Array Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - The Collected Works of Napoleon Bonaparte

Bonaparte summed this policy up in the phrase "careers open to talent." This idea was not original with him, it was contained in the Declaration of the Rights of Man. But he held it. Under him there were no artificial barriers, any one might rise as high as his ability, his industry, his service justified, always on condition of his loyalty to the Sovereign. Every avenue was kept open to ambition and energy. Napoleon's marshals, the men who attained the highest positions in his armies, were humbly born - Massena was the son of a saloon-keeper, Augereau of a mason, Ney of a cooper, and Murat of a country inn-keeper. None of these men could have possibly become a marshal under the Old Regime, nor could Bonaparte himself possibly ever have risen to a higher rank than that of colonel and then only when well along in life. Bonaparte did not think that all men are equal in natural gifts or in social position, but he maintained equality before the law, that priceless acquisition of the Revolution.

He did not believe in liberty nor did he believe that, for that matter, the French believed in it. His career was one long denial or negation of it. Neither liberty of speech, nor liberty of the press, neither intellectual nor political liberty received anything from him but blows and infringements. In this respect his rule meant reaction to the spirit and the practice of the Old Regime. It is quite true that the Convention and the Directory had also trampled ruthlessly upon this principle but it is also quite true that neither he nor they could successfully defy what is plainly a dominant preoccupation, a deep-seated longing of the modern world. For the last hundred years the ground has been cumbered with those who thought they could silence this passion for freedom, and who found out, to their cost and the cost of others, that their efforts to imprison the human spirit were unavailing. There are still, after all these instructive hundred years, rulers who share that opinion and act upon it. They have been able to preserve themselves and their methods of government in certain countries. But their day of reckoning, it may safely be prophesied, is coming, as it came for Napoleon himself. They fight for a losing cause, as the history of the modern world shows.

The activities of Bonaparte as First Consul, after Marengo and during the brief interval of peace, were unremitting and far-reaching. It was then that he gave his full measure as a civil ruler. He as ruler was concerned with binding up the wounds or open sores of the nation, with determining the precise form of the national institutions, with fashioning the mould through which the national life was to go pulsing for a long future, with consolidating the foundations of his power. A brief examination of this phase of his activity is essential to a knowledge of the later history of France, and to our appreciation of his own matchless and varied ability, of the power of sheer intellect and will applied to the problems of a society in flux.

First, the party passions which had rioted for ten years must be quieted. Bonaparte's policy toward the factions was conciliation, coupled with stern and even savage repression of such elements as refused to comply with this primary requirement. There was room enough in France for all, but on one condition, that all accept the present rulers and acquiesce in the existing institutions and laws of the land. Offices would be open freely to former royalists, Jacobins, Girondists, on equal terms, no questions asked save that of loyalty. As a matter of fact Bonaparte exercised his vast appointing power in this sense for the purpose of effacing all treatment of distinctions, all unhappy reminders of a troubled past. The emigres and .non-juring laws against the emigres and the recalcitrant priests were priests relaxed. Of over 100,000 emigrants, all but about 1,000 irreconcilables received, by successive decrees, the legal right to return and to recover their estates, if these had not been already sold. Only those who placed their devotion to the House of Bourbon above all other considerations found the door resolutely closed.

Bonaparte soon perceived that the strength of the Bourbon cause lay not in the merits or talents of the royal family itself or its aristocratic supporters, but in its close identification with the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church. Through all the angry religious warfare of the Revolution the mass of the people had remained faithful to the priests and the priests were subject to the bishops. The bishops had refused to accept the various laws of the Revolution concerning them and had as a consequence been driven from the country. They were living mostly in England and in Germany, taking their cue from the Pope, who recognized Louis XVIII, brother of Louis XVI, as the legitimate ruler of France.

Thus the religious dissension was fused with political opposition - royalists and bishops were in the same galley. Bonaparte determined to sever this connection, thus leaving the extreme royalists high and dry, a staff of officers without an army. No resolved to sooner had he returned from Marengo than he took measures to show the Catholics that they had nothing to fear from him, that they could enjoy their religion undisturbed if they did not use their liberty, under cover of religion, to plot against him and against the Revolutionary settlement. He was in all this not actuated by any religious sentiment himself, but by a purely political sentiment he was himself as he said, "Mohammedan in Egypt, Catholic in France," not because he considered that either was in the exclusive or authentic possession of the truth, but because he was a man of sense who saw the futility of trying to dragoon by force men who were religious into any other camp than the one to which they naturally belonged. Bonaparte also saw that religion was an instrument which he might much better have on his side than allow to be on the side of his enemies. He looked on religion as a force in politics, nothing else. Purely political, not spiritual, considerations determined his policy in now concluding with the Pope the famous treaty or Concordat, which reversed much of the work of the Revolutionary assemblies, and determined the relations of church and state in France for the whole nineteenth century. This important piece of legislation of the year 1802 lasted 103 years, being abrogated only under the present republic, in 1905.

Bonaparte's thought was that by restoring the Roman Catholic Church to something like its former primacy he would weaken the royalists. The people must have a religion, he said, but the religion must be in the hands of the government. Many of support of his adherents did not agree at all with him in this attitude. They thought it far wiser to keep church and state divorced as they had been by the latest legislation of the Revolution. Bonaparte discussed the matter with the famous philosopher Volney, whom he had just nominated a senator, saying to him, "France desires a opposition to religion." Volney replied that France also desired the Bourbons. At this Bonaparte assaulted the philosopher and gave him such a kick that he fell and lost consciousness. The army officers who were anti-clerical were bitter in their opposition and jibes, but Bonaparte went resolutely ahead. He knew the influence that priests exercise over their flocks and he intended that they should exercise it in his behalf. He meant to control them as he controlled the army and the thousands of state officials. The control of religion ought to be vested in the ruler. "It is impossible to govern without it," he said. He therefore turned to the Pope and made the treaty. "If the Pope had not existed," he said, "I should have had to create him for this occasion."

By the Concordat the Catholic religion was recognized by the Republic to be that "of the great majority of the French people" and its free exercise was permitted. The Pope agreed to a reorganization involving a diminution in the number of bishoprics. He also recognized the sale of the church property effected by the Revolution. Henceforth the bishops were to be appointed by the First Consul but were to be actually invested by the Pope. The bishops in turn were to appoint the priests, with the consent of the government. The bishops must take the oath of fidelity to the head of the state. Both bishops and priests were to receive salaries from the state. They really became state officials.