concessions. - His principal aim. - Bargains between the
central authority and the local Jacobins. - Effect on this on local
government, on the officials, and in local finances.
Let us now look at the other side of the scale, on the side of the
large urban communes, of which there are 223, with above 10,000
inhabitants, 90 of these above 20,000 inhabitants, 9 of the latter
above 100,000 inhabitants, and Paris, which has 2,300,000.[28] We see
at the first glance cast upon an average specimen of these human
anthills, a town containing from 40,000 to 50,000 souls, how vast and
complex the collective undertaking becomes, how many principal and
accessory services the communal society must co-ordinate and unite
together in order to secure to its members the advantages of public
roads and insure their protection against spreading calamities:
* Maintenance and repairs of these roads, the straightening, laying-
out, paving, and drainage, the constructions and expense for sewers,
quays, and rivers, and often for a commercial harbor;
* the negotiations and arrangements with departments and with the
state for this or that harbor, canal, dike, or insane asylum; the
contracts with cab, omnibus, and tramway companies and with telephone
and house-lighting companies; the street-lighting, artesian wells and
aqueducts;
* the city police, supervision and rules for using public highways,
and orders and agents for preventing men from injuring each other when
collected together in large assemblies in the streets, in the markets,
at the theater, in any public place, whether coffee-houses or taverns;
* the firemen and machinery for conflagrations; the sanitary measures
against contagion, and precautions, long beforehand to insure hygiene
during epidemics;
* and, as extra burdens and abuses, the establishment, direction and
support of primary schools, colleges, public lectures, libraries,
theaters, hospitals, and other institutions which should be supported
and governed by different associations; at the very least, the
appropriations to these establishments and therefore a more or less
legitimate and more or less imperative intervention in their internal
management.
Such are the great undertakings which form a whole, which bear alike
on the present, past, and future budget of the commune, and which, as
so many distinct branches of every considerable enterprise, require,
for proper execution, to have their continuity and connection always
present in the thoughtful and directing mind which has them in
charge.[29] Experience shows that, in the great industrial or
financial companies, in the Bank of France, in the Crédit Lyonnais,
and in the insurance, navigation, and railroad companies, the best way
to accomplish this end is a permanent manager or director, always
present, engaged or accepted by the administrative board on understood
conditions, a special, tried man who, sure of his place for a long
period, and with a reputation to maintain, gives his whole time,
faculties, and zeal to the work, and who, alone, possessing at every
moment a coherent and detailed conception of the entire undertaking,
can alone give it the proper stimulus, and bring to bear the most
economical and the most perfect practical improvements. Such is also
the municipal administration in the Prussian towns on the Rhine. Then,
in Bonn, for instance,[30] the municipal council, elected by the
inhabitants "goes in quest" of some eminent specialist whose ability
is well known. It must be noted that he is taken wherever he can be
found, outside the city, in some remote province; they bargain with
him, the same as with some famous musician, for the management of a
series of concerts. Under the title of burgomaster, with a salary of
10,000 francs per annum, he becomes for twelve years the director of
all municipal services, leader of the civic orchestra, solely
entrusted with executive power, wielding the magisterial baton which
the various instruments obey, many of these being salaried
functionaries and others benevolent amateurs,[31] all in harmony and
through him, because they know that he is watchful, competent, and top
quality, constantly occupied with am overall view, responsible, and in
his own interest, as a point of honor, wholly devoted to his work
which is likewise their work, that is to say, to the complete success
of the concert.
Nothing in a French town corresponds to this admirable type of a
municipal institution. Here, also, and to a much greater extent in the
village, the effect of universal suffrage has been to discredit the
true notables and to incite the abdication or insure the exclusion of
men who, by their education, the large proportion of the taxes they
pay, and still greater influence or production on labor and on
business, are social authorities, and who should become legal
authorities. In every country where conditions are unequal, the
preponderance of a numerical majority necessarily ends in the nearly
general abstention or almost certain defeat of the candidates most
deserving of election. But here the case is different; the elected,
being towns-people (citadins) and not rural, are not of the species as
in the village. They read a daily newspaper, and believe that they
understand not only local matters but all subjects of national and
general importance, that is to say, high level economy, philosophy and
law; somewhat resembling the schoolmaster who, being familiar with the
rules of arithmetic, thinks that he can teach the differential
calculus, and the theory of functions. At any rate, they talk loud and
argue on every subject with confidence, according to Jacobin
traditions, being, indeed, so many budding Jacobins. They are the
heirs and successors of the old sectarians, issuing from the same
stock and of the same stamp, a few in good faith, but mainly narrow-
minded, excited, and bewildered by the smoke of the glittering
generalities they utter. Most of them are mere politicians,
charlatans, and intriguers, third-class lawyers and doctors, literary
failures, semi-educated stump-speakers, bar-room, club, or clique
orators, and vulgar climbers. Left behind in private careers, in which
one is closely watched and accepted for what he is worth, they launch
out on a public career because, in this business, popular suffrage at
once ignorant, indifferent, is a badly informed, prejudiced and
passionate judge and prefers a moralist of easy conscience, instead of
demanding unsullied integrity and proven competency. Nothing more is
demanded from candidates but witty speech-making, assertiveness and
showing off in public, gross flattery, a display of enthusiasm and
promises to place the power about to be conferred on them by the
people in the hands of those who will serve its antipathies and
prejudices. Thus introduced into the municipal council, they
constitute its majority and appoint a mayor who is their figurehead or
creature, now the bold leader and again the docile instrument of their
spite, their favors, and their headlong action, of their blunders and
presumption, and of their meddlesome disposition and encroachments. -
In the department, the council general, also elected by universal
suffrage, also bears the marks of its origin; its quality, without
falling so low, still descends in a certain degree, and through
changes which keep on increasing: politicians install themselves there
and make use of their place as a stepping-stone to mount higher; it
also, with larger powers and prolonged during its vacations by its
committee, is tempted to regard itself as the legitimate sovereign of
the extensive and scattered community which it represents. - Thus
recruited and composed, enlarged and deteriorated, the local
authorities become difficult to manage, and from now on, to carry on
the administration, the prefect must come to some understanding with
them.
VII. Local society in 1880.
Present state of local society. - Considered as an organism, it is
stillborn. - Considered as a mechanism, it gets out of order. - Two
successive and false conceptions of local government. - In theory, one
excludes the other. - Practically, their union ends in the actual
system. - Powers of the prefect. - Restrictions on these through
subsequent changes. - Give and take. - Bargaining. - Supported by the
government and cost to the State.
Before 1870, when he appointed the mayors and when the council general
held its sessions only fifteen days in the year, the prefect was
almost omnipotent; still, at the present day, (1889), "his powers are
immense,"[32] and his power remains preponderant. He has the right to
suspend the municipal council and the mayor, and to propose their
dismissal to the head of the state. Without resorting to this
extremity, he holds them with a strong hand, and always uplifted over
the commune, for he can veto the acts of the municipal police and of
the road committee, annul the regulations of the mayor, and, through a
skillful use of his prerogative, impose his own. He holds in hand,
removes, appoints or helps appoint, not alone the clerks in his
office, but likewise every kind and degree of clerk who, outside his
office, serves the commune or department,[33] from the archivist,
keeper of the museum, architect, director, and teachers of the
municipal drawing-schools, from the directors and collectors of
charity establishments, directors and accountants of almshouses,
doctors of the mineral springs, doctors and accountants of the insane
asylums and for epidemics, head-overseers of octrois, wolf-bounty
guards, commissioners of the urban police, inspectors of weights and
measures, town collectors, whose receipts do not exceed thirty
thousand francs, down to and comprising the lowest employees, such as
forest guards of the department and commune, lock-keepers and
navigation guards, overseers of the quays and of commercial ports,
toll-gatherers on bridges and highways, field-guards of the smallest
village, policemen posted on the corner of a street, and stone-
breakers on the public highway. When things and not persons are
concerned, it is he, again, who, in every project, enterprise, or
proceeding, is charged with the preliminary examination and final
execution of it, who proposes the department budget and presents it,
regularly drawn up, to the council general, who draws up the communal
budget and presents that to the municipal council, and who, after the
council general or municipal council have voted on it, remains on the
spot the sole executor, director, and master of the operation to which
they have assented. Their total, effective part in this operation is
very insignificant, it being reduced to a bare act of the will; in
reaching a vote they have had in their hands scarcely any other
documents than those furnished and arranged by him; in gradually
reaching their decision step by step, they have had no help but his,
that of an independent collaborator who, governed by his own views and
interests, never becomes the mere instrument. They lack for their
decision direct, personal, and full information, and, beyond this,
complete, efficient power; it is simply a dry Yes, interposed between
insufficient resources, or else cut off, and the fruit of which is
abortive or only half ripens. The persistent will of the prefect
alone, informed, and who acts, must and does generally prevail against
this ill-supported and ill-furnished will. At bottom, and as he
stands, he is, in his mental and official capacity, always the prefect
of the year VIII.
Nevertheless, after the laws lately passed, his hands are not so free.
The competency of local assemblies is extended and comprises not only
new cases but, again, of a new species, while the number of their
executive decisions has increased five-fold. The municipal council,
instead of holding one session a year, holds four, and of longer
duration. The council general, instead of one session a year, holds
two, and maintains itself in the interim by its delegation which meets
every month. With these increased authorities and generally present,
the prefect has to reckon, and what is still more serious, he must
reckon with local opinion; he can no longer rule with closed doors;
the proceedings of the municipal council, the smallest one, are duly
posted; in the towns, they are published and commented on by the
newspapers of the locality; the general council furnishes reports of
its deliberations. - Thus, behind elected powers, and weighing with
these on the same side of the scales, here is a new power, opinion, as
this grows in a country leveled by equalized centralization, in
heaving or stagnant crowd of disintegrated individuals lacking any
spontaneous, central, rallying point, and who, failing natural
leaders, simply push and jostle each other or stand still, each
according to personal, blind, and haphazard impressions - a hasty,
improvident, inconsistent, superficial opinion, caught on the wing,
based on vague rumors, on four or five minutes of attention given each
week, and chiefly to big words imperfectly understood, two or three
sonorous, commonplace phrases, of which the listeners fail to catch
the sense, but the sound which, by din of frequent repetition, becomes
for them a recognized signal, the blast of a horn or a shrieking
whistle which assembles the herd and arrests or drives it on. No
opposition can make head against this herd as it rushes along in too
compact and too heavy masses. - The prefect, on the contrary, is
obliged to cajole it, yield to it, and satisfy it; for under the
system of universal suffrage, this same herd, besides local
representatives, elects the central powers, the deputies, the
government; and when the government sends a prefect from Paris into
the provinces, it is after the fashion of a large commercial
establishment, with a view to keep and increase the number of its
customers, to stay there, maintain its credit, and act permanently as
its traveling-clerk, or, in other terms, as its electoral agent, and,
still more precisely, as the campaign manager of coming elections for
the dominant party and for the ministers in office who have
commissioned and appointed him, and who, from top to bottom,
constantly stimulate him to hold on to the voters already secured and
to gain fresh ones. - Undoubtedly, the interests of the state,
department, and commune must be seriously considered, but, first and
above all, he is the recruiting officer for voters. By virtue of this
position and on this he treats with the council general and the
standing committee, with the municipal councilors and mayors, with
influential electors, but especially with the small active committee
which, in each commune, supports the prevailing policy and offers its
zeal to the government.
Give and take. These indispensable auxiliaries must obtain nearly all
they ask for, and they ask a great deal. Instinctively, as well as by
doctrine and tradition, the Jacobins are exacting, disposed to regard
themselves as the representatives of the real and the ideal people,
that is to say, as sovereigns by right, above the law, entitled to
make it and therefore to unmake it, or, at least, strain it and
interpret it as they please. Always in the general council, in the
municipal council, and in the mayoralty, they are tempted to usurp it;
the prefect has as much as he can do to keep them within the local
bounds, to keep them from meddling with state matters and the general
policy; he is often obliged to accept their lack of consideration, to
be patient with them, to talk to them mildly; for they talk and want
the administration to reckon with them as a clerk with his master; if
they vote money for any service it is on condition that they take part
in the use of the funds and in the details of the service, in the
choice of contractors and in hiring the workmen; on condition that
their authority be extended and their hands applied to the consecutive
execution of what does not belong to them but which belongs to the
prefect.[34] Bargaining, consequently, goes on between them
incessantly and they come to terms. - The prefect, it must be noted,
who is bound to pay, can do so without violating the letter of the
law. The stern page on which the legislator has printed his imperative
text is always provided with an ample margin where the administrator,
charged with its execution, can write down the decisions that he is
free to make. In relation to each departmental or communal affair, the
prefect can with his own hand write out what suits him on the white
margin, which, as we have already seen, is ample enough; but the
margin at his disposition is wider still and continues, beyond
anything we have seen, on other pages; he is chargé d'affaires not
only of the department and commune, but again of the State. Titular
conductor or overseer of all general services, he is, in his
circumscription, head inquisitor of the republican faith[35], even in
relation to private life and inner sentiments, the responsible
director of orthodox or heretical acts or opinions, which are laudable
or blamable in the innumerably army of functionaries by which the
central state now undertakes the complete mastery of human life, the
twenty distinct regiments of its vast hierarchy - with the staff of
the clergy, of the magistracy, of the preventive and repressive
police, of the customs; with the officials of bridges and highways,
forest domains, stock-breeding establishments, postal and telegraph
departments, tobacco and other monopolies; with those of every
national enterprise which ought to be private, Sévres and Gobelins,
deaf and dumb and blind asylums, and every auxiliary and special
workshop for war and navigation purposes, which the state supports and
manages. I pass some of them and all too many. Only remark this, that
the indulgence or severity of the prefecture in the way of fiscal
violations or irregularities is an advantage or danger of the highest
importance to 377,000 dealers in wines and liquors; that an accusation
brought before and admitted in the prefecture may deprive 38,000
clergymen of their bread,[36] 43,000 letter-carriers and telegraph
messengers, 45,000 sellers of tobacco and collecting-clerks, 75,000
stone-breakers, and 120,000 male and female teachers;[37] directly or
indirectly, the good or ill favor of the prefecture is of consequence,
since recent military laws, to all adults between 20 and 45 years,
and, since recent school laws, to all children between 6 and 13 years
of age. According to these figures, which go on increasing from year
to, calculate the breadth of the margin on which, alongside of the
legal text which states the law for persons and things in general, the
prefect in his turn gives the law for persons and things in
particular. On this margin, which belongs to him, he writes what he
pleases, at one time permissions and favors, exemptions,
dispensations, leaves of absence, relief of taxes or discharges, help
and subventions, preferences and gratuities, appointments and
promotions, and at another time disgrace, hardship, legal proceedings,
dismissals, and special favors. To guide his hand in each case, that
is to say, to spread all the favors on one side and all the disfavors
on the other, he has, among the local Jacobins, special informers and
important applicants. If not restrained by a very strong sentiment of
distributive justice and very great solicitude for the public good he
can hardly resist them, and in general when he takes up his pen it is
to write under the dictation of his Jacobin collaborators.
Democracy in France in 1889, Summary.
Thus has the institution of the year VIII deviated (The France of the
revolution corrected and decreed by Napoleon), no longer attaining its
object. The prefects, formerly appointed to a department, like a
pacier of the Middle Ages, imposed on it from above, ignorant of local
passions, independent, qualified and fitted for the office, was,
during fifty years, in general, able to remain the impartial minister
of the law and of equity, maintaining the rights of each, and exacting
from each his due, without heeding opinions and without respect to
persons. Now he is obliged to become an accomplice of the ruling
faction, govern for the advantage of some to the detriment of others,
and to put into his scales, as a preponderating weight, every time he
weighs judgment, a consideration for persons and opinions. At the same
time, the entire administrative staff in his hands, and under his eye,
deteriorates; each year, on the recommendation of a senator or deputy,
he adds to it, or sees, intruders there, whose previous services are
null, feeble in capacity and of weak integrity who do poor work or
none at all, and who, to hold their post or get promoted, count not on
their merits but on their sponsors. The rest, able and faithful
functionaries of the old school, who are poor and to whom no path is
open, become weary and lose their energy; they are no longer even
certain of keeping their place; if they stay, it is for the dispatch
of current business and because they cannot be dispensed with; perhaps
to-morrow, however, they will cease to be considered indispensable;
some political denunciation, or to give a political favorite a place,
will put them by anticipation on the retired list. From now on they
have two powers to consult, one, legitimate and natural, the authority
of their administrative chiefs, and the other illegitimate and
parasite, consisting of democratic influence from both above and
below. For them, as for the prefect, public welfare descends to the
second rank and the electoral interest mounts upward to the first
rank. With them as with him self-respect, professional honor, the
conscientious performance of duty, reciprocal loyalty go down;
discipline relaxes, punctuality falters, and, as the saying goes, the
great administrative edifice is no longer a well-kept house, but a
barracks.
Naturally, under the democratic regime, the maintenance and service of
this house becomes more and more costly;[38] for, owing to the
additional centimes, it is the rich and well-to-do minority which
defrays the larger portion of the expense. Owing to universal
suffrage, the poor or half-poor majority which dominate the elections
so that the large majority with impunity can overtax the minority. At
Paris, the parliament and the government, elected by this numerical
majority, contrive demands in its behalf, force expenditure, augment
public works, schools, endowments, gratuities, prizes, a
multiplication of offices to increase the number of their clients,
while it never tires in decreeing, in the name of principles, works
for show, theatrical, ruinous, and dangerous, the cost of which they
do not care to know, and of which the social import escapes them.
Democracy, above as well as below, is short-sighted; it seizes
whatever food it comes across, like an animal, with open jaws and head
down; it refuses to anticipate and to calculate; it burdens the future
and wastes every fortune it undertakes to manage, not alone that of
the central state, but, again, those of all local societies. Up to the
advent of universal suffrage, the administrators appointed above or
elected below, in the department or in the commune, kept tight hold of
the purse-strings; since 1848, especially since 1870, and still later,
since the passage of the laws of 1882, which, in suppressing the
obligatory consent of the heaviest taxed, let slip the last of these
strings, this purse, wide open, is emptied in the street. - In
1851,[39] the departments, all together, expended 97 millions; in
1869, 192 millions; in 1881, 314 millions. In 1836, the communes, all
together, save Paris, expended 117 millions, in 1862, 450 millions, in
1877, 676 millions. If we examine the receipts covering this
expenditure, we find that the additional centimes which supplied the
local budgets, in 1820, with 80 millions, and, in 1850, with 131
millions, supplied them, in 1870, with 249 millions, in 1880, with 318
millions, and, in 1887, with 364 millions. The annual increase,
therefore, of these superadded centimes to the principal of the direct
taxes is enormous, and finally ends in an overflow. In 1874,[40] there
were already 24 departments in which the sum of additional centimes
reached or surpassed the sum of the principal. "In a very few years,"
says an eminent economist,[41] "it is probable that, for nearly all of
the departments," the overcharge will be similar. Already, for a long
time, in the total of personal taxation,[42] the local budgets raised
more than the state, and, in 1888, the principal of the tax real
property, 183 millions, is less than the total of centimes joined with
it, 196 millions. Coming generations are burdened over and beyond the
present generation, while the sum of loans constantly increases, like
that of taxation. The indebted communes, except Paris, owed,
altogether, in 1868, 524 millions francs[43] , in 1871, 711 millions,
and in 1878, 1322 millions francs.[44] Paris, in 1868, already owed
1326 millions, March 30, 1878, it owed 1988 millions. In this same
Paris, the annual contribution of each inhabitant for local expenses
was, at the end of the first Empire, in 1813, 37 francs per head, at
the end of the Restoration,[45] francs, after the July monarchy, in
1848, 43 francs, and, at the end of the second Empire, in 1869, 94
francs. In 1887,45 it is 110 francs per head. [46]
VIII. Final result in a tendency to bankruptcy.
Such, in brief, is the history of local society from 1789 down to
1889. After the philosophic demolition of the Revolution and the
practical constructions of the Consulate, it could no longer be a
small patrimony, something to take pride in, an object of affection
and devotion to its inhabitants. The departments and communes have
become more or less vast lodging-houses, all built on the same plan
and managed according to the same regulations one as passable as the
other, with apartments in them which, more or less good, are more or
less dear, but at rates which, higher or lower, are fixed at a uniform
tariff over the entire territory, so that the 36,000 communal
buildings and the 86 department hotels are about equal, it making but
little difference whether one lodges in the latter rather than in the
former. The permanent taxpayers of both sexes who have made these
premises their home, have not obtained recognition for what they are,
invincibly and by nature, a syndicate of neighbors, an involuntary,
obligatory and private association, in which physical solidarity
engenders moral solidarity, a natural, limited society whose members
own the building in common, and each possesses a property right more
or less great, according to the greater or lesser contribution he
makes to the expenses of the establishment. Up to this time no room
has yet been found, either in the law or in minds, for this very plain
truth; its place is taken and occupied in advance by the two errors
which, in turn or both at once, have led the legislator and opinion
astray.
Taking things as a whole, it is admitted up to 1830 that the
legitimate proprietor of the local building is the central state, that
it may install its delegate therein, the prefect, with full powers;
that, for better government, he consents to be instructed by the
leading interested and most capable parties on the spot; that he
should fix the petty rights he concedes to them within the narrowest
limits; that he should appoint them; that, if he calls them together
for consultation, it is from time to time and generally for form's
sake, to add the authority of their assent to the authority of his
omnipotence, on the implied condition that he shall not give heed to
their objections if he does not like them, and not follow their advice
if he does not choose to accept it. - Taking things as a whole, it is
admitted that, since 1848, the legitimate proprietors of the building
are its adult male inhabitants, counted by heads, all equal and all
with an equal part in the common property, comprising those who
contribute nothing or nearly nothing to the common expenditure of the
house, the numerous body of semi-poor who lodge in it at half price,
and the not less numerous body to whom administrative charity
furnishes house comforts, shelter, light, and frequently provisions,
gratuitously. - Between both these contradictory and false
conceptions, between the prefect of the year VIII, and the democracy
of 1792, a compromise has been effected; undoubtedly, the prefect,
sent from Paris, is and remains the titular director, the active and
responsible manager of the departmental or communal building; but, in
his management of it he is bound to keep in view the coming elections,
and in such a way as will maintain the parliamentary majority in the
seats they occupy in parliament; consequently, he must conciliate the
local leaders of universal suffrage, rule with their help, put up with
the intrusion of their bias and cupidity, take their advice daily,
follow it often, even in small matters, even in payments day by day of
sums already voted, in appointing an office-clerk, in the appointment
of an unpaid underling, who may some day or other take this clerk's
place.[47] - Hence the spectacle before our eyes: a badly kept
establishment in which profusion and waste render each other worse and
worse, where sinecures multiply and where corruption enters in; a
staff of officials becoming more and more numerous and less and less
serviceable, harassed between two different authorities, obliged to
possess or to simulate political zeal and to neutralize an impartial
law by partiality, and, besides performing their regular duties, to do
dirty work; in this staff, there are two sorts of employees, the new-
comers who are greedy and who, through favor, get the best places, and
the old ones who are patient and pretend no more, but who suffer and
grow disheartened; in the building itself, there is great demolition
and reconstruction, architectural fronts in monumental style for
parade and to excite attention, entirely new decorative and extremely
tiresome structures at extravagant cost; consequently, loans and
debts, heavier bills at the end of each year for each occupant, low
rents, but still high, for favorites in the small rooms and garrets,
and extravagant rents for the larger and more sumptuous apartments; in
sum, forced receipts which do not offset the expenses; liabilities
which exceed assets; a budget which shows only a stable balance on
paper, - in short, an establishment with which the public is not
content, and which is on the road to bankruptcy.
____________________________________________________________________
Notes:
[1] Laws of March 21, 1831, and July 18, 1837, June 22, 1833, and May
10, 1838. The municipal electors number about 2,250,000 and form the
superior third of the adult masculine population; in the choice of its
notables and semi-notables, the law takes into account not only wealth
and direct taxation but likewise education and services rendered to
the public. - The department electors number about 200,000, about as
many as the political electors. The reporter observes that "an almost
complete analogy exists between the choice of a deputy and the choice
of a department councilor, and that it is natural to confide the
election to the same electoral body otherwise divided, since the
object is to afford representation to another order of interests."
[2] Laws of July 3, 1848.
[3] Laws of Aug. 12, 1876, March 28, 1882, and April 5, 1884; law of
Aug. 10, 1871.
[4] The prefect, who is directed and posted by the minister of the
Interior in Paris.
[5] "The Revolution," vol. I., book VIII. (Laff. I. pp. 467-559.)
[6] And in 1880 it certainly excluded the female side of human
nature. (SR.)
[7] It must have been evident that nature gives to each worker,
hunter, farmer or fisherman in accordance with their competence and
industry. (SR.)
[8] Construction of roads, canals, sewers, highways etc and protection
against calamities.
[9] Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, "Traité de la science des finances," 4th
edition, I., p. 303: "The personal tax, levied only as principal,
oscillates between the minimum of 1 fr. 50 and the maximum of 4 fr. 50
per annum, according to the communes. - Ibid., 304: "In 1806 the
personal tax produced in France about sixteen millions of francs, a
little less than o fr. 50 per head of the inhabitants."
[10] Ibid., I., 367 (on the tax on doors and windows). According to
the population of the commune, this is from 0 fr. 30 to 1 fr. for each
opening, from 0 fr. 45 to 1 fr. 50 for two openings, from 0 fr. 90 to
4 fr. 50 for three openings, from 1 fr. 60 to 6 fr. 40 for four
openings, and from 2 fr. 50 to 8 fr. 50 for five openings. The first
of these rates is applied to all communes of less than 5000 souls. We
see that the poor man, especially the poor peasant, is considered; the
tax on him is progressive in an inverse sense.
[11] De Foville, "La France Economique" (1887), p.59: "Our 14,500
charity bureaux gave assistance in 1883 to 1,405,500 persons; . . . .
as, in reality, the population of the communes aided (by them) is only
22,000,000, the proportion of the registered poor amounts to over six
per cent."
[12] Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, " Essai sur la répartition des richesses,"
p.174, et seq. - In 1851, the number of land-owners in France was
estimated at 7,800,000. Out of these, three millions were relieved of
the land tax, as indigent, and their quotas were considered as
irrecoverable.
[13] Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, "Traité de la science des finances," p.721.
[14] De Foville, p.419. (In 1889.)
[15] Cf ante, on the characteristics of indirect taxation.
[16] Here it is the estimated rent, which stands to the real rent as
four to five ; an estimated rent of 400 francs indicates a real rent
of 500 francs.
[17] De Foville, p.57.
[18] Paul Leroy-Beaulieu," Essai sur la répartition de richesses," p.
174.
[19] Ibid., p.209: In 1878, in Paris, 74,000 houses with 1,022,539
rentals, 337,587 being for trade and commerce, and 684,952 for
dwelling purposes. Among the latter, 468,641 have a locative value
inferior to 300 francs a year; 74,360 are between 500 and 750 francs ;
21,147 are between 750 and 1000 francs. All these lodgings are more
or less exempt from the personal tax: those between 1000 and 400
francs pay it with a more or less great reduction: those under 400
francs pay nothing. Above 1000 francs, we find 17,202 apartments from
between 1000 and 1250 francs ; 6198 from between 1250 and 1500
francs; 21,453 from 1500 to 3000 francs. These apartments are
occupied by more or less well-to-do people. - 14,858 apartments above
3000 francs are occupied by the richer or the wealthy class. Among
the latter 9985 are from 3000 to 6000; 3040 are from 6000 to 10,000;
1443 are from 10,000 to 20,000; 421 are above 20,000 francs. These
two latter categories are occupied by the really opulent class. -
According to the latest statistics, instead of 684,952 dwelling
rentals there are 806,187, of which 727,419 are wholly or partly free
of the personal tax. ("Situation au 1ère Janvier, 1888," report by M.
Lamouroux, conseiller-municipal.)
[20] The following appropriations for 1889 are printed on my tax-bill:
"To the State, 51 %.; to the Department, 21 % ; to the commune, 25 %."
On business permits: "To the State, 64 %.; to the Department, 12 %.;
to the commune, 20 %. The surplus of taxes is appropriated to the
benevolent fund and for remission of taxes."
[21] Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, "Traité de la science des finances," I., pp.
367-368: "In communes under 5000 inhabitants the principal of the tax
on doors and windows is, for houses with one opening, 0 fr. 30 per
annum ; for those with four openings, 1 fr. 60." Now, "a house with
five openings pays nearly nine times as much as a house with one
opening." The small taxpayers are accordingly largely relieved at the
expense of those who pay heavy and average taxes, the magnitude of
this relief being appreciable by the following figures: In 1885, out
of 8,975,166 houses, 248,352 had one opening, 1,827,104 two openings,
1,624,516 three openings, and 1,165,902 four openings. More than one-
half of the houses, all of those belonging to the poor or straitened,
are thus relieved, while the other half, since the tax is an impost,
not a quota, but an apportionment, is overcharged as much.
[22] One result of this principle is, that the poor who are exempt
from taxation or who are on the poor list have no vote, which is the
case in England and in Prussia. - Through another result of the same
principle, the law of May 15, 1818, in France, summoned the heaviest
taxpayers, in equal number with the members of the municipal council,
to deliberate with it every time that "a really urgent expenditure"
obliged the commune to raise extra additional centimes beyond the
usual 0 fr. 05. "Thus," says Henrion de Pancey ("Du pouvoir
municipal," p.109), "the members of the municipal councils belong to
the class of small land-owners, at least in a large number of
communes, voted the charges without examination which only affected
them insensibly." - This last refuge of distributive justice was
abolished by the law of April 5, 1882.
[23] Max Leclerc, "Le Vie municipale en Prusse." (Extrait des "Annales
de l'Ecole libre des sciences politique," 1889, a study on the town of
Bonn.) At Bonn, which has a population of 35,810 inhabitants, the
first group is composed of 167 electors: the second, of 471; the
third, of 2607, each group elects 8 municipal councilors out of 24.
[24] De Foville, "La France économique," p. 16 (census of 1881). -
Number of communes, 36,097; number below 1000 inhabitants, 27,503;
number below 500 inhabitants, 16,870. - What is stated applies partly
to the two following categories: 1st, communes from 1000 to 1500
inhabitants, 2982; 2nd, communes from 1500 to 2000 inhabitants, 1917.
- All the communes below 2000 inhabitants are counted as rural in the
statistics of population, and they number 33,402.
[25] See Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, "L'État moderne et ses fonctions," p.
169. "The various groups of inhabitants, especially in the country, do
not know how to undertake or agree upon anything of themselves. I have
seen villages of two or three hundred people belonging to a large
scattered commune wait patiently for years and humbly petition for aid
in constructing an indispensable fountain, which required only a
contribution of 200 or 300 francs, 5 francs per head, to put up. I
have seen others possessing only one road on which to send off their
produce and unable to act in concert, when, with an outlay of 2000
francs, and 200 or 300 francs a year to keep it in order, it would
easily suffice for all their requirements. I speak of regions
relatively rich, much better off than the majority of communes in
France."
[26] In French villages, on one of the walls of a public building on
the square are notices of all kinds, of interest to the inhabitants,
and among these, in a frame behind a wire netting, the latest copy of
the government official newspaper, giving authentic political items,
those which it thinks best for the people to read. (Tr.)
[27] On the communal system in France, and on the reforms which,
following the example of other nations, might be introduced into it,
cf. Joseph Ferrand (formerly a prefect), "Les Institutions
administratives en France et à l'étranger"; Rudolph Gneist, "Les
Réformes administratives en Prusse accomplies par la legislation de
1872," (especially the institution of Amtsvorsteher, for the union of
communes or circumscriptions of about 1500 souls); the Duc de Broglie,
"Vues sur le gouvernement de la France" (especially on the reforms
that should be made in the administration of the commune and canton),
p. 21. - "Deprive communal magistrates of their quality as government
agents; separate the two orders of functions; have the public
functionary whose duty it is to see that the laws are executed in the
communes, the execution of general laws and the decisions of the
superior authority carried out, placed at the county town."
[28] De Foville, ibid., p. 16. - The remarks here made apply to towns
of the foregoing category (from 5000 to 10,000 souls), numbering 312.
A last category comprises towns from 2000 to 5000 souls, numbering
2160, and forming the last class of urban populations; these, through
their mixed character, assimilate to the 1817 communes containing from
1500 to 2000 inhabitants, forming the first category of the rural
populations.
[29] Max Leclerc, "La Vie municipale en Prusse," p 17. - In Prussia,
this directing mind is called "the magistrate," as in our northern and
northeastern communes. In eastern Prussia, the "magistrate" is a
collective body; for example, at Berlin, it comprises 34 persons, of
which 17 are specialists, paid and engaged for twelve years, and 17
without pay. In western Prussia, the municipal management consists
generally of an individual, the burgomaster, salaried and engaged for
twelve years.
[30] Max Leclerc, ibid., p.20. - "The present burgomaster in Bonn was
burgomaster at Münchens-Gladbach, before being called to Bonn. The
present burgomaster of Crefeld came from Silesia . . . . A lawyer,
well known for his works on public law, occupying a government
position at Magdeburg," was recently called "to the lucrative position
of burgomaster " in the town of Münster. At Bonn, a town of 30,000
inhabitants, "everything rests on his shoulders he exercises a great
many of the functions which, with us, belong to the prefect."
[31] Max Leclerc, ibid., p. 25. - Alongside of the paid town officers
and the municipal councilors, there are special committees composed of
benevolent members and electors "either to administer or superintend
some branch of communal business, or to study some particular
question." "These committees, subject, moreover, in all respects to
the burgomaster, are elected by the municipal council." - There are
twelve of these in Bonn and over a hundred in Berlin. This institution
serves admirably for rendering those who are well disposed useful, as
well as for the development of local patriotism, a practical sense and
public spirit.
[32] Aucoc, p. 283.
[33] Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, "L'administrateur locale en France et en
Angleterre," pp.26, 28, 92. (Decrees of March 25, 1852, and April 13,
1861.)
[349 J. Ferrand, ibid., p. 169, 170 (Paris, 1879): "In many cases,
general tutelage and local tutelage are paralyzed . . . . Since 1870-
1876 the mayors, to lessen the difficulties of their task, are
frequently forced to abandon any rightful authority; the prefects are
induced to tolerate, to approve of these infractions of the law. . . .
For many years one cannot read the minutes of a session of the council
general or of the municipal council without finding numerous examples
of the illegality we report . . . . In another order of facts, for
example in that which relates to the official staff, do we not see
every day agents of the state, even conscientious, yield to the will
of all-powerful political notabilities and entirely abandon the
interests of the service? " - These abuses have largely increased
within the past ten years.
[35] See "La République et les conservateurs," in the Revue des Deux
Mondes of March 1, 189, p.108. - "I speak of this de visu [from
experience, (SR.)]: I take my own arrondissement. It is in one of the
eastern departments, lately represented by radicals. This time it was
carried by a conservative. An attempt was first made to annul the
election, which had to be given up as the votes in dispute were too
many. Revenge was taken on the electors. Gendarmes, in the communes,
investigated the conduct of the curés, forest-guard, and storekeeper.
The hospital doctor, a conservative, was replaced by an opportunist.
The tax-comptroller, a man of the district, and of suspicious zeal,
was sent far into the west. Every functionary who, on the even of the
election, did not have a contrite look, was threatened with dismissal.
A road-surveyor was regarded as having been lukewarm, and accordingly
put on the retired list. There is no petty vexation that was not
resorted to, no insignificant person, whom they disdained to strike.
Stone breakers were denounced for saying that they ought not to have
their wages reduced. Sisters of charity, in a certain commune,
dispensed medicine to the poor; they were forbidden to do this, to
annoy the mayor living in Paris. The custodians of mortgages had an
errand-boy who was guilty of distributing, not voting-tickets, but
family notices (of a marriage) on the part of the new deputy; a few
days after this, a letter from the prefecture gave the custodian
notice that the criminal must be replaced in twenty-four hours. A
notary, in a public meeting, dared to interrupt the radical candidate;
he was prosecuted in the court for a violation of professional duties,
and the judges of judiciary reforms condemned him to three months
'suspension.' This took place, "not in Languedoc, or in Provence, in
the south among excited brains where everything is allowable, but
under the dull skies of Champagne. And when I interrogate the
conservatives of the West and the Center, they reply: "We have seen
many beside these, but is long since we have ceased to be astonished!"
[36] Ibid., p.105 : "Each cantonal chief town has its office of
informers. The Minister of Public Worship has himself told that on the
first of January, 1890, there were 300 curés deprived of their salary,
about three or four times as many as on the first of January, 1889."
[37] These figures are taken from the latest statistical reports. Some
of them are furnished by the chief or directors of special services.
[38] Taine could hardly have imagined how costly the modern democracy
would, 100 years later, become. How could he have imaged that the
"Human Rights" should become the right to live comfortably and well at
the expense of an ever more productive society.
[39] DeFoville, pp.412, 416, 425, 455; Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, "Traité de
la science des finances," I., p.717.
[40] "Statistiques financières des communes en 1889": - 3539 communes
pay less than 15 common centimes; 2597 pay from 0 fr. 15 to 0 fr. 30;
9652 pay from 0 fr. 31 to 0 fr. 50; 11,095 from 0 fr. 51 to 1 franc,
and 4248 over 1 franc. - Here this relates only to the common
centimes; to have the sum total of the additiona1 local centimes of
each commune would require the addition of the department centimes,
which the statistics do not furnish.
[41] Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, ibid., I., pp.690, 717.
[42] Ibid.: "If the personal tax were deducted from the amount of
personal and house tax combined we would find that the assessment of
the state in the product of the house tax, that is to say the product
of the tax on rentals, amounts to 41 or 42 millions, and that the
share of localities in the product of this tax surpasses that of the
state by 8 or 9 millions (Year 1877.)
[43] Between 1805 and 1900 the French franc was tied to the gold
standard. A 20 francs coin thus weighed 7,21 grams. Its price is today
in 1998 1933.- francs. Taine's figures have to be multiplied by app.
ten in order to compare with today's prices. No real comparison can,
however, be made since production per capita has multiplied by a large
factor and so have taxes.
[44] "Situation financière des department et des communes," published
in 1889 by the Minister of the Interior. Loans and indebtedness of
the departments at the end of the fiscal year in 1886, 630,066,102
francs. Loans and indebtedness of the communes Dec. 30, 1886,
3,020,450,528 francs.
[45] De Foville, p.148; Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, " L'État moderne et ses
fonctions," p. 21.
[46] During the 110 years since Taine wrote his somber previsions
the French have had to pay the same penalty as other ill managed
Democracies; Bankruptcies direct or indirect with galloping inflation
and enormous devaluations with as a consequence impoverishment of
naive depositors and credulous pension fund participants, wars for
which France was badly prepared with millions of dead and prisoners
and with occupation of France as a result. The culprits, the elected
politicians, have either died or anyhow lived out their lives
comfortably on the indexed retirements which the oligarchy generally
reserves for themselves. (SR.)
[47] Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, "L'Administration locale en France et en
Angleterre," p. 28. (Decrees of March 25, 1852, and April 13, 1861.)
List of offices directly appointed by the prefect and on the
recommendation of the heads of the service, among others the
supernumeraries of telegraph lines and of the tax offices.