His behaviour towards Portugal was, however, of a character deviating from the moderation he had in general displayed. Portugal, the ancient and faithful ally of England, was on that account the especial object of the first consul's displeasure. He, therefore, demanded of the King of Spain, who, since the peace between the countries, had been the submissive vassal of France, to declare war on the Prince Regent of Portugal, although the husband of his daughter. War accordingly was declared, in obedience to the mandate of the first consul, and the Spanish armies, together with an auxiliary army of French under Leclerc, entered Portugal, took Olivenza and Almeida, and compelled the prince regent, 6th of June, 1801, to sign a treaty, engaging to shut his ports against the English, and surrendering to Spain, Olivenza, and other places on the frontier of the Guadiana. Buonaparte was highly discontented with this treaty, to which he would not accede; and he refused, at the same time, to withdraw from Spain the army of Leclerc. On the 29th September, he condescended to grant Portugal peace under some additional terms,587 which were not in themselves of much consequence, although the overbearing and peremptory conduct which he exhibited towards the Peninsular powers, was a sign of the dictatorial spirit which he was prepared to assume in the affairs of Europe.
The same disposition was manifested in the mode by which Buonaparte was pleased to show his sense of the King of Spain's complaisance. He chose for that purpose to create a kingdom and a king – a king, too, of the house of Bourbon. An infant of Spain obtained the throne of Tuscany, under the name of Etruria, rent from the house of Austria.588 Madame de Staël terms this the commencement of the great masquerade of Europe; but it was more properly the second act. The stage, during the first, was occupied by a quadrille of republics, who were now to be replaced by an anti-mask of kings. This display of power pleased the national vanity, and an uproar of applause ensued, while the audience at the theatre applied to Buonaparte the well-known line —
"J'ai fait des rois, madame, et n'ai pas voulu l'être."
While all the continent appeared thus willing to submit to one so ready to avail himself of their subjection, Britain alone remained at war; without allies, without, it might seem, a direct object; yet on the grand and unalterable principle, that no partial distress should induce her to submit to the system of degradation, which seemed preparing for all nations under the yoke of France, and which had placed France herself, with all her affected zeal for liberty, under the government of an arbitrary ruler. On every point the English squadrons annihilated the commerce of France, crippled her revenues, blockaded her ports, and prevented those combinations which would have crowned the total conquest of Europe, could the master, as he might now be called, of the land, have enjoyed, at the same time, the facilities which can only be afforded in communication by sea.
It was in vain that Buonaparte, who, besides his natural hardiness of perseverance, connected a part of his own glory with the preservation of Egypt, endeavoured by various means to send supplies to that distant province. His convoys were driven back into harbour by the English fleets; and he directed against his admirals, who could not achieve impossibilities, the unavailing resentment natural to one who was so little accustomed to disappointment.
The chance of relieving Egypt was rendered yet more precarious by the loss of Malta, which, after a distressing blockade of two years, was obliged to submit to the English arms on the 5th of September, 1800. The English were thus in possession of a strong, and almost impregnable citadel, in the midst of the Mediterranean, with an excellent harbour, and every thing required for a naval station of the first importance; above all, they had obtained the very spot which Buonaparte had fixed upon for maintaining the communication with Egypt, which was now in greater danger than ever.
The capture of Malta was, however, by its consequences, favourable to Napoleon's views in one important respect. The Emperor Paul imagined he had rights upon that island, in consequence of his having declared himself Grand Master of the Order of Saint John; and although, by his deserting the coalition, and abandoning the common cause, he had lost all right to expect that Great Britain should surrender to him an important acquisition made by her own arms, yet, with his usual intemperate indulgence of passion, he conceived himself deeply injured by its being withheld,589 and nourished from that time an implacable resentment against England and her government, the effects of which are afterwards to be traced.
CHAPTER XXI
Internal Government of France – General Attachment to the Chief Consul – Plot to remove him by Assassination – Defeated – Vain hopes of the Royalists, that Napoleon would restore the Bourbons – Infernal Machine – It fails – Suspicion first falls on the Republicans – The actual Conspirators executed – Use made by Buonaparte of the Conspiracy to consolidate Despotism – System of Police – Fouché – His Skill, Influence, and Power – Apprehension entertained by the Chief Consul of the effects of Literature – Persecution of Madame de Staël – The Concordat – Plan for a general System of Jurisprudence – Amnesty granted to the Emigrants – Plans of Public Education – Hopes of a General Peace.
INTERNAL GOVERNMENT OF FRANCE
We return to the internal government of France under the chief consul.
The events subsequent to the revolution of the 18th Brumaire, seemed to work a miraculous change on the French nation. The superior talents of Napoleon, with the policy exercised by Talleyrand and Fouché, and the other statesmen of ability whom he had called into administration, and who desired at all events to put an end to further revolutionary movements – but, above all, the victory of Marengo, had at once created and attached to the person of the chief consul an immense party, which might be said to comprehend all those, who, being neither decided Royalists nor determined Republicans, were indifferent about the form of the government, so they found ease and protection while living under it.590
But, on the other hand, the heads of the two factions continued to exist; and, as the power of the first consul became at once more absolute and more consolidated, it grew doubly hateful and formidable to them. His political existence was a total obstruction to the systems of both parties, and yet one which it was impossible to remove. There was no national council left, in which the authority of the first consul could be disputed, or his measures impeached. The strength of his military power bid defiance alike to popular commotions, if the Democrats had yet possessed the means of exerting them, and to the scattered bands of the Royalist insurgents. What chance remained for ridding themselves of the autocrat, in whom the Republicans saw a dictator, the Royalists an usurper? None, save that, being mortal, Napoleon was subject to be taken off by assassination.
PLOT TO ASSASSINATE THE FIRST CONSUL
The Democrats were naturally the first to meditate an enterprise of this nature. The right of taking off a tyrant was, according to their creed, as proper to any private citizen as to those who opposed him armed in the field. The act of Harmodius and Aristogiton – the noble deed of Brutus and his associates – were consecrated in history, and esteemed so congenial to the nature of a free constitution, that the Convention, on the motion of Jean de Brie,591 had at one time determined to raise a legion of assassins, armed with poniards, who should devote themselves to the pious task of exterminating all foreign princes, statesmen, and ministers – in short, all who were accounted the foes of freedom, without pity or distinction. In a party entertaining such principles, there could be no scruple on the score of morality; and where they had been so lately professed by thousands, it seemed natural that, amid the multitude, they must have made a deep impression on some enthusiastic and gloomy disposition, which might be easily provoked to act upon them.
Oct. 10
It is no wonder, therefore, that some obscure Jacobins should have early nourished the purpose of assassinating Napoleon, as the enemy of his country's freedom, and the destroyer of her liberties; but it is singular, that most of the conspirators against his person were Italians. Arena, brother of the deputy592 who was said to have aimed a dagger at Buonaparte in the Council of Five Hundred, was at the head of the conspiracy. He was a Corsican.593 With him, Ceracchi594 and Diana, two Italian refugees; a painter called Topino-Lebrun;595 and two or three enthusiasts of low condition, formed a plot for the purpose of assassinating the chief consul at the Opera-house. Their intention was detected by the police; Ceracchi and Diana were arrested in the lobby,596 armed, it was said, and prepared for the attempt, and Napoleon was congratulated by most of the constituted authorities upon having escaped a great danger.597
Crassous, president of the Tribunate, made a singular speech on the occasion, which would almost bear a double interpretation. "There had been so many conspiracies," he said, "at so many different periods, and under so many different pretexts, which had never been followed up either by inquiry or punishment, that a great number of good citizens had become sceptical on the subject of their existence. This incredulity was dangerous," he argued; "it was time it should be ended." With this view, Monsieur Crassous recommended, that the persons guilty on the present occasion should be prosecuted and punished with all the solemnity and rigour of the laws.
Buonaparte replied, with military indifference, that he had been in no real danger. "The contemptible wretches," he said, in something like a renewal of his Egyptian vein, "had no power to commit the crime they meditated. Besides the assistance of the whole audience, I had with me a piquet of my brave guard, from whom the wretches could not have borne a look."598 So ended this singular discourse; and it is remarkable that neither were the circumstances of the plot made public, nor the conspirators punished, till the more memorable attempt on Napoleon's life by the Royalists.
THE ROYALISTS
The Royalists, as a party, had far more interest with Buonaparte than the Democrats. The former approved of the principles and form of his government, – it was only necessary for their conversion, that they should learn to endure his person; whereas the Jacobins being equally averse to the office to which he aspired, to his power, and to himself, there were no hopes of their being brought to tolerate either the monarch or the man. Of the latter, therefore, Napoleon entertained equal dislike and distrust; while, from obvious causes, his feelings towards the former were in some measure friendly.
The Royalists, too, for some time entertained a good opinion of Buonaparte, and conceived that he intended, in his own time and in his own way, to act in behalf of the exiled royal family. The enthusiastic of the party were at a loss to conceive that the throne of France should be again erected, and that any one but a Bourbon should dare to ascend it. It seemed to them impossible that the monarchy should revive without the restoration of the legitimate monarch, and they could not believe that a Corsican soldier of fortune would meditate an usurpation, or that France would be for a moment tolerant of his pretensions. The word liberty had, indeed, misled the people of France for a time, but, that illusion being dissipated, their natural love to the royal race would return like a reviving spring, and again run in its old channel.
So general was the belief among this class, that Buonaparte meditated the restoration of the Bourbons, that several agents of the family made their way so far as to sound his own mind upon the subject. Louis himself, afterwards XVIII., addressed to the first consul a letter of the following tenor: – "You cannot achieve the happiness of France without my restoration, any more than I can ascend the throne which is my right, without your co-operation. Hasten then to complete the good work, which none but you can accomplish, and name the rewards which you claim for your friends."599
Buonaparte answered the letter with cold civility. He esteemed the person, he said, and pitied the misfortunes, of his Royal Highness the Comte de Provence, and should be glad to assist him, did an opportunity permit. But as his royal highness could not be restored to France, save at the expense of an hundred thousand lives, it was an enterprise in which he, Buonaparte, must decline to aid him.600
A less direct, and more artful course, is said to have been attempted, by the mission of the Duchesse de Guiche, one of the most beautiful and pleasing women of the time, who, obtaining permission to come to Paris under pretext of her private affairs, was introduced at the Tuileries, and delighted Josephine with the elegance of her manners.601 Napoleon did not escape the fascination but the instant she touched on the subject of politics, the interesting duchesse received an order to quit Paris.
As soon as the Royalists discovered, by the failure of these and similar applications, as well as by the gradual tendency of Buonaparte's measures, that the restoration of the Bourbons was the thing farthest from his purpose, their disappointment exasperated them against the audacious individual, whose single person seemed now the only obstacle to that event. Monarchical power was restored, in spirit at least, if not in form; was it to be endured, the more zealous followers of the Bourbons demanded of each other, that it should become the prize of a military usurper? This party, as well as that of the Jacobins, contained doubtless many adherents, whom the enthusiasm of their political principles disposed to serve their cause, even at the expense of great crimes. The sentiments of the princes of the royal family upon such a subject, were becoming their high ranks.602 They were resolved to combat Buonaparte's pretensions with open force, such as befitted their pretensions as head of the chivalry of France, but to leave to Jacobins the schemes of private assassination. Still there must have been many, among those characters which are found during the miseries and crimes of civil war, who conceived that the assassination of the chief consul would be received as good service when accomplished, although it might not be authorised beforehand. Nay, there may have been partisans zealous enough to take the crime and punishment on themselves, without looking farther than the advantage which their party would receive by the action.
THE INFERNAL MACHINE
A horrible invention, first hatched, it is said, by the Jacobins,603 was adopted by certain Royalists of a low description, remarkable as actors in the wars of the Chouans, of whom the leaders were named Carbon and St. Regent. It was a machine consisting of a barrel of gunpowder, placed on a cart to which it was strongly secured, and charged with grape-shot so disposed around the barrel, as to be dispersed in every direction by the explosion. The fire was to be communicated by a slow match. It was the purpose of the conspirators, undeterred by the indiscriminate slaughter which such a discharge must occasion, to place the machine in the street through which the first consul was to go to the opera, having contrived that it should explode, exactly as his carriage should pass the spot; and, strange to say, this stratagem, which seemed as uncertain as it was atrocious, was within a hair's-breadth of success.
On the evening of the 24th December, 1800, Buonaparte has informed us, that though he himself felt a strong desire to remain at home, his wife and one or two intimate friends insisted that he should go to the opera. He was slumbering under a canopy when they awaked him. One brought his hat, another his sword. He was in a manner forced into his carriage, where he again slumbered and was dreaming of the danger which he had escaped in an attempt to pass the river Tagliamento some years before. On a sudden he awaked amidst thunder and flame.604
The cart bearing the engine, which was placed in the street St. Nicaise, intercepted the progress of the chief consul's coach, which passed it with some difficulty. St. Regent had fired the match at the appointed instant; but the coachman, who chanced to be somewhat intoxicated, driving unusually fast, the carriage had passed the machine two seconds before the explosion took place; and that almost imperceptible fraction of time was enough to save the life which was aimed at. The explosion was terrible. Two or three houses were greatly damaged – twenty persons killed, and about fifty-three wounded; among the latter was the incendiary St. Regent. The report was heard several leagues from Paris. Buonaparte instantly exclaimed to Lannes and Bessières, who were in the carriage, "We are blown up!" The attendants would have stopped the coach, but with more presence of mind he commanded them to drive on, and arrived in safety at the opera;605 his coachman during the whole time never discovering what had happened, but conceiving the consul had only received a salute of artillery.606
A public officer, escaped from such a peril, became an object of yet deeper interest than formerly to the citizens in general; and the reception of the consul at the opera, and elsewhere, was more enthusiastic than ever. Relief was ostentatiously distributed amongst the wounded, and the relatives of the slain; and every one, shocked with the wild atrocity of such a reckless plot, became, while they execrated the perpetrators, attached in proportion to the object of their cruelty. A disappointed conspiracy always adds strength to the government against which it is directed; and Buonaparte did not fail to push this advantage to the uttermost.
Notwithstanding that the infernal machine (for so it was not unappropriately termed) had in fact been managed by the hands of Royalists, the first suspicion fell on the Republicans; and Buonaparte took the opportunity, before the public were undeceived on the subject, of dealing that party a blow, from the effects of which they did not recover during his reign. An arbitrary decree of the Senate was asked and readily obtained for the transportation beyond seas of nearly one hundred and thirty of the chiefs of the broken faction of the Jacobins, among whom were several names which belonged to the celebrated Reign of Terror, and had figured in the rolls of the National Convention. These men were so generally hated, as connected with the atrocious scenes during the reign of Robespierre, that the unpopularity of their characters excused the irregularity of the proceedings against them, and their fate was viewed with complacency by many, and with indifference by all. In the end, the first consul became so persuaded of the political insignificance of these relics of Jacobinism, (who, in fact, were as harmless as the fragments of a bombshell after its explosion,) that the decree of deportation was never enforced against them; and Felix Lepelletier, Chaudieu, Talot, and their companions, were allowed to live obscurely in France, watched closely by the police, and under the condition that they should not venture to approach Paris.607
The actual conspirators were proceeded against with severity. Chevalier and Veycer, Jacobins, said to have constructed the original model of the infernal machine, were tried before a military commission, condemned to be shot, and suffered death accordingly.
Arena, Ceracchi, Topino-Lebrun, and Demerville, were tried before the ordinary court of criminal judicature, and condemned by the voice of a jury; although there was little evidence against them, save that of their accomplice Harel, by whom they had been betrayed. They also were executed.
At a later period, Carbon and St. Regent, Royalists, the agents in the actual attempt of 24th December, were also tried, condemned, and put to death. Some persons tried for the same offence were acquitted; and justice seems to have been distributed with an impartiality unusual in France since the Revolution.
But Buonaparte did not design that the consequences of these plots should end with the deaths of the wretches engaged in them. It afforded an opportunity not to be neglected to advance his principal object, which was the erection of France into a despotic kingdom, and the possessing himself of uncontrolled power over the lives, properties, thoughts, and opinions, of those who were born his fellow-subjects, and of whom the very meanest but lately boasted himself his equal. He has himself expressed his purpose respecting the Constitution of the year Eight, or Consular Government, in words dictated to General Gourgaud: —
"The ideas of Napoleon were fixed; but the aid of time and events were necessary for their realization. The organization of the Consulate had presented nothing in contradiction to them; it taught unanimity, and that was the first step. This point gained, Napoleon was quite indifferent as to the form and denominations of the several constituted bodies. He was a stranger to the Revolution. It was natural that the will of these men, who had followed it through all its phases, should prevail in questions as difficult as they were abstract. The wisest plan was to go on from day to day – by the polar star by which Napoleon meant to guide the Revolution to the haven he desired."608
If there is any thing obscure in this passage, it received but too luminous a commentary from the course of Buonaparte's actions; all of which tend to show that he embraced the Consular government as a mere temporary arrangement, calculated to prepare the minds of the French nation for his ulterior views of ambition, as young colts are ridden with a light bridle until they are taught by degrees to endure the curb and bit, or as water-fowl taken in a decoy are first introduced within a wider circuit of nets, in order to their being gradually brought within that strict enclosure where they are made absolute prisoners. He tells us in plain terms, he let the revolutionary sages take their own way in arranging the constitution; determined, without regarding the rules they laid down on the chart, to steer his course by one fixed point to one desired haven. That polar star was his own selfish interest – that haven was despotic power. What he considered as most for his own interest, he was determined to consider as the government most suited for France also. Perhaps he may have persuaded himself that he was actually serving his country as well as himself; and, indeed, justly considered, he was in both instances equally grievously mistaken.
SPECIAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL
With the views which he entertained, the chief consul regarded the conspiracies against his life as affording a pretext for extending his power too favourable to be neglected. These repeated attacks on the Head of the state made it desirable that some mode should be introduced of trying such offences, briefer and more arbitrary than the slow forms required by ordinary jurisprudence. The prompt and speedy justice to be expected from a tribunal freed from the ordinary restraint of formalities and justice, was stated to be more necessary on account of the state of the public roads, infested by bands called Chauffeurs, who stopped the public carriages, intercepted the communications of commerce, and became so formidable, that no public coach was permitted to leave Paris without a military guard of at least four soldiers on the roof. This was used as a strong additional reason for constituting a special court of judicature.
Buonaparte could be at no loss for models of such an institution. As hero of the Revolution, he had succeeded to the whole arsenal of revolutionary weapons forged in the name of Liberty, to oppress the dearest rights of humanity. He had but to select that which best suited him, and to mould it to the temper of the times. The country which had so long endured the Revolutionary Tribunal, was not likely to wince under any less stern judicature.
The court which Government now proposed to establish, was to consist of eight members thus qualified. 1. The president and two judges of the ordinary criminal tribunal. 2. Three military men, bearing at least the rank of a captain. 3. Two citizens, to be suggested by Government, who should be selected from such as were by the constitution qualified to act as judges. Thus five out of eight judges were directly named by the Government for the occasion. The court was to decide without jury, without appeal, and without revision of any kind. As a boon to the accused, the court were to have at least six members present, and there was to be no casting vote; so that the party would have his acquittal, unless six members out of eight, or four members out of six, should unite in finding him guilty; whereas in other courts, a bare majority is sufficient for condemnation.
With this poor boon to public opinion, the special Commission Court was to be the jurisdiction before whom armed insurgents, conspirators, and in general men guilty of crimes against the social compact, were to undergo their trial.
The counsellor of state, Portalis, laid this plan before the Legislative Body, by whom it was, according to constitutional form, referred to the consideration of the Tribunate. It was in this body, the only existing branch of the constitution where was preserved some shadow of popular forms and of free debate, that those who continued to entertain free sentiments could have any opportunity of expressing them. Benjamin Constant, Daunon, Chenier, and others, the gleanings as it were of the liberal party, made an honourable but unavailing defence against this invasion of the constitution, studying at the same time to express their opposition in language and by arguments least likely to give offence to the Government. To the honour of the Tribunate, which was the frail but sole remaining barrier of liberty, the project had nearly made shipwreck, and was only passed by a small majority of forty-nine over forty-one. In the Legislative Body there was also a strong minority.609 It seemed as if the friends of liberty, however deprived of direct popular representation, and of all the means of influencing public opinion, were yet determined to maintain an opposition to the first consul, somewhat on the plan of that of England.
Another law, passed at this time, must have had a cooling effect on the zeal of some of these patriots. It was announced that there were a set of persons, who were to be regarded rather as public enemies than as criminals, and who ought to be provided against rather by anticipating and defeating their schemes than by punishing their offences. These consisted of Republicans, Royalists, or any others entertaining, or supposed to entertain, opinions inimical to the present state of affairs; and the law now passed entitled the government to treat them as suspected persons, and as such, to banish them from Paris or from France. Thus was the chief consul invested with full power over the personal liberty of every person whom he chose to consider as the enemy of his government.
Buonaparte was enabled to avail himself to the uttermost of the powers which he had thus extracted from the constitutional bodies, by the frightful agency of the police. This institution may, even in its mildest form, be regarded as a necessary evil; for although, while great cities continue to afford obscure retreats for vice and crime of every description, there must be men, whose profession it is to discover and bring criminals to justice, as while there are vermin in the animal world, there must be kites and carrion-crows to diminish their number; yet, as the excellence of these guardians of the public depends in a great measure on their familiarity with the arts, haunts, and practices of culprits, they cannot be expected to feel the same horror for crimes, or criminals, which is common to other men. On the contrary, they have a sympathy with them of the same kind which hunters entertain for the game which is the object of their pursuit. Besides, as much of their business is carried on by the medium of spies, they must be able to personate the manners and opinions of those whom they detect; and are frequently induced, by their own interest, to direct, encourage, nay suggest crimes, that they may obtain the reward due for conviction of the offenders.
Applied to state offences, the agency of such persons, though sometimes unavoidable, is yet more frightfully dangerous. Moral delinquencies can be hardly with any probability attributed to worthy or innocent persons; but there is no character so pure, that he who bears it may not be supposed capable of entertaining false and exaggerated opinions in politics, and, as such, become the victim of treachery and delation. In France, a prey to so many factions, the power of the police had become overwhelming; indeed, the very existence of the government seemed in some measure dependent upon the accuracy of their intelligence; and for this purpose their numbers had been enlarged, and their discipline perfected, under the administration of the sagacious and crafty Fouché. This remarkable person had been an outrageous Jacobin, and dipped deep in the horrors of the revolutionary government610– an adherent of Barras, and a partaker in the venality and peculation which characterised that period. He was, therefore, totally without principle; but his nature was not of that last degree of depravity, which delights in evil for its own sake, and his good sense told him, that an unnecessary crime was a political blunder. The lenity with which he exercised his terrible office, when left in any degree to his own discretion, while it never prevented his implicit execution of Buonaparte's commands, made the abominable system over which he presided to a certain extent endurable; and thus even his good qualities, while they relieved individual suffering, were of disservice to his country, by reconciling her to bondage.