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1799.

CONSULS INSTALLED.

155

Freedom, in fact, was not only extinct, and its revival hopeless, from the reasons above stated; the generation capable of sustaining it was worn out. There were not men, scarcely one man, of honesty and talents, whereof to make a minister, much less a supreme governor. "Cela s'appelle des hommes d'état," said Bonaparte, alluding to Gohier. It was the misfortune of the revolution, that at its commencement, when talents and integrity abounded, experience, so necessary to give them effect, was wanting: and at its close, when the fruit of experience was plentifully gathered from an unparalleled series of political phenomena, neither talent nor integrity remained to profit by it. Here that higher class which had been proscribed were wanted. Whatever difference of opinion may subsist respecting the aristocracy of birth and property, there can be none as regards the aristocracy of talent and intellectual acquirement. These at least are necessary to command, in any station, that respect which forms the bulwark of all political authority. A system of sanscullotism and terrorism had in France levelled all. It had swept away the better-born, sent all the talents of the bar to the scaffold, and driven the rising generation to the camp and the battlefield; and there now really did not remain in civil society respectability sufficient to form a legislature or a government. The revolution, like Saturn, had devoured its children. Its Jupiter alone escaped in Bonaparte.

Whatever may have been the crimes and faults of this great man, we cannot consider usurpation as one. It was necessary-it was inevitable. When in ten years a nation, having conquered its foes, cannot organize liberty,-when it has let pass every opportunity for this, and thrown away all its means, despotism must close, at least, over that generation. The overwhelming tide of tyrannic power must pass over the vain labor, the passions, the factions of the time, levelling them all, and reducing them to merited oblivion; whilst to a forlorn race is reserved the opportunity for reattempting that great task, which the energy of evil passions may be requisite to commence, but which virtue and moderation, and a respect for laws human and divine, can alone worthily or lastingly complete.

Bonaparte, with his two partisans of the late directory, Sièyes and Ducos, were the provisional consuls charged with preparing the new constitution. Their first step was to instal themselves in the palace of the Luxembourg. Here, at their first council, Sièyes disclosed the famed plan of government, which had been so long concocting in silence, and which he now fully hoped to see realized. He systematically acknow

ledged two principles of authority, the popular and the sove reign. The former he constituted by causing the nation to divide itself into two classes,-the communal, or lower; the departmental, or higher: the people choosing their own notables, as it were, and re-electing them every two years. Out of this departmental list, a few more select lists, emanating from it, came the council of state, the legislative body, and the tribunate. The sovereign source of authority, with Sièyes, was his grand elector, whose office was solely to select a set of ministers, and a council of state, with whom he was never to interfere. The council of state was thus the government. The tribunate, being the first notables of the people, was to take care of their rights, discuss measures and laws. But neither council nor tribunate could give validity to a measure or a law. These were to be presented to the legislative body, which was to pass or reject them without discussion, and more as a judicial court than as an assembly. To prevent the tribunate from participating too fully in the effervescence and polemics of the people, its members were appointed for life. This last provision rendered the plan of Sièyes a mockery of popular government; whilst his grand elector, menaced with absorption if he misbehaved, was too much a parody of the monarchical form.

Sièyes destined the palace of Versailles, and a large revenue, to his grand elector, and thought thus to tempt Bonaparte. "What man of spirit," replied the latter, "would consent to fatten like a pig, without respectability or power, in such a position?" Bonaparte returned the compliment. He gave Sièyes a large sum of money, a splendid mansion and domain at Versailles, and sent him to fatten there like his own grand elector, arranging the constitution more to his mind. He began not at the base of the pyramid, but the apex. He established in the first place of power a first consul, possessed of the full executive power, with two others, merely allowed to deliberate and advise. The first consul appointed a senate, the senate a tribunate, the members of both for life, and all with handsome pensions. A more open and audacious scheme of despotism could not have been framed by the sultan. Yet Bonaparte sent it for acceptation to the primary assemblies of France-the several votes of which, during the revolution, certainly do not furnish very strong arguments in favor of universal suffrage. The democratic constitution of 1793, the more recent constitution of the directory, had been similarly submitted, and had each received the adhesion of upwards of millions of votes. Now Bonaparte's dictatorship acquired nearly four millions of votes; so extensive was his popu

1800.

CONSULATE.

157

larity, so profound the disgust of a republic. The consular constitution was promulgated in the last days of 1799, and Bonaparte soon after left the too modest Luxembourg for the Tuilleries.

Whilst yet only provisional consul, Bonaparte had not been idle. The law of hostages and that of the forced loan had been repealed. A hasty list of proscriptions drawn up against the most. turbulent Jacobins was no sooner published than withdrawn. In the choice of ministers, talents were advanced, and tolerance shown to all opinions. Talleyrand, one of the liberal and old noblesse, was again reinstated as minister for foreign affairs. Fouché kept the police. "Fouché was a terrorist," objected Sièyes. "We commence a new epoch," replied Bonaparte; "let us forget the crimes of the past, and remember merely the benefits." The choice of the two assistant consuls, Cambacérès and Le Brun, was approved of as moderate and wise.

Upon his first assuming the office of chief magistrate of the state, Bonaparte sunk his military propensities and character. He entered with novel delight upon the task of legislating and administering; in which those who knew him esteem his talents to have been full as eminent as in the field of battle or the campaign. His vanity, too, of which he had no inordinate measure, just as much as may be allowed to mingle with greatness, was pleased with the pomp of his station, and which he began to arrange early after the old regal standard. He liked to act king; and he took no small pleasure in announcing his accession to the generals and envoys of the republic, as well as to foreign states.

His letter to the monarch of Great Britain must be considered in this light. It was an announcement of his sovereignty; being perfectly aware that at that epoch England would not seek peace on the terms that the first consul could grant. Lord Grenville's reply, though of befitting spirit, was too verbose for pride, too vague for argument. It was really unfortunate for Austria that she did not follow the advice of the archduke Charles, in making peace now in the hour of success. Her yielding would have obliged England to put an end to the war, and a treaty then would have been inore favorable to the allies than that of Amiens proved. Engaged in the paths of peace, Bonaparte might not have found his new despotism so tranquilly submitted to; and even he might have passed, like Barras, had not the victory of Marengo placed the crown upon his head. Austria, however, did not condescend to these considerations. Her imperial pride, sustained by British money, had resolved upon another

campaign, in which the fierce soldiers of Suwarrow were i be ill replaced by German contingents from Bavaria and othe petty princes. The archduke Charles protested, he saw no wisdom in this zeal; and he was removed in consequence from command.

Previous to taking the field, Bonaparte determined to root out even the semblance of civil war. He summoned the Vendean and Chouan chiefs to Paris with fair promise of accom. modation. They had hopes, such as many entertained, of his acting Monk, and restoring the Bourbons,-an idea far from his intentions. Most of them submitted. The fiercest, Georges Cadoudal, Bonaparte sought to awe or win in a personal interview. But the Breton, true to the stubbornness of his provincial character, only conceived a more deadly enmity towards the new dictator.

"A new dynasty," says the French orators of the day, "must be baptized in blood." Bonaparte felt so. He had need of a crowning victory, not only for his country's but his own sake, and he was determined that it should be full and glori ous, opened by a gigantic march which was calculated as much to strike imaginations at home as to distress the Austrian. The first confsul had dispatched Moreau to the Rhine. For his own purposes, an army, called that of reserve, was collected at Dijon, and organized by Berthier. His object was to recover Italy, which the Austrians now occupied to the foot of the Alps, with the exception of Genoa, where Massena still held out, though pressed hard by famine, by the Austrians on land, and by an English fleet. Melas, commander of the imperial armies, had his quarters at Alexandria; his troops and views all directed towards the Savoy Alps in pursuit of Suchet, who was retreating over those mountains. Of meeting with the French general in any other direction he did not dream, and the name properly given to the army assembled at Dijon, that of reserve, indicated no bolder intention than that of defending the course of the Rhine.

The real views of Bonaparte were indeed too bold to have entered into the Austrian general's conception They were to traverse Switzerland with his army, by Geneva, its lake, and the valley of the Rhône, to Martigny; from thence to cross mount St. Bernard, and descend into the plains of Lombardy in the rear of Melas. The communications of the Austrian would thus be cut off, all his plans deranged, his troops obliged to countermarch and take new positions; whilst a defeat would be total ruin. To keep up the dread of his name by surprise was another object with Bonaparte, who knew the value of being original in war.

1800.

BONAPARTE CROSSES THE ALPS

159

On the 6th of May the first consul left Paris. The army ɔf Dijon, reinforced from the Rhine, and amounting to about 40,000 men, marched into Switzerland. Mount St. Bernard was crossed on the 20th, its passage by the gallant hosts forming one of the most picturesque feats in the annals of modern warfare. Mules and foot passengers alone traverse this Alpine road. The French placed their cannon in the hollowed trunks of trees, the men dragging them up the steep ascent. In May the winter is still unmitigated in these regions. The rigor of a northern clime, snow, and ice, and the torment of the whirlwind, increased the dangers of the way. A large sum had been transmitted to the monks of the convent on the summit to provide refreshments for the troops as they passed. But the consciousness of achieving the feat of Hannibal's army bore up both general and soldier; the divi sion which crossed the Simplon had perhaps more difficulties to encounter, passing deep fissures one by one, or clinging to a single cord. ́ In issuing from mount St. Bernard, down into the valley of Aosta, the way is stopped by the little fort of Bard, under which the road runs. The troops might avoid it by clambering round the hills; for the artillery this was impossible. It was summoned, cannonaded,-in vain. The little street, however, being strewn with straw and branches of trees, the cannon were dragged past in the course of a dark night. Had the fort opened its fire on this night, and delayed the army longer, all the advantages of the bold march and meditated surprise would have been lost. Bonaparte followed the course of the Dora and the Po, entered Milan and Pavia, and seized all the letters and communications passing betwixt Melas and Vienna.

The Austrian general had already retrograded; he could not credit the report of Bonaparte's being in Italy. He sent a trusty messenger to learn; and the messenger for a thousand louis betrayed to the French a complete account of the force and positions of their enemy. What above all astonished Melas was to hear the French cannon: how had they passed the Alps? Bonaparte's arrival at Milan, itself a triumph, and felt as such by his army, took place on the 2d of June. Moncey was to join him with reinforcements from the army of Switzerland. He in the mean time dispatched his lieutenants to seize the towns on the Po, which was effected. Murat in taking Piacenza intercepted a courier who bore tidings of the fall of Genoa. This misfortune left Bonaparte no object save that of marching upon Melas, and defeating him in battle. The Austrian general concentrated his force at Alexandria; whilst Ott, his lieutenant, after having

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