distance, and being careful whom he invited to his table. Neither did he disguise his ambition. As far back as 1797, he observed to Melzi and Miot, "What the French want is glory, and to have their vanity gratified. As to liberty, they don't know what to do with it."* As he exchanged his private abode for that of the Tuileries in town, in the country he removed from the Malmaison to St. Cloud. He at the same time banished the classic frippery which the Revolution had introduced and the Directory patronized. Togas and tunics were declared no longer the fashion, and military uniform became the court costume. Far more serious changes than these were effected by a law reorganizing provin cial administration. If Siéyes had, by concentrating power in the hands of a body of notables, favoured despotic power, he had contemplated counterbalancing this tendency by leaving communes and municipalities free. This indeed he sought to insert in his constitution, which Bonaparte insisted on omitting, and in its place soon inaugurated the imperial system of centralization. He appointed prefects in every department, subprefects in every district, and kept to himself the nomination of mayor in every commune. If the republican government had stricken root and worked beneficently in rural districts, such a complete reversal of it, as well as of all local authority, would not have been possible. But, unfortunately, the rustic and provincial authorities sprung from election had abused their power as much as conventionalists or directors. Entrusted with the levy and repartition of the public contributions, they had exercised this duty as violent and selfish partisans, and in such a way as to stop all flow of revenue from the provinces to the capital. The confiscated property of émigrés and clergy had been as badly dealt with. Mayor and council obeyed the terrible commissioners of the * Mémoires du Comte Miot de Melito. СНАР. XLIII. CHAP. Convention, who came with the guillotine in their train. But they would obey nothing less, and decentralization came to be synonymous with disorder. After such unhappy experience, it was easy for Bonaparte to suspend communal and municipal liberty, allowing the assemblies indeed to remain, and to elect juges de paix; but all real power in province and district was transferred to the prefect, and to the herd of political, fiscal, and judicial functionaries which soon invaded the provinces. If the disorder and embezzlement traced to the municipal authorities during their revolutionary reign rendered the re-establishment of the old monarchic intendants easy, under the name of "prefects," the prevalence of factions in the provinces, either Chouan or republican, served as a pretext for the extension of police superintendence over the country. A minister of that name and functions had been created by the Directory, but his authority and exertions were confined to the capital. Now, however, the police minister (Fouché) was empowered to appoint commissaries in every provincial town, and thus envelope the future empire with a network of police. Fouché, indeed, was as greedy of power as Napoleon himself. Lucien Buonaparte, as home minister, offuscated him, and he having committed the blunder of publishing a pamphlet entitled "Monk and Napoleon," well intended but premature, was obliged to quit office, and abandon the field to Fouché.* Stern republican as Lucien had been, the public liberties did not lose by his resignation. He sanctioned and executed a large proscription of the press, the first consul having inaugurated his reign by the immolation of all the journals save thirteen. And these existed under the permission of the police. Individual liberty need not be mentioned, although each successive code appeared to secure it. The jury, which was promised, *Miot. Thibaudeau. XLIII. was soon set aside. And the military ruler had always CHAP. courts martial or special tribunals at his command, when it was his object to avoid or supersede the regular courts of justice. The tribunate which commenced its sittings and orations with the new year raised a feeble voice against the worst of these dictatorial acts, and merely attacked the less consequential. The revolution had abrogated the right of willing property, by establishing a fixed and forced division. The First Consul sought to restore parental authority somewhat, by allowing it to bequeath a larger portion to one child. This supposed attack on equality, this tendency to aristocracy, was a fertile subject of declamation, which indisposed rather than hurt the First Consul. He was, in fact, obeyed as no monarch had ever been, not even Louis the Fourteenth. One left as little liberty to the population as the other, but the chains and the burdens of Frenchmen in the nineteenth century were equally borne by all. There were neither corporations, nor professions, nor class, nor institutions, that could resent or even show discontent. If there was a murmur it must be a general one, and the mass of the people were too well pleased to have escaped, some from the starvation, others from the extortion or the tyranny, of the republic, to repine either at the revival of the worst taxes of the monarchy, salt and drink duties included, or at the new burden of the conscription, far more onerous than the corvée or any feudal exaction. All this went to throw power into the hands of the government, power unwisely spent, first in the domination and subjection of other countries and races, but soon used to teach them the selfsame modes of concentrated administration and levyings of men and resources, which the conqueror employed. The conscription first tried in France was soon applied to the German and Sclavonic races. And Napoleon at last did but create a military world, intended to combat for XLIII. CHAP. him, but quite certain to combat against him, sooner or later. It was impossible to organise the modern world into dominant and subject races. No event so efficaciously contributed to this as the French revolution. Yet Napoleon was induced to attempt to apply the old feudal law of domination and subservience to Europe. He failed and must have failed. Although the world is so tardy in perceiving the true cause of his fall, or deriving the true lesson from it. men. * This iron sceptre required to be gilt with glory, no easy achievement even for Bonaparte. The French armies had been beaten upon almost every field. The loss during 1799 was estimated at little less than 200,000 Massena's reduced army was menaced with capture in Genoa, the remains of the Egyptian expedition in the same predicament. The Russians, to be sure, had retired in disgust from the war, but Austria had a powerful army on the Rhine, and a veteran one in Piedmont. Had the Austrians acted fairly and wisely, they would have at once restored his dominions to the King of Piedmont, and made him raise a native royalist force to defend them. But Austria had determined on keeping Piedmont, thus rivalling the foe in rapacity, and throwing away the natural support that might have swelled their armies. † The principal desire of Bonaparte was to reverse the triumphs of the latter. His reputation, and consequently his power, were built on his Italian conquests. To recover these was the surest mode of dazzling the French, and making them acquiesce in his government. With this aim it was also necessary to free Italy by one decisive blow, not by a long campaign, during which the absence of the First Consul from the capital would give an opening to a host of dangerous conspiracies and intrigues. His plan was therefore not to fight his way over the Alps, or through * Enquête. † Castlereagh Correspondence, vol. v. p. 3. their passes from Provence, but to convey an army en masse through Switzerland, at once into the plains of Piedmont. This could not be attempted at a very early period of the year, nor at any time whilst the Austrians had a large army in Swabia. To drive them behind the Inn became his first object. Moreau was given the command of the army in Alsace, and his mission was to force the Austrians back into Bavaria, whilst an army destined for Italy was mustered and equipped at Dijon. But Moreau was cautious. He himself had failed in a previous attack of the same kind, Jourdan had suffered a defeat from the Archduke Charles, whilst engaged in a similar enterprise. But the archduke no longer commanded. He had recommended the emperor to make great reforms civil and military, as well as to observe peace for the present, but the court with its wonted fatuity replaced him by Kray. That general spread his 100,000 men in an extended line from the Maine to the Tyrol, the French were far more concentrated near Basle. Bonaparte wished Moreau to pass the Rhine at Schaffhausen, to get in the rear of the enemy's centre. But Moreau insisted on moving straight forward, and he succeeded in beating Kray in three successive actions, the principal one being at Moeskirch, and obliging that general to shut himself in the entrenched camp of Ulm.† * Some 40,000 men had, in the meantime, been collected and equipped at Dijon. And no sooner did Bonaparte learn that Moreau had driven the Austrians so far eastward as to break off their communications with the Lake of Constance and Switzerland, which was effected towards the middle of May, than he ordered the army at Dijon to proceed round the Lake of Geneva, and reinforced by 20,000 men, which had formed the right * For the reforms, proposed by the Archduke Charles, see Springer, Geschichte Osterreichs. † St. Cyr, Napoleon, Archduke Charles. CHAP, XLIII. |