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

The Concordat gave great satisfaction to the mass of the population for two reasons - it gave them back the normal exercise of the religion in which they believed, and it confirmed their titles to the lands of the Church which they had bought during the Revolution, titles which the Church now recognized as legal. The Church soon found that Bonaparte regarded it as merely another source of influence, an instrument of rule. The clergy now became his supporters and in large measure abandoned royalism. Moreover Bonaparte, by additional regulations to which he did not ask the Pope's assent, bound the clergy hand and foot to his own chariot.

The Concordat was nevertheless a mistake. France had worked out a policy of entire separation of church and state which, had it been allowed to continue, would have brought the blessing of toleration into the habits of the country. But the Concordat cut this promising development short and by tying church and state together in a union which each shortly found disagreeable it left to the entire nineteenth century an irritating and a dangerous problem. Nor did it preserve, for long, happy relations between Napoleon and the Pope. Not many years later a quarrel arose between them which grew and grew until the Pope excommunicated Napoleon and Napoleon seized the Pope and kept him prisoner. Napoleon himself came to consider the Concordat as the worst blunder in his career. However its immediate advantages were considerable.

"My real glory," said Napoleon at St. Helena, "is not my having won forty battles. What will never be effaced, what will endure forever, is my Civil Code." He was undoubtedly mistaken as to the durability of this achievement, but he was correct in placing it higher than that activity which occupied far more of his time. The famous Code Napoleon was an orderly, systematic, compact statement of the laws of France. Pre-revolutionary France had been governed by a perplexing number of systems of law of different historical origins. Then had come, with the Revolution, a flood of new legislation, inspired by different principles and greatly increasing the sum-total of laws in force. It was desirable to sift and harmonize all these statutes, and to present to the people of France a body of law, clear, rational, and logically arranged, so that henceforth all the doubt, uncertainty, and confusion which had hitherto characterized the administration of justice might be avoided and every Frenchman might easily know what his legal rights and relations were, with reference to the state and his fellow citizens. The Constituent Assembly, the Convention, the Directory, had all appreciated the need of this laid by the codification and had had committees at work upon it, but various work had been uncompleted. Bonaparte now lent the driving force of his personality to the accomplishment of this task, and in a comparatively brief time the lawyers and the Council of State to whom he intrusted the work had it finished. The code to which Napoleon attached his name preserved the principle of civil equality established by the Revolution. It was immediately put into force in France and was later introduced into countries conquered or influenced by France, Belgium, the German territories west of the Rhine, and Italy.

Bonaparte's own direct share in this monumental work was considerable and significant. Though no lawyer himself, and with little technical knowledge of law, his marvelous intellectual ability, Bonaparte's share in the the precision, penetration, and pertinence of many of his making of criticisms, suggestions, questions, gave color and tone and character to the complete work. He presided over many of the sessions of the Council of State devoted to the elaboration of this code. "He spoke," says a witness, " without embarrassment and without pretension. He was never inferior to any member of the Council; he often equaled the ablest of them by the ease with which he seized the point of a question, by the justness of his ideas and the force of his reasoning; he often surprised them by the turn of his phrases and the originality of his expression." Called a new Constantine by the clergy for having made the Concordat, Bonaparte was considered by the lawyers a new Justinian. He was as a matter of fact, in many respects, the superior of both.

During these years of the Consulate Bonaparte achieved many other things than those which have been mentioned. He improved the system of taxation greatly, and brought order into the of France national finances. He founded the Bank of France which still exists and another institution which has come down to our own day, the Legion of Honor, for the distribution of honors and emoluments to those who rendered distinguished service to the state. of Honor Opposed as undemocratic, as offensive to the principle of equality, it was nevertheless instituted. Though open to those who had rendered civil service as well as to those who had rendered military, as a matter of fact Napoleon conferred only 1,400 crosses out of 48,000 upon civilians.

Nor did this exhaust the list of durable achievements of this crowded period of the Consulate. The system of national education was reorganized, and industry and commerce received the interested attention of the ambitious ruler. Roads were improved, canals were cut, ports were dredged. The economic development of the country was so rapid as to occasion some uneasiness in England.

Thus was carried through an extensive and profound renovation of the national life. This period of the Consulate is that part of Bonaparte's career which was most useful to his fellow men, most contributory to the welfare of his country. His work was not accomplished without risk to himself. As his reputation and authority increased, the wrath of those who saw their way to power barred by his formidable person increased also. At first the royalists had looked to him to imitate the English General Monk who had used his position for the restoration of Charles II. But Bonaparte had no notion of acting any such graceful and altruistic a part. When this became apparent certain reckless royalists commenced to plot against him, began considering that it was possible to murder him. An attack upon him occurred shortly after Marengo. Many lives were lost but he escaped with his by the narrowest margin.

A more serious plot was woven in London in the circle of the Count of Artois, younger brother of Louis XVI. The principal agents were Georges Cadoudal and Pichegru. Bonaparte, through his police, knew of the plot. He hoped, in allowing it to develop, to get his hands on the Count of Artois. But the Count did not land in France. Cadoudal and his accomplices were taken and shot. Pichegru was found strangled in prison. Bonaparte wished to make an example of the House of Bourbon which would be remembered. This led him to commit a monstrous crime. He ordered the seizure on German soil of the young Duke d'Enghien, the Prince of Conde, a member of a branch of the Bourbon family. The prince, who was innocent of any connection whatever with the conspiracy, was abducted, brought to Vincennes at five o'clock on the evening of March 20, 1804, was sent before a court-martial at eleven o'clock and at half past two in the night was taken out into the courtyard and shot. This was assassination pure and simple and it was Bonaparte's own act. It has remained ever since an odious blot upon his name, which the multitudinous seas cannot wash out. Its immediate object, however, was achieved. The royalists ceased plotting the murder of the Corsican.

A few days after this Bonaparte took another step forward in the consolidation of his powers. In 1802, after the Treaty of Amiens had been made, he had astutely contrived to have his consulate for ten years transformed into a consulate for life, with the right to name his successor. The only remaining step was taken in 1804 when a servile Senate approved a new constitution, declaring him Emperor of the French, "this change being demanded by the interests of the French people." It was at any rate agreeable to the French people, who in a popular vote or plebiscite ratified it overwhelmingly. Henceforth he is designated by his first name, in the manner of monarchs. It happened to be a more musical and sonorous name than most monarchs have possessed.