For more than ten years, amid unheard of shocks and sufferings, France had been seeking for a free and regular government, that might assure to her the new rights which had only been gained through tribulation. She had overthrown the Monarchy and attempted a Republic; she had accepted and rejected three constitutions, all the while struggling single-handed with Europe, leagued against her. She had undergone the violence of the Reign of Terror, the contradictory passions of the Assemblies, and the incoherent feebleness of the Directory. For the first time since the death of King Louis XIV., her history finds once more a centre, and henceforth revolves round a single man. For fifteen years, victorious or vanquished, at the summit of glory, or in the depths of abasement, France and Europe, overmastered by an indomitable will and unbridled passion for power, were compelled to squander their blood and their treasure upon that page of universal history which General Bonaparte claims for his own, and which he has succeeded in covering with glory and crime. On the day following the 18th Brumaire, in the uncertainty of parties, in face of a constitution audaciously violated, and a government mainly provisional, the nation was more excited than apprehensive or disquieted. It had caught a glimpse of that natural power and that free ascendancy of genius to which men willingly abandon themselves, with a confidence which the most bitter deceptions have never been able to extinguish. Ardent and sincere republicans, less and less numerous, felt themselves conquered beforehand, by a sure instinct that was not misled by the protest of their adversaries. They bent before a new power, to which their old hatreds did not attach, which they believed to be in some sort created by their own hands, and of which they had not yet measured the audacity. The mass of the population, the true France, hailed with joy the hope of order and of a regular and strong administration. They were not prejudiced in favor of the philosophic constitution so long propounded by Sieyès. In the eyes of the nation, the government was already concentrated in the hands of General Bonaparte; it was in him that all were trusting, for repose at home and glory and peace abroad. In fact, he was governing already, disregarding the prolonged discussions of the two legislative commissions, and the profound developments of the projects of Sieyès, expounded by M. Boulay. Before the Constitution of the year VIII, received the sanction of his dominant will, he had repealed the Law of Hostages, recalled the proscribed priests from the Isle of Oléron, and from Sinnamari most of those transported on 18th Fructidor. He had reformed the ministry, and distributed according to his pleasure the chief commands in the army. As Moreau had been of service to Bonaparte in his _coup d'état_, he was placed at the head of the army of the Rhine joined to the army of Helvetia, taken from Massena on the morrow of his most brilliant victories. Distrust and ill-will struggled with his admiration of Bonaparte in the mind of the conqueror of Zurich; he was sent to the army of Italy, always devoted to Bonaparte. Berthier remained at Paris in the capacity of minister of war. Fouché was placed at the police, and Talleyrand undertook foreign affairs. By a bent of theoretical fancy, which was not borne out by experience in government, the illustrious mathematician Laplace was called to the ministry of the interior. Gaudin became minister of finances; he replaced immediately the forced loans with an increase of direct taxes, and introduced into the collection of the public revenues some important improvements, which paved the way for our great financial organization. At the same time, without provocation and without necessity, as if simply in compliance with the mournful traditions of past violence, a list of proscriptions, published on the 23rd Brumaire, exiled to Guiana or the ?le de Ré nine persons--a mixture of honest republicans opposed to the new state of things, and of wretches still charged with the crimes of the Reign of Terror. Only the name of General Jourdan excited universal reprobation, and it was immediately struck out. The measure itself was soon mitigated, and the decree was never executed. Through the revolutionary storms and the murderous epochs which had successively seen all the great actors in the political struggles disappear from the scene, the Abbé Sieyès emerged as a veteran associated with the first free impulses of the nation. In 1789, his pamphlet, "What is the Third Estate?" had arrested the attention of all serious minds. He had several times, and in decisive circumstances, played an important part in the Constituent Assembly. Since his vote of the 20th January, and until the 9th Thermidor, he remained in voluntary obscurity; mingling since then in all great theoretical discussions, he had exercised a preponderating influence in recent events. From revolution to revolution, popular or military, he came out in the part of legislator, his spirit escaping from the influence of pure democracy. He had formerly proposed the banishment _en masse_ of all the nobility, and he still nursed in the depths of his soul a horror for all traditional superiority. He had said, "Whoever is not of my species is not my fellow-creature; the nobles are not of my species; they are wolves, and I fire upon them." He had, however, been brought, by his reflections and the course of events, to construct eccentric theories, of a factitious aristocracy, the wielders of power to the exclusion of the nation, recruited from a limited circle--a disfigured survival of the Italian republics of the middle ages, without the free and salutary action of representative government. "Confidence ought to proceed from below, and power to act from above," declared the appointed legislator of the 18th Brumaire. He himself compared his political system to a pyramid, resting on the entire mass of the nation, terminating at the top in a single man, whom he called the Great Elector. He had not the courage to pronounce the word king. Five millions of electors, constituted into primary assemblies, were to prepare a _municipal_ list of 500,000 elected who in their turn were entrusted with the formation of a _departmental_ list of 50,000 names. To these twice sifted delegates was confided the care of electing 5000 as a _national_ list, alone capable of becoming the agents of executive power in the whole of France. The municipal and departmental administrations were to be chosen by authority from their respective lists. The _Conservative Senate_, composed of eighty members, self-elective, had the right of appointing the members of the Corps Législatif, the Tribuneship, and the Court of Cassation. It was besides destined to the honor of choosing the Great Elector. The senators, richly endowed, might exercise no other function. The Corps Législatif was dumb, and limited to voting the laws prepared by the Council of State, and discussed by the Tribunate. The Great Elector, without actively interfering in the government, furnished with a civil list of six millions, and magnificently housed by the state, appointed the two councils of peace and war, upon whom depended the ministers and all the administrative _personnel_ of prefects and sub- prefects entrusted with the government of the departments. In case the magistrate, so highly placed in his sumptuous indolence, should seem to menace the safety of the State, the Senate was authorized to _absorb_ him by admitting him into its ranks. The same action might be exercised with respect to any of the civil or military functionaries. So many complicated wheels calculated to hinder rather than to sustain each other, so much pomp in words and so little efficacy in action, could never suit the intentions or the character of General Bonaparte. He claimed at once the position of Great Elector, which Sieyès had perhaps secretly thought to reserve for himself. "What!" said he, "would you want to make me a pig in a dunghill?" Then demolishing the edifice laboriously constructed by the legislator, "Your Great Elector is a slothful king," said he to Sieyès; "the time for that sort of thing is past. What! appoint people to act, and not act himself! It won't do. If I were this Great Elector I should certainly do everything which you would desire me not to do. I should say to the two consuls of peace and war: 'If you don't choose such and such a man, or take such and such a measure, I shall send you about your business.' And I would compel them to proceed according to my will. And these two consuls? How do you think they could agree? Unity of action is indispensable in government. Do you think that serious men would be able to lend themselves to such shams?" Sieyès was not fond of discussion, for which indeed he was not suited; with the prudent sagacity which always characterized his conduct, he recognized the inferiority of his will and his influence in comparison with General Bonaparte. Three consuls were substituted for the Great Elector and his two chosen subordinates equal in appearance, but already classed according to the origin of their power. As first consul, Bonaparte was not to be subjected to any election; he held himself as appointed by the people. "What colleagues will they give me?" said he bluntly to Roederer and Talleyrand who served him constantly as his agents of communication. "Whom do you wish?" He named Cambacérès, then minister of justice, clever and clear-sighted, of an independent spirit joined to a docile character; and Lebrun, the former secretary of the Chancellor Maupeou, minister for foreign affairs under the Convention, and respected by moderate republicans. Some had spoken of M. Daunou, honestly courageous in the worst days of the Revolution; the clever author of the Constitution of the year III., and whom Bonaparte had taken a malicious pleasure in entrusting with the drawing up of the new Constitution. A certain number of voices in the two legislative commissions had supported his name. The resolution of M. Daunou was known; Bonaparte did not complete the counting of the votes. "We shall do better," said he, "to keep to those whom M. Sieyès has named." Cambacérès and Lebrun were appointed consuls. Sieyès received from the nation a rich grant and the estate of Crosne. In concert with Roger-Ducos and the new consuls, he formed the list of the Senate, who immediately completed its numbers, as well as the lists of the 300 members of the Corps Législatif, and the 100 members of the Tribunate. Moderation presided over the composition of the lists; Bonaparte attached no importance to them, and took no part in their preparation. He had formed with care the Council of State, many capable men finding a place in it. It was the instrument which the First Consul destined for the execution of his ideas. Once only, on the 19th Brumaire, he came for a moment into contact with the assemblies. Henceforth he left them in the shade; all power rested in his hands. Under the name of Republic, the accent of an absolute master resounded already in the proclamation everywhere circulated on the day following the formation of the new government:-- "Frenchmen, "To render the Republic dear to citizens, respected by foreigners, formidable to our enemies, are the obligations which we have contracted in accepting the chief magistracy. "It will be dear to citizens if the laws and the acts of authority bear the impress of the spirit of order, justice and moderation. "The Republic will be imposing to foreigners if it knows how to respect in their independence the title of its own independence, if its engagements, prepared with wisdom and entered upon with sincerity, are faithfully kept. "Lastly, it will be formidable to its enemies, if the army and navy are made strong, and if each of its defenders finds a home in the regiment to which he belongs, and in that home a heritage of virtue and glory; if the officer, trained by long study, obtains by regular promotion the recompense due to his talents and work. "Upon these principles depend the stability of government, the success of commerce and agriculture, the greatness and prosperity of nations. "We have pointed out the rule, Frenchmen, by which we ought to be judged, we have stated our duties. It will be for you to tell us whether we have fulfilled them." "What would you have?" said the First Consul to La Fayette. "Sieyès has put nothing but shadows everywhere; the shadow of legislative power, the shadow of judicial power, the shadow of government; some part of the substance was necessary. Faith! I have put it there." The very preamble of the Constitution affirmed the radical change brought about in the direction of affairs. "The powers instituted to-day will be strong and lasting, such as they ought to be in order to guarantee the rights of citizens and the interests of the State. Citizens, the Revolution is fixed upon the same principles which began it. It is finished!" It was not the apotheosis, but the end of the Revolution that the authors of the Constitution of the year VIII. arrogantly announced. In the first impulse of a great spirit brought face to face with a difficult task, Bonaparte conceived the thought of terminating the war like the Revolution, and of re-establishing, at least for some time, the peace he needed in order to govern France. Disdainful of the ordinary forms of diplomacy, he wrote directly to George III., as he had formerly written to the Archduke Charles (18th December, 1799). "Called by the will of the French nation to be first magistrate, I deem it expedient on entering upon my charge to communicate directly with your Majesty. "Must the war which for eight years has ravaged the four quarters of the globe, be eternal? Is there no other means of arriving at a mutual understanding? "How can the most enlightened nations of Europe, powerful and strong beyond what their security and independence require, sacrifice the interest of commerce, the prosperity of their people, and the happiness of families, to ideas of vainglory? "These sentiments cannot be foreign to the heart of your Majesty, who governs a free nation with the sole aim of rendering it happy. "Your Majesty will see in these overtures only my sincere desire to contribute effectively, for the second time, to a general pacification by a prompt procedure, full of confidence and divested of those forms which, necessary perhaps, in order to disguise the dependence of feeble States, only reveal between strong States a mutual desire to deceive each other. "France and England, by the abuse of their power, may for a long time yet retard its termination; but I dare to say that every civilized nation is interested in the close of a war which embraces the whole world." At the same time, and in nearly the same terms, Bonaparte wrote to the Emperor Francis. He had treated formerly with this sovereign, and would not perhaps have found him inflexible; but Pitt did not believe the Revolution finished, and had no confidence in a man who had just seized with a victorious hand the direction of the destinies of France. A frigidly polite letter, addressed by Lord Granville to Talleyrand, the minister of foreign affairs, repelled the advances of the First Consul. The English then prepared a new armament intended to second the attempts which the royalists were at that time renewing in the west. In enumerating the causes of European mistrust with regard to France, Lord Granville added, "The best guarantee, the most natural guarantee, for the reality and the permanence of the pacific intentions of the French government, would be the restoration of that royal dynasty which has maintained for so many ages the internal prosperity of France, and which has made it regarded with respect and consideration abroad. Such an event would clear away all the obstacles which hinder negotiations for peace, it would ensure to France the tranquil possession of her ancient territory, and it would give to all the nations of Europe that security which they are compelled to seek at present by other means." During the violent debate raised in Parliament by the pacific propositions of the First Consul, Pitt based all his arguments upon the instability and insecurity of a treaty of peace with the French Revolution, whatever might be the name of its chief rulers. "When was it discovered that the dangers of Jacobinism cease to exist?" he cried. "When was it discovered that the Jacobinism of Robespierre, of Barère, of the five directors, of the triumvirate, has all of a sudden disappeared because it is concentrated in a single man, raised and nurtured in its bosom, covered with glory under its auspices, and who has been at once the offspring and the champion of all its atrocities?... It is because I love peace sincerely that I cannot content myself with a vain word; it is because I love peace sincerely that I cannot sacrifice it by seizing the shadow when the reality is not within my reach. _Cur igitur pacem nolo? Quia infida est, quia periculosa, quia esse non potest!_" More moderate in form, Austria had in reality replied like England. War was inevitable, and in the internal disorder in which the Directory had left affairs, in the financial embarrassment and in the deplorable state of the armies, the First Consul felt the weight of a government that had been so long disorganized and weak, pressing heavily on his shoulders. His first care was to achieve the pacification of the west, always agitated by royalist passions. For a moment the chiefs of the party thought it possible to engage General Bonaparte in the service of the monarchical restoration: they were speedily undeceived. But the First Consul knew how to make use in Vendée of the influence of the former curé of St. Laud, the Abbé Bernier; he made an appeal to the priests, who returned from all parts to their provinces, "The ministers of a God of Peace," said the proclamation of the 28th December, 1799, "will be the first promoters of reconciliation and concord; let them speak to all hearts the language which they learn in the temple of their Master! Let them enter temples which will be reopened to them, and offer for their fellow-citizens the sacrifice which shall expiate the crime of war and the blood which has been made to flow!" Always in intimate unison with the religious sentiment of the populace who fought under their orders, the Vendean chiefs responded to this appeal, laying down their arms. In Brittany and in Normandy, Georges Cadoudal and Frotté continued hostilities; severe instructions were sent, first to General Hédouville, and then to General Brune. "The Consuls think that the generals ought to shoot on the spot the principal rebels taken with arms in hand. However cunning the Chouans may be, they are not so much so as Arabs of the desert. The First Consul believes that a salutary example would be given by burning two or three large communes, chosen from among those who have behaved themselves most badly." Six weeks later the insurrection was everywhere subdued; Frotté, and his young aide-de-camp Toustain, had been shot; Bourmont had accepted the offers of the First Consul, and enrolled himself in his service; Georges Cadoudal resisted all the advances of him whom he was soon to pursue with his hatred even to attempting a crime. "What a mistake I have made in not stifling him in my arms!" repeated the hardy chief of the Chouans on quitting General Bonaparte. He retired into England. The civil war was terminated; the troops which had occupied the provinces of the west could now rejoin the armies which were preparing on the frontiers. Carnot, who had just re-entered France, replaced at the ministry of war General Berthier, called upon active service. It was the grand association connected with his name, rather than the hope of an active and effective co-operation, which decided the First Consul to entrust this post to Carnot; possibly he wished to remove it from the little group of obstinate liberals justly disquieted at the dangers with which they saw freedom menaced. Already the journals had been suppressed, with the exception of thirteen; the laws were voted without dispute; and, "in a veritable whirlwind of urgency," the government claimed to regulate the duration of the discussions of the Tribunate. Benjamin Constant, still young, and known for a short time previously as a publicist, raised his voice eloquently against the wrong done to freedom of discussion. "Without doubt," said he "harmony is desirable amongst the authorities of the Republic; but the independence of the Tribunate is no less necessary to that harmony than the constitutional authority of the government; without the independence of the Tribunate, there will be no longer either harmony or constitution, there will be no longer anything but servitude and silence, a silence that all Europe will understand." The past violence of the assemblies, and their frequent inconsistencies, had wearied feeble minds, and blinded short-sighted spirits. The speech of Benjamin Constant secured for his friend Madame de Staël a forced retirement from Paris. The law was voted by a large majority, and the adulations of flatterers were heaped up around the feet of the First Consul. He himself took a wiser view of his position, which he still considered precarious. On taking up his residence at the Tuileries, in great state, on February 19, 1800, he said to his secretary, "Well, Bourienne, we have reached the Tuileries; the thing is now to stop here." Already, and by the sole effort of a sovereign will, which appeared to improve by exercise, the power formerly distributed among obscure hands was concentrated at Paris, under the direction of a central administration suddenly organized; exactions borne with difficulty resulted in abundant resources from the conquered or annexed countries, at Genoa, in Holland, at Hamburg. The young King of Prussia, sensible and prudent, had refused to transform his neutrality into alliance; but he had used his influence over the smaller states of the empire, to induce them to maintain the same attitude. The Emperor Paul I., tossed to and fro by the impetuous movements of his ardent and unhealthy spirit, was piqued by the defeats of Suwarrow, and offended by the insufficiency of the help of Austria; he was discontented with the English government, and ill-humoredly kept himself apart from the coalition. The resumption of hostilities was imminent, and the grand projects of the First Consul began to unroll themselves. Active preparations had been till then confined to the army of the Rhine under Moreau. The army of Liguria, placed under the command of Masséna, with Genoa as a centre of operations, had received neither reinforcements nor munitions; its duty was to protect the passage of the Appenines against Mélas, whilst Moreau attacked upon the Rhine the army of Suabia, commanded by Marshal Kray. The occupation of Switzerland by the French army impeded the movements of the allies, by compelling them to withdraw their two armies from each other; the First Consul meditated a movement which should give him all the advantages of this separation. Moreau in Germany, Masséna in Italy, were ordered at any cost to keep the enemy in check. Bonaparte silently formed a third army, the corps of which he cleverly dispersed, distracting the attention of Europe by the camp of the army of reserve at Dijon. Already he was preparing the grand campaign which should raise his glory to its pinnacle, and establish his power upon victory. In his idea everything was to be sacrificed to the personal glory of his successes. He conceived a project of attack by crossing the Rhine. Moreau, modest and disinterested, accepted the general plan of the war, and subordinated his operations to those of the First Consul; in his military capacity independent and resolute, he persisted in passing the Rhine at his pleasure. Bonaparte was enraged. "Moreau would not seek to understand me," cried he. He yielded, however, to the observations of General Dessoles, and always clever in subjugating those of whom he had need, he wrote to Moreau to restore him liberty of action. "Dessoles will tell you that no one is more interested than myself in your personal glory and your good fortune. The English embark in force; what do they want? I am to-day a sort of manikin, who has lost his liberty and his good fortune. Greatness is fine but in prospective and in imagination. I envy you your luck; you go with the heroes to do fine deeds. I would willingly barter my consular purple against one of your brigadier's epaulettes" (16th March, 1800). The army of Italy had been suffering for a long time with heroic courage; the well-known chief who took the command was more than any other suited to obtain from it the last efforts of devotion; it was the first to undergo the attack of the allied forces. The troops of Masséna were still scattered when he was assailed by Mélas. The fear of prematurely exhausting the insufficient resources of Genoa had prevented him from following the wise councils of Bonaparte, by massing his troops round that town. After a series of furious combats upon the upper Bormida, the French line found itself cut in two by the Austrians; General Suchet was obliged to fall back upon Nice, Masséna re-entered Genoa. A new effort forced back General Mélas beyond the Appenines. The attempt to rejoin the corps of General Suchet having failed, Masséna saw himself constrained to shut himself up in Genoa, in the midst of a population divided in opinion, but whose confidence he had already known how to win. Resolved to occupy by resistance and by sorties all the forces of the allies, the general made preparations for sustaining the siege to the last extremity. All the provisions of the place were brought into the military magazines; the most severe order reigned in the distribution, but already scarcity was felt. The forces of Masséna, exhausted by frequent fights, diminished every day; bread failed; and the heroic obstinacy of the general alone compelled the Austrians to keep a considerable corps d'armée before a famished town (5th May, 1800). Mélas had in vain attempted to force the lines of Var, behind which General Suchet, too feeble to defend Nice, had cleverly entrenched himself. Moreau delayed to commence the campaign; his material was insufficient; Alsace and Switzerland, exhausted of resources, could not furnish the means of transport required by his movement. The First Consul urged him. "Obtain a success as soon as possible, that you may be able by a diversion in some degree to expedite the operations in Italy," he wrote to him on April 24; "every day's delay is extremely disastrous to us." On April 26, Moreau passed the Rhine at Strasburg, at Brisach, and at Basle, thus deceiving General Kray, who defended the defiles of the Black Forest, whilst the different divisions of the French army reascended and repassed the Rhine, in order to cross it afresh without difficulty at Schaffhausen. The Austrians had not yet collected their forces, dispersed by the unlooked-for movement they found themselves obliged to execute; the French corps were themselves dispersed when the battle commenced, on May 3, at Engen. After a furious struggle at several points, General Moreau achieved a splendid victory; two days later the same fortune crowned the battle of Moesskirch; the loss on both sides was great. The action was not well combined; Marshal Kray at first fell back behind the Danube; by the advice of his council of war he decided to defend the magazines at Biberach. He repassed the river, and offered battle to the corps of Gouvion St. Cyr, then hampered with Moreau, bearing his direction with difficulty. The positions occupied by the Austrians were everywhere attacked at once; their troops, already demoralized by several defeats, retired in disorder. Kray fell back on Ulm, where an entrenched camp was ready for him. General Moreau was compelled to weaken his army by detaching a corps of 1800 men, necessary for the operations of the First Consul. He attempted without success a movement intended to turn the flank of General Kray, and resolved to blockade him in his positions, and wait for the result of the manoeuvres of Bonaparte. On the 27th May he wrote to Bonaparte, "We await with impatience the announcement of your success. M. de Kray and I are groping about here--he to keep his army round Ulm, I to make him quit the post. It would have been dangerous, especially for you, if I had carried the war to the left bank of the Danube. Our present position has forced the Prince of Reuss to remove himself to the passes of the Tyrol, to the sources of the Lech and the Iller; thus he is no longer dangerous for you. If M. de Kray comes towards me, I shall still retreat as far as Meiningen; there I shall join General Lecourbe, and we shall fight. If M. de Kray marches upon Augsburg, I shall do the same; he will quit his support at Ulm, and then we shall see what will have to be done to cover your movements. We should find more advantages in carrying on the war upon the left bank of the Danube, and making Wurtemberg and Franconia contribute to it; but that would not suit you, as the enemy would be able to send detachments down into Italy whilst leaving us to ravage the provinces of the Empire. "Give me, I pray you, some news of yourself, and command me in every possible service I can render you." All was thus prepared in Germany and Italy for the success of that campaign of the First Consul of which the enemy were still ignorant. Always deceived by the fictitious concentrations carried on at Dijon, the Austrians saw without disquietude the departure of Bonaparte, who left Paris, as it was said, for a few days, in order to pass in review the army of reserve. The French public shared the same illusion; the preparations eagerly pushed forward by the First Consul, remained secret. He set out at the last moment, leaving with regret, and not without uneasiness, his government scarcely established, and new institutions not yet in working order. "Keep firmly together," said he to Cambacérès and Lebrun; "if an emergency occurs, don't be alarmed at it. I will return like a thunderbolt, to crush those who are audacious enough to raise a hand against the government." He had in advance, by the powerful conceptions of his genius arranged the whole plan of operations, and divined the movements of his enemies. Bending over his maps, and designating with his finger the positions of the different corps, he muttered in a low voice, "This poor M. de Mélas will pass by Turin, he will fall back upon Alessandria. I shall pass the Po, and come up with him again on the road of Placenza, in the plains of the Scrivia; and I shall beat him there, and then there." The Tribunate expressed their desire that the First Consul might return soon, "conqueror and pacificator." An article of the Constitution forbade him to take the command of the armies; Berthier received the title of general-in-chief. The First Consul passed in review the army of conscripts and invalids assembled at Dijon. On May 13, he combined the active forces at Geneva; the troops coming from Germany under the command of General Moncey had not yet arrived; they were to pass by the St. Gothard. General Marescot had been ordered to reconnoitre the Alps; the pass of the St. Bernard, more difficult than that of the Simplon or Mont Cenis, was much shorter, and the passage from it could be much more easily defended. "Difficult it may be," replied the First Consul to the report of Marescot, "but is it possible?" "I think so," said the general, "with extraordinary efforts." "Ah, well! let us set out," said Bonaparte. From Geneva to Villeneuve the journey was easy, and vessels carried provisions to that point. The First Consul had carefully arranged places for revictualling all along the road. At Montigny half the mules, requisitioned at great cost in the neighborhood, were loaded with victuals and munitions of war; the other half were attached to the gun carriages relieved of the cannon, which were to be again put in working order at San Remi, on the other side of the pass. The cannon themselves were enveloped in the hollowed trunks of trees; they could then be dragged over the ice and snow. The number of mules proving insufficient, and the peasants refusing to undertake this rough work, the soldiers yoked themselves to the cannon, and dragged them across the mountain without wishing to accept the rewards promised by the First Consul. He rode on a mule at the head of the rear-guard, wrapped in a gray greatcoat, chatting familiarly with his guide, and sustaining the courage of his soldiers by his unalterable coolness. After a few hours' rest at the hospice of St. Bernard commenced the descent, more difficult still than the ascent. From the 15th to the 20th of May the divisions followed each other. Lannes and Berthier, who commanded the vanguard, had already advanced to Aosta, when they found themselves stopped by the little fort of Bard, built upon a precipitous rock, and with artillery commanding the defile. It was now night; a layer of straw and refuse was spread over the frozen foot-path; the wheels of the gun-carriages were encased in tow; at the break of day the passage had been safely cleared. The French army, descending like a torrent into the valley, seized upon Ivry, and repulsed the Austrians at the Chiusella on May 26th. All the divisions of Bonaparte's army assembled by degrees; the corps of Moncey debouched by the St. Gothard, 4000 men under the orders of General Thureau crossed by Mont Cenis. General Mélas still refused to believe in the danger which menaced him, and already an imposing army was advancing against his scattered and divided forces. Already Lannes had beaten General Ott at Montebello, after a hotly disputed engagement. "I heard the bones crackle like a hailstorm on the roofs," said the conqueror. Bonaparte threw himself upon Milan, neglecting Genoa, which he might have delivered without risk; thereby condemning Masséna and his army to the sufferings of a prolonged siege, terminated by a sad defeat. He had conceived vaster projects, and the design of annihilating the Austrian army by a single blow. Everything had to give way to the consideration of personal success and his egotistical thirst for glory. The Lombard populace received the First Consul with transport, happy to see themselves delivered from the Austrian yoke, and beguiled in advance with the hope of liberty. General Mélas was at Alessandria, summoning to his aid the forces that were attacking Suchet on the Var, and the troops of General Ott, detained by the siege of Genoa. He was assured of the impossibility of any succor being sent by Marshal Kray. It was necessary to conquer or die. In the prison in which the Austrian army detained him, Masséna had divined the situation of the enemy. He was still hoping for the assistance that had been promised him; already General Ott had sent him a flag of truce. "Give me only provisions for two days, or one day," said he to the Genoese, "and I will save you from the Austrian yoke, and spare my army the sorrow of surrender." All resources were exhausted; the horrors of famine had worn out the courage of the inhabitants; even the soldiers were yielding to discouragement. "Before he will surrender," said they, "the general will make us eat his boots." For a long time the garrison had lived on unwholesome bread made with starch, upon linseed and cocoa, which scarcely sufficed to keep the soldiers alive; the population, reduced to live on soup made of herbs gathered on the ramparts, died by hundreds; the prisoners cantoned in the port in old dismasted vessels, uttered cries that reached the ears of their old generals. The latter had refused to send in provisions for the prisoners, in spite of the promise of Masséna to reserve it for them. The last food was used up; on the 3rd of June the general consented to receive the flag of truce. He asked for, and obtained, the honors of war; the army was authorized to depart from Genoa with arms and baggage, flags displayed, and free to direct its course towards the corps of General Suchet. "Without that I should issue arms in hand, and it should be seen what eight thousand famished men could do." War and famine had reduced to this number the soldiers in condition to carry arms. After their cure, the sick, who filled the hospitals, were to be sent to the quarters of General Suchet. Masséna defended the interests of the Genoese, and asked in their favor for a free government. The Austrian generals refused to make any engagement. "In less than a fortnight I shall be back again in Genoa," declared the French general. "You will find there the men whom you have taught how to defend it," replied St. Julien, one of the plenipotentiaries. General Soult remained in the place, seriously wounded. Masséna brought his exhausted troops to the Var. In the depths of their souls, generals and soldiers cherished a bitter resentment for the manner in which they had been abandoned. When the Austrian troops, beaten by Suchet, had retired towards Alessandria, Masséna did not allow him to pursue them; he contented himself with guarding the gates of France. Bonaparte had just quitted Stradella, which he had occupied after leaving Milan. He had been obliged to disperse his forces, in order to cut off all the passages open to the enemy. When he entered, on June 13th, the plain that extends between the Scrivia and the Bormida, near the little village of Marengo, he was badly instructed as regards the movements of the enemy, as well as the resources of the country. On the morning of the 14th, General Mélas, constrained by necessity, evacuated Alessandria, and, passing the Bormida upon three bridges, attacked General Victor before Marengo. Lannes was at the same time surrounded on every side, and obliged to retreat in spite of prodigies of courage. Marengo had been destroyed by the artillery of the enemy, when Bonaparte arrived upon the field of battle with his guard and his staff officers, at once drawing upon himself the brunt of the fight. Meanwhile the retreat continued; the army seemed about to be cut in two; the Austrian general, old and fatigued, believing himself assured of victory, re-entered Alessandria. It was now three o'clock, and Bonaparte still hoped and kept on fighting. He despatched an aide-de-camp to Desaix, returned from Egypt two days before, and whom he had detached in the direction of Novi; upon his return depended the fortune of the day. Desaix had divined this, and forestalled the message of Bonaparte; before he could be expected he was beside the general, who questioned him as to the aspect of affairs. "Well," said Desaix, after having rapidly examined the situation of the different corps, "it is a lost battle; but it is not late; we have time to gain another." His regiments were forming whilst he spoke, stopping the march of the Austrians. "My friends," said the First Consul to the reanimated soldiers, "remember that it is my custom to sleep upon the field of battle." At the same moment Desaix advanced at the heads of his troops. "Go and tell the First Consul that I am about to charge," said he to his aide-de- camp, Savary; "I need to be supported by cavalry." He was crossing an undulation in the ground when a ball struck him in the breast; from daybreak he had been oppressed by gloomy presentiments. "I have been too long making war in Africa," said he; "the bullets of Europe know me no longer." On falling he said to General Boudet, "Conceal my death; it might unsettle the troops." The soldiers had perceived it and rushed forward to avenge him. Kellermann arrived at the same instant, urged forward by one of those sudden inspirations which mark great generals; hurling his dragoons upon the Austrian cavalry, which he broke through, he attacked the column of grenadiers which arduously sustained the assault of the division of Desaix. Their ranks fell into disorder; one entire corps threw down its arms. General Zach, entrusted with the command in the absence of Mélas, was forced to give up his sword. When the old general hurried up in agitation, the battle was lost. The Austrian troops, repulsed and routed, and crowded against the banks of the Bormida, blocked up all the bridges, or cast themselves into the river, everywhere pursued by the victorious French. The cannon, which stuck fast in the Bormida, fell into the hands of the conquerors. The staff was decimated. The First Consul regretted the loss of Desaix, the only one among the companions of his youth who had seemed able to inspire in him any particular regard. He was, however, triumphant, and this great day made him in fact the master of Italy. He had the wisdom to perceive it. The needs of government recalled him to France; the conditions he proposed to Mélas, although hard, were such as could be accepted. The Austrian army was authorized to retire with the honors of war; but it was to surrender to the French troops all its positions in Liguria, Piedmont, Lombardy, and the Legations, whilst evacuating the Italian territory as far as the Mincio. To the protests of Mélas, Bonaparte replied by a formal refusal to listen. "Sir," said he, "my conditions are irrevocable. I did not begin to made war yesterday. Your position is as well known to me as to yourself. You are in Alessandria, encumbered with the dead, the wounded, and the sick, and destitute of provisions; you have lost the _élite_ of your army; you are surrounded on all sides. I could exact everything, but I only demand of you that which the situation of affairs imperatively requires. Return to Alessandria; you will have no other conditions." Mélas signed, pledging his word until he should receive a reply from Vienna. On the same evening, before quitting the field of battle, the First Consul wrote for the second time to the Emperor Francis Joseph. He was moved to the very depths of his impassable and haughty soul by the spectacle of the carnage and fury of the battle. In subsequent calmer moments he perhaps regretted his letter. "It is upon the battlefield of Marengo," said he, "in the midst of agonies, and surrounded by 15,000 corpses, that I conjure your Majesty to listen to the cry of humanity, and not permit the children of two brave and powerful nations to massacre each other for interests which are foreign to them. It is for me to press this upon your Majesty, since I am the nearest to the theatre of war. Your heart cannot be so keenly alive to it as mine. The arms of your Majesty have achieved sufficient glory. You govern a large number of States. What then can those in the cabinet of your Majesty allege in favor of the continuation of hostilities? Is it the interests of religion and of the Church? Why do they not counsel your Majesty to make war on the English, the Muscovites, and the Prussians? They are further from the Church than we. Is it the form of the French Government, which is not hereditary but simply elective? But the government of the Empire is also elective; and besides, your Majesty is thoroughly convinced of the powerlessness of the entire world to change the desire which the French people have received from nature to govern themselves as they please. Is it the destruction of revolutionary principles? If your Majesty will take account of the effects of war you will see that it tends to revolutionize Europe, by increasing everywhere the public debt and the discontent of the people. In compelling the French people to make war, you compel them only to think of war, only to live in war; and the French legions are numerous and brave. If your Majesty wishes for peace it is done; let us give repose and tranquillity to the present generation. If future generations are foolish enough to fight--well, they will learn after a few years of war to become wise and live in peace. I might take captive the entire army of your Majesty. I am satisfied by a suspension of hostilities, having hopes that it may be the first step towards the repose of the world; an object for which I can plead all the more forcibly because, nurtured and schooled by war, I might be suspected of being more accustomed to the evils it drags after it. If your Majesty refuses these proposals, the hostilities will recommence; and let me be permitted to tell you frankly, in the eyes of the world you alone will be responsible for the war." Peace was still to be delayed, but the Convention of Alessandria was concluded at once; and the success of General Moreau sustained in Germany the victorious arguments of the First Consul. The former passed the Danube near Hochstedt; after a very brilliant action, which lasted eighteen hours (June 19), he took 5000 prisoners, and captured twenty pieces of cannon and considerable magazines. Kray, menaced with the probability of having his line of retreat cut off, had abandoned his position at Ulm, forcing his march so precipitately that General Moreau had not been informed of it. Meanwhile he attacked the Grisons and the Tyrol, repulsed the Prince of Reuss, and established himself upon the Isar. On the 15th of July a suspension of arms was signed at Parsdorf, near Munich. Like the soldiers of the army of Italy, the soldiers of the army of the Rhine were about to take some repose. Masséna had re-entered Genoa on the 24th of June, justifying to the letter his glorious bravado; his ill-humor was dissipated, and he remained entrusted with the chief command of the army of Italy. The First Consul had received at Milan the eager homage of the Lombards, but the Cisalpine Republic was not reconstituted; a Grand Council governed it under the Presidency of Pétiet, the French minister. At Turin, General Jourdan directed the provisional government; at Genoa, General Dejean filled the same functions; everywhere the paraded power of France was substituted for the semblance of liberty; the Roman States were still in the hands of the Neapolitans. The new Pope, Barnabus Chiaramonti, formerly Bishop of Imola, who had shown himself well disposed towards the French, had just arrived unexpectedly at Ancona, whence he negotiated his re-entry into the eternal city. The First Consul assured him of his good intentions as regards the Catholic Church, and the Holy See. The far-seeing _finesse_ of the Court of Rome did not permit it to be deceived. The Secretary of the Sacred College, Monsignor Consalvi, had said during the conclave, "It is from France that we have received persecutions for ten years past; well, it is from France that will perhaps come in the future our succors and our consolations. A very extraordinary young man, and even more difficult to be judged, rules there to-day. There is no doubt he will soon have reconquered Italy. Remember that he protected the priests in 1797, and that he has recently rendered funeral honors to Pius VI. Let us not neglect the resources which offer themselves to us on this side." On the day after the battle of Marengo preliminary negotiations already commenced. The First Consul was officially present at the grand _Te Deum_ chanted in the cathedral of Milan. "Our atheists at Paris may say of it what they will," wrote Bonaparte to Cambacérès. During the night of the 2nd and 3rd July, 1800, Bonaparte re-entered Paris, overwhelmed on the way by evidences of public joy, which were most brilliantly manifested at Lyons. He had forbidden all preparations for his return: "My intention is to have neither arches of triumph nor any species of ceremony," he wrote to his brother Lucien, who had replaced Laplace at the ministry of the interior. "I have too good an opinion of myself to hold such baubles in much estimation. I know no other triumph than the public satisfaction." The day would come when public satisfaction, of a truth much mitigated by long sufferings, would no longer suffice for the triumph of the absolute master who dragged exhausted France across fields of battle; the remembrance of his return to Paris after the victory of Marengo was to recur to his sorrowful mind when he dictated at St. Helena the memoirs explanatory of his life: "It was a great day," said he. Already the adulations and mean worship of courtiers were encompassing him; already, also, was revealed the provisional character of that power which depended so completely upon the life of a single man. Sinister reports were circulated during the campaign in Italy; the names of Carnot, Moreau, and La Fayette had been put forward. The triumphant arrival of the First Consul promptly baffled the intrigues in which the principals interested had never taken part; nevertheless, he nursed against Carnot an unjust feeling, which soon betrayed itself in his dismissal. Lucien Bonaparte had forestalled, or badly comprehended, the wishes of his brother; he had got Fontanes to write a pamphlet entitled "Caesar, Cromwell, and Bonaparte," which revealed projects and hopes in favor of the First Consul for which the public was not prepared. "Happy for the Republic," it was said, "if Bonaparte were immortal? But where are his successors? Who is the successor of Pericles? Frenchmen, you slumber over an abyss, and your sleep is madly tranquil." It was too soon to allow these premature pretensions to be thus made public. The _finesse_ of La Fayette enabled him to penetrate the secret hope of the First Consul, who was already occupied, and for most serious reasons, with the re-establishment of religion in France. He was able to say to him, with an irony that was a little scornful, "Come, general, confess that this has no other aim than to get the little phial broken on your head." Public opinion was not yet calling for the re-establishment of the monarchy; it did not connect the idea of hereditary power with a victorious general, still young, and who had scarcely seized the reins of the government of the interior. The pamphlet, and the insinuations it contained, had no success; Fouché was openly reprimanded for allowing the publication. Lucien Bonaparte was sent as ambassador to Madrid, bearing, he has declared, the manuscript of the pamphlet, with four corrections in the handwriting of the First Consul. The latter began to surround himself with a court. Madame Bonaparte had already her ladies and chevaliers of honor. St. Julien had just arrived at Paris with the ratification of the treaty of Alessandria, and for the purpose of sounding the First Consul as to his intentions on the subject of a definitive peace. Major-general of the imperial armies, and little versed in diplomatic usages, he, in all simplicity, avowed his ignorance to Talleyrand. The latter profited by this to prevail upon the Austrian ambassador to sign the preliminary articles. "So be it," said St. Julien, "but they will have no authority until after their ratification by my sovereign." The major-general was not authorized to treat; and the conventions he had accepted being vague as to the most important point, the settlement of the frontiers of Italy, were disavowed at Vienna. Thugut proposed the opening of a congress, in which England was disposed to take part. General Duroc, aide-de-camp of the First Consul, who had accompanied St. Julien on his return to Vienna, was not admitted to negotiate, and found himself compelled to return to Paris. Bonaparte's temper was quick; his irritation against England was old and inveterate. For more than two years that power had hindered the success of his favorite enterprises; and he struggled against her in her commercial interests, as well as in her military efforts, with a perseverance worthy of Pitt. He had already won over the United States to the doctrine of the greater part of European States as to the rights of neutrals, and concluded with their diplomatists the treaty of Morfontaine; he then worked to raise up against England a formidable coalition, at the head of which the Emperor Paul I. had just placed himself. Strongly influenced in favor of France by the offer the First Consul had made to cede to him Malta, then besieged by the English, the Czar also received with satisfaction the 6000 Russian prisoners whom Bonaparte sent to him without ransom, after having vainly solicited exchanges with England and Russia. The maritime powers of the north of Europe had to complain of vexatious interference with merchant vessels on the part of England. The law of the seas, said they, authorized them to carry on commerce between one power and another, goods contraband of war alone excepted; as the flag covered the merchandise, English vessels could not legitimately stop and visit ships of neutral countries, in order to seize French or Spanish commodities. The theory of England was different, serving her own commercial and military interests. In 1800 the Emperor Paul embraced the cause of the maritime powers, and formed against England the League of Neutrals, whilst he entered into amicable relations, and a sort of alliance, with the First Consul. At the same time Bonaparte negotiated with the King of Spain, offering him Tuscany, with the title of King of Etruria, for his son-in-law the Duke of Parmo, on condition that France should receive back Louisiana, formerly ceded to Spain by Louis XV. for an indemnity claim. Charles IV. also engaged himself to use his influence to have the ports of Portugal closed against England. Before admitting England to the congress, the First Consul demanded that the continental armistice should be extended to naval forces, as the suspension of maritime hostilities would permit him to revictual Malta and Egypt; he accepted on these terms the common negotiations. England rejected, and could not but reject, these proposals. She already held the conquest of Malta as certain; and since Bonaparte himself had quitted Egypt, the English soldiers and marines no longer doubted the ultimate success of their efforts against us, everywhere united with those of the Porte. Egypt was henceforth a point so important for England that she had resolved never to yield to the passionate caprices which had led General Bonaparte to establish the French dominion there. In the month of August, 1800, she could not accept an armistice which would of necessity have prolonged the war in the East. In the month of November, 1799, letters of General Kléber, sincere and discouraged, had fallen into the hands of the English Government. Entrusted since the departure of General Bonaparte with the chief command, Kléber displayed to the Directory the sad state of his army and his finances. Five months had passed, and nothing new had taken place; no succor had arrived from France. Kléber had lent his ear to the proposals of the vizier and Sir Sidney Smith. Bonaparte himself had foreseen the circumstances under which the evacuation of Egypt would become necessary; he had left upon this subject peremptory and haughty instructions. Kléber forestalled the term marked out by the general who had let his mantle fall upon his shoulders, and he concluded the treaty of El Arish, a monument of his sorrow and desolation. The signature of Desaix, who negotiated it, was mournfully wrung from him, after he had required from the general-in-chief a formal order to put his name to it. Negotiated between military men, it was not countersigned with the signature of the plenipotentiary, who himself had not better authority to negotiate. The Government of Great Britain, informed of the distress of General Kléber, sent to Admiral Keith a formal injunction forbidding him to treat with the French army, unless they surrendered as prisoners of war. Sir Sidney Smith immediately made known to Kléber the orders he had received; the honorable conditions which the French general had previously accepted were already in process of execution; several places had been given up to the Turks; the vizier had advanced. Kléber, however, did not hesitate. He published to the army the letter of the English commodore, with these words: "Soldiers! such insolence as this is only answered by victories: prepare to give battle." It is a noble spectacle, that of resolute men reduced to extremities without fleeing from danger. On March 20 the French army went out from Cairo; diminished by death and sickness it numbered no more than 12,000 men, who formed themselves into squares, according to the old tactics of the troops of Egypt, in front of the ancient ruins of Heliopolis. Kléber estimated at 70,000 or 80,000 men the Turkish army which was to assail him. "My friends," said he in passing along the ranks, "you possess in Egypt only the ground which you have beneath your feet! If you retreat a step, you are lost!" Having thus spoken, he gave the order to carry the entrenched village of El Matarieh. The little redoubts were already in our possession when the Janissaries made their first rush upon the Friant division. The squares remained immovable, keeping up a continuous fire, enveloped in smoke, and scarcely distinguishing the mass of the enemies who were falling at their feet. When the clouds began to disperse, a rampart of corpses surrounded all the French corps; in the distance were seen the enemy in flight. Kléber order a pursuit, which was continued during three days. When the general-in-chief at length reached the camp of the vizier at Salahieh he only found a few detachments of the enemy. The chiefs had disappeared in the desert, with their best troops. The French soldiers pillaged the tents: they were loaded with rich spoils when they retook the road to Cairo. The capital of Egypt, never in complete submission, and disturbed by frequent insurrections, had revolted at the announcement of the evacuation and the departure of the French army; crimes had been committed, and the Christians had been massacred in several quarters. Kléber laid siege to it; the resistance was long and furious, and it was as conquerors that the French re-entered the city which formerly cost them such slight efforts. All the rebel cities of Lower Egypt were again brought back into obedience to France. The war indemnities and the prizes taken from the enemy restored the finances. Kléber labored for the completion of the forts scattered over the hills; he enrolled Copts, Syrians, and some blacks from Darfour; he treated with Murad Bey, who had driven from Upper Egypt the Turkish corps of Dervish Pacha; Ibrahim Bey and Nassif Pacha, who had sustained the revolt of Cairo, obtained an authorization to retire. Egypt appeared to be once more submissive; but the illusions which the Mohammedans had conceived were promptly dissipated: they recognized their traditional enemies, and the old fanaticism was reawakened. An assassin had already arrived in Cairo from Palestine, and shut up in the great mosque he had confided to the sheiks his project of killing General Kléber. They sought to dissuade him from it, but without informing the French. On the 14th of June, as the general was walking in his garden with the architect of the army, Suleiman presented himself before him, pretending to ask alms, and struck him several times with his dagger. The architect was wounded in striving to defend Kléber. When the soldiers came hurrying up the general had already breathed his last. The assassin made no attempt to flee; he expired under torture. At Cairo, and on the battlefield of Marengo, Kléber and Desaix succumbed on the same day, and almost at the same hour, both young, and serving to their last day the designs of the chief to whom they were very unequally attached. The First Consul wished to unite them in the same patriotic honors; he had never had much liking for Kléber, but he did not the less keenly feel the greatness of his loss. General Menou, who took by seniority the command of the army of Egypt was incapable, and of a chimerical spirit. Bonaparte comprehended the danger which threatened that one of his conquests to which he attached the most importance; he increased the reinforcements of men and munitions, but he was in want of generals, and the war was recommencing in Europe. The English had just succeeded at last in taking Malta. The armistice had been prolonged for eighty-five days, and the Emperor of Austria had paid for this moment of peace by the surrender of the cities of Ulm, Philipsburg, and Ingoldstadt; the preliminaries, which Cobentzel had drawn out to great length, had brought about no result. Austria refused to negotiate without England, to whom she was allied by a treaty of subsidies. In contempt of the convention of Alessandria, the French troops occupied Tuscany; Masséna no longer commanded the army of Italy. Quarrels had arisen with the Italian administrations, who said they were victims of heavy exactions. Masséna was accused; in the depth of his soul he was discontented, and was always little favorable to the First Consul. Brune had replaced him. At the expiration of the armistice, and in spite of the new attempts at negotiations, the troops entered on the campaign. General Bonaparte still remained at Paris, ready to proceed at need to the threatened points. All eyes were fixed on Germany; by a common instinct great military events upon this theatre were look forward to. The Archduke John was young and daring; he conceived the hope of cutting off the army of General Moreau, and imprudently crossing the Inn, the difficult passage of which the French dreaded, he advanced immediately towards the Isar, intending to reascend the river in our rear. But already the difficulties of the enterprise became apparent; the young general resolved to give battle immediately. An advantage gained on the 1st of December, over the left wing of the French army, emboldened him to the point of pushing forward across the forest of Hohenlinden, in the vain hope of encountering no resistance. General Moreau waited for him in the plain between Hohenlinden and Harthofen; Generals Richepanse and Decaen had been directed to take the Austrians in the rear. Moreau had exactly calculated the time necessary for this operation. The battle commenced at the exit from the forest; as fast as they debouched upon the plain the Austrian corps encountered the attack of our troops. Across the snow, which fell in great flakes, the general-in-chief discerned a little confusion in the ranks of the enemy. "The moment has come to charge," he cried; "Richepanse has taken them in the rear." General Ney rushed forward at the head of his division; he rejoined his companions at the centre of the defile mingled with the confused crowd of the enemy, which they drove before them. The centre of the Austrian army was completely hemmed in; the left wing had been thrown back upon the Inn by Decaen. The French divisions who were engaged on the right, repulsed for a moment, had in their turn forced the Austrians to redescend into the valley. The plain of Hohenlinden remained in the hands of the French army. The enemy lost 8000 men killed or wounded, 12,000 prisoners, and eighty-seven pieces of cannon. General Lecourbe passed the Inn close behind the Archduke John, the division of Decaen crossed the Salza and seconded the movement of Lecourbe; General Moreau crossed the Traun, and advanced towards the Ens. The Archduke Charles, drawn from his disgrace by the danger of his country, resumed the command of the Austrian troops. It was too late to snatch back victory; he accepted the sorrowful duty of arresting the conqueror's progress by negotiations. Moreau had arrived at Steyer, a few leagues from Vienna; the ardor of his lieutenants urged him to march forward. "It would, without doubt, be a fine thing to enter Vienna," he replied; "but it is a much finer thing to dictate peace." The armistice was signed on the 25th of December, 1800, delivering to the French all the valley of the Danube, with the Tyrol, various fortresses, and immense magazines. The army of Augereau, which had had adventure enough on the Rednitz, was included in the armistice; the generals commanding in Italy and in the Grisons, Macdonald and Brune, were to be engaged to accept a suspension of arms. The modest prudence and consummate cleverness of General Moreau had assured to our arms advantages which at length promised peace. Bonaparte perceived this, not without secret heartburning; but for a time he felt himself compelled to dissemble. "I cannot tell you all the interest I have taken in your admirable and wise manoeuvres," he wrote to Moreau; "in this campaign you have surpassed yourself." The orders of the First Consul caused the war in Italy to be ardently pushed forward. "Wherever a couple of men can plant their feet, an army can find the means of passing," said General Bonaparte; and Macdonald had led his 15,000 men across the passes of the Splügen, among rocks and glaciers, obliged to open a path by the oxen, who trod down the snow in order to permit the soldiers to advance; he left behind him numerous victims of cold and fatigue. The army of the Grisons had arrived at Trent, the efforts of General Wukassovich having failed to arrest its progress. Brune had conducted his operations more gently; when he marched towards the Mincio, in order to cross it at two points, the imprudence of the attack and the division of the forces led to a great shedding of blood; it was only on the 31st December that the passage of the Adige was at last effected. The corps of General Moncey rejoined the forces of Macdonald at Trent; the Count of Laudon, close pressed, could only save his troops by a subterfuge, by forestalling the armistice, which did not yet extend to the armies of Italy. He had rejoined the Count of Bellegarde, when all military operations were suspended by a convention signed at Treviso. Cobentzel and Joseph Bonaparte had remained at Lunéville during the resumption of hostilities, negotiating mutual concessions, of which the cannon every day altered the conditions. The success of his armies, and the attitude of the powers of the north, enlarged the pretensions of the First Consul; the Austrian plenipotentiary defended with persevering courage the frontier of the Adda, and the re-establishment of the Italian princes in their States, when the instructions of Bonaparte to his brother were all of a sudden altered. Order was given to retard the conclusion of peace; at the same time, as if for the purpose of calling upon Austria to bow to imperious necessity, the First Consul sent to the Corps Législatif a message, which was a bold evidence of the newest phase of his diplomacy. "Legislators, the Republic triumphs, and its enemies once more implore its moderation. "The news of the victory of Hohenlinden has resounded throughout Europe; that day will be reckoned in history as one of the grandest examples of French valor. But it has been thought little of by our defenders, who only think themselves victors when the country has no more enemies. The army of the Rhine has passed the Inn; every day has been a battle, and every battle a triumph. The Gallo-Batavian army has conquered at Bamberg; the army of the Grisons, through snow and ice, has crossed the Splügen, in order to turn the formidable lines of the Mincio and the Adige. The army of Italy has carried by main force the passage of the Mincio, and has blockaded Mantua. Lastly, Moreau is no more than five days' march from Vienna, master of an immense tract of country, and of all the magazines of the enemy. "It is at this juncture that the Archduke Charles has asked, and the general-in-chief of the army of the Rhine has accorded, the armistice of which the conditions are about to be placed before you. "Cobentzel, plenipotentiary of the Emperor at Lunéville, has declared himself ready to open negotiations for a separate peace. Thus Austria is freed from the influence of the English Government. "The Government, faithful to its principles and to the prayer of humanity, confides to you, and proclaims to France and entire Europe, the intentions which animate it. "The left bank of the Rhine shall be the limit of the French Republic; she claims nothing on the right bank. The interests of Europe will not permit the emperor to pass the Adige. The independence of the Helvetic and Batavian Republics shall be assured and recognized. Our victories add nothing to the claims of the French people. Austria ought not to expect from its defeats that which it would not have obtained by victories. Such are the unchangeable intentions of the Government. It will be the happiness of France to restore calm to Germany and Italy; its glory to enfranchise the continent from the covetous and malevolent influence of England. "If our good faith is still deceived, we are at Prague, at Vienna, at Venice." So many rigorous conditions, thus arrogantly announced, were, and could not fail to be, the object of discussions and stubborn resistance. But even these did not satisfy the will of the First Consul, and his resolution to snatch the last concessions from the conquered. The Emperor Paul, in his capacity of Grand Master of the Order, demanded from England the cession of the island of Malta. Upon the refusal of the British Government, he placed an embargo on all English vessels found in his ports, at the same time announcing the despatch of a plenipotentiary to Paris. In accord with Prussia, he admitted the principle of the granting of indemnities to the deposed Italian princes by the secularization of the ecclesiastical territories in Germany. Cobentzel was constantly opposed to this arrangement; he equally refused to deliver Mantua to France as a condition of the armistice in Italy. Abandoned by the neutral powers, isolated in Germany, and separated from England, who alone remained openly hostile to France, the Austrian envoy saw himself constrained to accept conditions harder than those the rigor of which he had formerly deplored. On the 9th February, 1801, the treaty of Lunéville was at last signed. A single concession had been accorded to Cobentzel; France had consented to surrender the places which she held on the right bank of the Rhine. She insisted, however, that the fortifications should be demolished. "Dismantle them yourselves," said the Austrian plenipotentiary, sorrowfully, "and we will engage that they shall remain in the condition in which they are surrendered." This was the last hope, and the last effort of diplomacy. Upon the very morning of the signature, and with reference to the obstinate persistence of Cobentzel, Joseph Bonaparte declared, in language which was not his own, "that if the termination of the war was favorable to France, the house of Austria ought to expect to find the valley of the Adige on the crest of the Julian Alps; and that there was no power in Europe which did not see with pleasure the Austrians expelled from Italy." The bases of the treaty of Lunéville were identical with those of the treaty of Campo Formio. Austria lost in Germany the bishopric of Salzburg, assured as an indemnity to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and in Italy the territories of this prince were granted to the Duke of Parma. The articles made no mention of Piedmont or Parma, or of the Pontifical States. The First Consul did not wish to commit himself on this point or encounter the sluggish proceedings of a congress. The Emperor of Austria had treated for the Empire as for himself. The Diet assembled at Ratisbon simply ratified the conditions of the treaty. Henceforth England found itself isolated in Europe, as France had been in 1793. The duel continued between Bonaparte and Pitt. So much _éclat_ abroad, so much glory and success terminating in an almost general peace, did not absorb all the thoughts of the First Consul, and had not yet succeeded in founding his power on a lasting basis. He felt it bitterly, and the irritation which he experienced habitually manifested itself against the remnants of the Jacobin party, the declared enemies of the order of things which he wished to establish, capable, he thought, of any crimes, and whose works he had had the opportunity of judging. This exclusive preoccupation sometimes turned away his attention from more pressing perils and bolder enemies. A conspiracy to which the police had lent themselves, and which had failed without any of the accomplices daring to put their hands on their arms, roused public attention, in the month of October, 1800, to the dangers which pursued the First Consul. Since then there had been seized, at the house of a mechanician named Chevalier, an explosive machine which had given rise to certain suspicions; but no attempt had been made, and the conspirators, who plotted in the dark, were as yet only known to Fouché, the minister of police, clever and foreseeing, constantly hostile to the old enemies of the Republic, and more disquieted than the First Consul at the royalist manoeuvres. It was to the Chouans and men of that class that the police attributed the brigandage which infested the roads in the departments of the west, the centre, and the south; it was the descents of their former chiefs upon the Norman coasts which preoccupied Fouché. At one period the royalists had thought General Bonaparte capable of playing the _rôle_ of Monk, and accepting that modest ambition. On the 20th of February, 1800, Louis XVIII. wrote to him with his own hand, "Whatever may be their apparent conduct, men like yourself, monsieur, never inspire uneasiness. You have accepted an eminent place, and I am thankful for it. Better than any one you know how much force and power are needed to make the happiness of a great nation. Save France from its own madness, and you will have accomplished the first desire of my heart; restore to it its king, and future generations will bless your memory. You will always be too much a necessity of the State for me ever to discharge by the highest appointments the debt of my forefathers and my own." This letter remained unanswered. Louis XVIII. thought he ought to write again. "For a long time, general," said he yon ought to know that you have won my esteem. If you have any doubt as to my being susceptible of gratitude, appoint your place, and decide as to the position of your friends. As to my principles, I am French; merciful by character, I should be still more so by reason. "No, the conqueror of Lodi, of Castiglione, of Arcola, the conqueror of Italy and Egypt, cannot prefer a vain notoriety to glory. But you are losing precious time. We can assure the peace of France; I say _we_, because I need Bonaparte for that, and he cannot do it without me. "General, Europe observes you, glory waits for you, and I am impatient to restore peace to my people." Sad illusions of exiles, who in a remote country know not how to judge either men or circumstances! Louis XVIII. and his friends were blind as to the state of men's minds in France, which they believed ripe for a monarchical restoration; they comprehended neither the character nor the still veiled designs of the man who had conquered, by the audacity of his genius, military glory and the civil authority. In the depth of his soul, and in spite of his firm design to mount the throne by means of absolute power, Bonaparte was, and remained, revolutionary--hostile to the remains of the past by conviction as well as by personal ambition. He wrote to Louis XVIII. on the 7th September, 1800. "I have received, monsieur, your letter; I thank you for the fair words you have spoken. You ought not to desire your return to France; it would be necessary for you to march over 500,000 corpses. Sacrifice your interests for the repose and happiness of France; history will take account of you for it. "I am not insensible to the misfortune of your family. I shall contribute with pleasure to the comfort and tranquillity of your retreat." Five hundred thousand corpses of French soldiers were yet to strew the soil of Europe to serve the ambition of Bonaparte, without hindering that return of the House of Bourbon which he declared to be so disastrous. In 1800 the First Consul deigned to promise his benevolence to the descendants of Henry IV., and felt no fear as to royalist intrigues in France. Since the troubles had ceased in the west, only Georges Cadoudal had continued sometimes to attract his attention. A letter in the month of July had ordered Bernadotte to pursue him: "Have this miserable Georges arrested, and shot within twenty-four hours," he wrote. Georges had returned to England. He was back again in France on the 24th December, 1800, when the coach of the First Consul was stopped in the Rue St. Nicaise by a small cart which barred the way; the coachman urged forward the horses, and passed it. At the same instant an explosion was heard; the dead and the wounded fell round the carriage of Bonaparte, shaken by the violence of the shock, all the windows being broken. Bonaparte stopped his carriage, and comprehended at once the cause of the accident. "Drive to the opera!" said he. Madame Bonaparte was waiting for him there. When the public was reassured by his presence, he returned to the Tuileries. A barrel of powder, loaded with grape-shot, had been placed upon the road; the victims were numerous, and the assassins escaped. The general fright was of use to the anger and emotion of the First Consul. The enemies of Fouché denounced a police everywhere favorable to the old Jacobins. The suspicions of Bonaparte were all directed against these known and furious enemies of his person and his policy. He was enraged in his irritation, and disdained, according to his custom, the legal forms and the justice of the tribunals. "We must make the number of the convicted equal to the number of their victims," he said, "and transport all their adherents. I will not have all quarters of Paris successively undermined. There are always Septembrisers, miscreants covered with crimes, in square battalion against every successive government. It is necessary to make an end of them." Fouché, silent but imperturbable, for a long time on the traces of the conspiracy, persisted in seeing in the infernal machine the work of the agents of Chouannerie. The Council of State proposed to institute a military commission and authorize the First Consul to remove the men who appeared dangerous. Bonaparte was irritated by this slowness of justice. "The action of a special tribunal will be slow," said he; "it will not get hold of the truly guilty. It is not a question of judicial metaphysics. There are in France 10,000 miscreants who have persecuted all honest men, and who are steeped in blood. They are not all culpable in the same degree, far from it. Strike the chiefs boldly and the soldiers will disperse. There is no middle course here; it is necessary to pardon all, like Augustus, or else there must be a prompt and terrible vengeance proportionate to the crime. It is necessary to shoot fifteen or twenty of these miscreants, and transport 200 of them. I am so convinced of the necessity of purging France from these sanguinary dregs that I am ready to constitute myself sole tribunal--to bring forward the guilty, examine them, judge them, and have their condemnation carried into effect. It is not myself that I seek to avenge here. I am as ready to die as First Consul for the preservation of the Republic and the Constitution as to fall upon the field of battle; but it is necessary to reassure France, who will approve my policy." The members of the council listened, struck with consternation at such absolutist and revolutionary violence, but already too much dismayed to defend the cause of the most elementary justice. Admiral Truguet alone suggested doubts as to the true authors of the crime. "It is desired," said he, "to defeat the miscreants who trouble the Republic, so be it; but the miscreants are of more than one kind. The returned emigrants menace those who have acquired national property, the Chouans infest the highways, the priests inflame the passions of the people, the public spirit is corrupted by pamphlets." The First Consul blushed violently at this allusion; the reminder of the unfortunate attempt of Lucien Bonaparte increased his anger. Advancing towards the admiral, "Of what pamphlets do you speak?" cried he. "You know as well as I do," without giving way, answered the brave sailor. The First Consul paced the hall; the councillors of State watched him, vaguely recognizing in the outbursts of the anger of the master the powerful instinct of government, which discerned the permanent hostility of the revolutionaries without being able to divest itself of their principles or of their modes of action. "Do people take us for children?" he cried. "Do they expect to draw us aside with these declamations against the emigrants, the Chouans, and the priests? Because there are still a few partial attempts in Vendée, must we be called upon to declare the country in danger? If the Chouans commit crimes, I will have them shot. But must I commence proscribing for a quality? Must I strike these because they are priests, those because they are old nobles? Must I send away into exile 10,000 old men, who only ask to be allowed to live peaceably in obedience to the established laws? Do you not know, gentlemen, members of the council, that excepting two or three you all pass for royalists? You, Citizen Defermon, don't they take you for a partisan of the Bourbons? Must I send Citizen Portalis to Sinnamari, and Citizen Devaisne to Madagascar, and then must I make for myself a Babeuf council? No, no, Citizen Truguet, you won't get me to make any change; there are none to fear except the Septembrisers. They would not spare even you yourself, and it would be in vain for you to tell them that you defended them at the Council of State. They would cut your throat, just the same as mine or the throats of your colleagues." He went out without giving time for any one to answer him. Cambacérès, moderate and prudent, equally clever in giving counsel and at yielding when counsels were useless, deemed the anger of the First Consul too passionate to admit of contradiction. The Council of State, several times consulted, was brought over with repugnance to the idea of an extraordinary measure. The First Consul wished a law; it was decided to involve the great bodies of the State in the arbitrary act which he was about to commit. "The consuls do not know what may happen," said he. "So long as I am alive I am not afraid of any one daring to ask me an account of my actions; but I may be killed, and then I cannot answer for my two colleagues. You are not very firmly placed in your stirrups," he added, turning to Cambacérès, with a smile. "Better to have a law now as well as for the future." The Council of State hesitated from a repugnance to form a proscription list, assuring him that it would be rejected by the Tribunate and the Legislative Body. "You are always afraid of the Tribunate," said Bonaparte, "because it rejected one or two of your laws; but there are only a few Jacobins in the Legislative Body, ten or twelve at most. The others know well that but for me they would all have been massacred. The law will be passed." At last, Talleyrand, who had previously remained silent, said that since there was a Senate, some use should be made of it. The proscription list was sent to the Senate. It had been written by Fouché, who knew the real criminals; and the statement of reasons were drawn up by the two sections of the Council of State who were at first unanimously opposed to the measure: the Senate voted, the First Consul having signed the act. "All these men have not taken the dagger in their hands," said the preamble, "but they are all universally known to be capable of sharpening it and taking it." Two days afterwards 133 Jacobins sailed from Nantes for Guiana--formerly members of the Convention and the Commune, proved or supposed to have had a part in the massacres of September, all certainly loaded with crime, and worthy of the punishment which they underwent, strangers to the attempt to assassinate the First Consul, and condemned without regard to moral or legal justice. At the same time, and as if to clear off all old accounts with the conspirators, the four men accused in October, Aréna, formerly a representative, and recently employed by the Committee of Public Safety, and the artists Ceracchi and Topino-Lebrun, were at last tried, and condemned to perish on the scaffold. Chauveau- Lagarde defended them, as he had formerly defended Charlotte Corday and the men of Nantes denounced by Carrier. His efforts were not crowned with success; whether acknowledged or only suspected, the Jacobin conspiracy was everywhere repressed with the same rigor. Nevertheless, Fouché had at last recovered the temporarily lost traces of the real criminals. Two assistants of Georges Cadoudal, Limoëlan and St. Réjant, who had formerly taken part in the civil wars, entered into partnership with a man of the lower orders named Carbon, who bought them the cart, the horse, and powder. He was found concealed in Paris; Limoëlan had fled abroad. St. Réjant, who had let off the infernal machine, had not yet recovered from the injuries caused by it; and Carbon having betrayed his place of concealment, and all the details of the plot, they were both executed. Fouché's penetration on this occasion gained him still greater confidence with the First Consul. "He was right," repeated Bonaparte: "his opinion was better than that of the others. The returned emigrants, the royalist plotters, and people of that sort, ought to be closely watched. I am pleased, however, to be rid of the Jacobin staff." Neither the banishment of the old revolutionists, nor the condemnation of those who had contrived the infernal machine, had disturbed the repose of public opinion, then in close alliance with the steady and firm power which ruled France. The abstract principles of justice were no longer thought of by men in general: the desire for permanent freedom had given place to the longing for rest and quiet, and all were pleased with the energy which the government had shown against disturbers of the peace; and the oppressive laws being modified, prosperity was reappearing. The state of the finances became more satisfactory: a part of the public funds had been paid, and that which still remained had just been registered in the "Great Ledger;" the fundholders accepted without too much difficulty the delay in paying the first dividend. The national property not yet sold was set apart for the liquidation, excepting what was assigned for public instruction and the support of the Invalides. Everywhere roads were being made or repaired, canals dug, and three bridges were built over the Seine. In spite of the formation of extraordinary tribunals, the great Code of Civil Law was being slowly made--destined to rule France and extend her useful action. An agent, almost unknown at Rome and only recently arrived in Paris, was already discussing with Abbé Bernier those great questions of order and organization which were afterwards to introduce the concordat. Peace, even when partial and precarious, was everywhere bearing its fruits; at home, France displayed that wonderful recuperative power so frequently and painfully put to the proof by the severe shocks of our modern history; abroad, her importance in Europe was daily increasing, and caused more disquiet to all her enemies. The government of England, however, was soon to pass from Pitt's hands: the whole English nation called loudly to stop a war of which they had financially borne the burden, even though their armies had generally had little share in it. In the south of Europe the First Consul, while negotiating with the Pope, and occupying Piedmont without diplomacy, had no longer any enemy to subdue worthy of his power. Murat had invaded the kingdom of Naples, causing so great terror that the queen herself was on the point of accepting an armistice by which the ports of the Two Sicilies were closed to the English. The treaty of definitive peace was signed at Florence on the 18th of March, 1801, the conditions being the same as those of the armistice, with the important addition that the territory of Elba, a dependency of the kingdom of Naples, was to be ceded. By a secret article, the sovereign of the Two Sicilies was obliged to receive and maintain a body of fifteen thousand men, which the First Consul intended to transport to Egypt, important armaments being prepared in our ports in order to be sent to the same place, their real destination being yet concealed. A Franco-Spanish expedition, nominally commanded by Prince de la Paix but really directed by General Gouvion St. Cyr, was to attempt in April the conquest of Portugal. In spite of repeated promises, the government of that small State remained obstinately faithful to England. England was suffering from a scarcity of food which threatened to become a famine, constantly made worse by the hindrances put in the way of her commerce. The difficulties of the home government increased those of the diplomatic and military isolation which she underwent in Europe. At the moment of the conclusion of the Treaty of Union, Pitt had entered upon engagements with the Irish Catholics which he felt himself bound to fulfil. The conscientious but shortsighted and narrow-minded George III. opposed every act of toleration with respect to his Catholic subjects: he refused to give his assent, and Pitt by resigning his post sacrificed, at a perilous crisis for his country, foreign policy to the duties and obligations of parliamentary tactics. The reason of King George, already tottering, was unable to undergo so much agitation; he remained faithful to his convictions, but was for a short time out of his mind. When he regained his faculties, Pitt, who was moved to the heart by the trouble which he had caused to his aged king, and disturbed by the evils which threatened England under the regency of the Prince of Wales, undertook never to raise the question of the emancipation of the Catholics during the life of George III. He had no seat, however, in the new cabinet, which was obviously incapable, and unequal to the difficult task which it had undertaken, and in their earlier proceedings still influenced by Pitt's action, and following the line of policy which he had traced. Scarcely had Addington become prime minister, when an attempt which had long been projected against Denmark was put in execution. Nelson had charge of it under the superior command of Sir Hyde Parker, who was above him in the order of seniority. "This is no time to feel nervous," said Nelson to his superior as they were setting sail. "Dark nights and mountains of ice matter little; we must take courage to meet the enemy." Having passed the Sound, the English squadron blockaded the fleet which covered Copenhagen. The Danes made an heroic defence, and the old Admiral Parker, somewhat alarmed, gave the signal for the action to cease. "I'll be d----d first!" cried Nelson in a passion: "I have the right of seeing badly"--putting his telescope to the eye which he had lost at Aboukir. "I don't see the signal. Nail mine to the mast. Let them press closer on the enemy. That's my reply to such signalling." It was Nelson, moreover, who, when the battle was gained, arranged with the Prince Royal of Denmark the terms of the armistice which separated his country from the number of the neutral states. Almost at the same moment the coalition of maritime powers underwent a more fatal check. For several months the strange workings of the mind of the Emperor Paul I. had become more obvious. Everybody trembled before him, and even the empress, as well as her sons, had been threatened with banishment to Siberia. A caricature was published representing the Czar holding in one hand a paper on which was written the word "order;" in the other, the word "counter-order;" on his forehead was read the word "disorder." A conspiracy was formed, including the principal nobles and the most intimate members of his household. "They are conspiring against me, Pahlen," said the emperor to the Governor of St. Petersburg. "Let your Majesty's mind be easy," replied the Russian, coolly; "I am up to them." He really was so, and on the night of the 23rd March, 1801, he entered the Michael palace with the conspirators. The next in importance to him, General Benningsen, had afterwards the honor of fighting bravely against the Emperor Napoleon when subduing Poland; he was already distinguished, and had been decorated with all the orders of the empire. On making his way to the bedroom of the Czar, who was asleep, the two Hungarians who formed the only guard ran away after striking one or two blows; the palace-guard were already on an understanding with the conspirators. The unfortunate Czar, pursued by the assassins, took refuge behind a screen. Benningsen observing him held out a paper: "There is your act of abdication," said he; "sign it and I answer for your life." The emperor resisted; the conspirators crowded into the room; the lamp fell and was extinguished, and in that moment of darkness a scarf was tightened round the neck of Paul I., and he was struck on the head with the pummel of a sword. When a light was brought in he was dead. Count Pahlen had not entered the room, being engaged in guarding the doors with a troop of soldiers: he went to call on the new emperor. Alexander was not ignorant of the plot formed to force from his father an abdication which had become necessary; but he had not considered, and did not anticipate, the fatal consequences of that enterprise. Pahlen's silence was the only reply to his questions about the Czar: the young man burst into tears, hiding his face in his hands and heaping reproaches upon the Governor of St. Petersburg, who still remained motionless before him. But by this time the empress, out of her mind from sorrow, and suddenly seized with an ill-regulated ambition, sent to announce to her son that she was resolved to take possession of the power. Count Pahlen at once threw off his apathy. "Enough of childish tears," said he to the young emperor; "now, come and reign!" He then presented him to the troops, by whom he was well received. A few days afterwards the Emperor Alexander was crowned. "Before him marched his grandfather's murderers," wrote Madame de Bonneuil, "beside him those of his father, and behind him his own." Count Pahlen's ambition was to govern the young monarch, but he was not to reap the fruits of his crime. The empress-mother insisted upon the banishment of the murderers of Paul I. In the retirement of his country estate, where he lived a long time, the count on the 23rd of March made himself drunk from daybreak, in order to pass in oblivion the dreaded anniversary which awoke in his mind a remorse which was only slumbering. "That's the regular mode of deposition in Russia," said Talleyrand, cynically, on hearing of the emperor's assassination. The First Consul's anger overcame his judgment. "The wretches!" he exclaimed; "they failed here on the 3rd Nivôse, but they have not failed in St. Petersburg." And bent on showing his spite towards his enemies, he had the following note inserted in the _Moniteur_: "Paul I. died on the night of the 23rd March, and the English squadron passed the Sound on the 31st. History will inform us the relation that possibly exists between these two events." History has done justice to those false insinuations, unworthy even of him who pronounced them. Admiral Nelson felt no joy at the death of the Emperor Paul, which finally broke the league of the neutrals, and deprived him of the easy triumph which he made sure of gaining over the Russian fleet. It was of service, however, to England, and contributed to assist the wish for peace which was beginning to be awakened in the mind of the First Consul. Scarcely was the Emperor of Russia dead, when Piedmont, long protected by his favor, was reduced to the condition of a French department: but it was in vain that Bonaparte pretended to reckon on the alliance of the young Czar, in vain that Duroc was despatched to St. Petersburg with a mission of confidence; he was not deceived as to the Emperor Alexander's leaning to ally himself with England. In fact, M. Otto, who had been sent to London to arrange the exchange of prisoners, had already several weeks previously been authorized to meet favorably the advances made by Lord Hawkesbury, then the foreign minister. On both sides they tried to gain time. The great question which then separated France and England, the possession of Egypt, remained undecided, and both sides determined that it should be settled. On the 7th of March, 1801, the English squadron of the Mediterranean, which was long stationed at Mahon, and had recently been directed towards Malta, suddenly disembarked a body of 18,000 soldiers under the orders of Sir Ralph Abercromby. Thus, with a Turkish contingent and the regiments of sepoys brought from India, there were 60,000 men united against the army of occupation, which was reduced to 15,000 or 18,000 soldiers, commanded by dissatisfied officers, and generals who could not act together. Unfortunate in his relations to his colleagues, and showing little tact in his application of European methods of organization to the native population, General Menou was unable to take the necessary precautions against the English invasion of Egypt; and in spite of his bravery, General Friant, who was in charge of 15,000 men defending Alexandria, could make only a feeble resistance to the landing of the English. Assisted by General Lanusse, he again joined battle, 13th March, on the road to Ramanièh; while General Menou--"Abdallah Menou," as his soldiers called him after he became a Mussulman--was on march with all his troops to assist Alexandria. After committing the fault of allowing the English army to land, it was necessary to make haste to fight it before it should have received the expected reinforcements. The battle of Canopa was fought on the 21st March under disadvantageous circumstances; and General Lanusse being killed in the action, General Reynier's disposition prevented his supplying his chief's incapacity. The battle, though remaining indecisive, left the English masters of the coast, and constantly revictualled by the fleet. For more than two months, the French army hoped and waited for the assistance which had been promised them. Admiral Ganteaume, provided with the best vessels of our navy, a body of picked soldiers, and supplies and resources of every kind, had in fact set sail on the 23rd January, leaving Brest in the midst of a frightful tempest in the hopes of escaping the English cruisers. After being beaten about and somewhat damaged by the sea, the French vessels made for the Straits of Gibraltar, without any accident except a short engagement between the frigate "Bravoure" and an English one. The admiral hesitated; in spite of his personal courage, he felt loaded with too great a responsibility. Bringing back his squadron almost within view of Toulon, he thought he saw Mahon's English fleet making straight for him, and as the struggle threatened to be unequal he returned into the harbor of Toulon. Leaving it on the 19th of March, after his vessels were repaired and urgent orders were received from the First Consul, he again delayed, on account of an accident which had happened to one of his ships, and it was only on the 22nd that he finally put to sea. On the 26th he was delayed by the collision of two vessels at Cape Carbonara in Sardinia, and becoming discouraged and uneasy, the admiral again entered Toulon on the 5th of April, at the moment when the English fleet were passing Rosetta. The town was badly defended and fell into the hands of the enemies, who thus became masters of the mouth of the Nile; and sending some gun-boats up as far as Fouèh, they soon took it. Generals Lagrange and Morand held Ramanièh; and Menou delaying to lend the assistance which he promised, Lagrange fell back upon Cairo, and communication with Alexandria was interrupted. General Billiard, who commanded in the capital of Egypt, made a sally to repulse the vizier's troops; but in spite of several skirmishes he could not reach the main body of the army, and returning to the town, he offered to capitulate. The English were anxious to finish, being afraid of one of those strokes of good fortune to which the French arms had so often owed their success. The most honorable conditions were granted to the army, the troops evacuating Egypt being carried back to France at the expense of England, and in their vessels (27th June, 1801). Almost at the same moment (24th June), Admiral Ganteaume, with his squadron reduced by sickness, at last anchored before Derne, several marches from Alexandria; but as the people on the coast opposed his landing, and the undertaking was hazardous and the land route difficult, he again put to sea, thinking himself fortunate in finding in the Straits at Candia an English ship, which he captured and brought triumphantly to Toulon. General Menou, now alone, and shut up in Alexandria, obstinately and heroically resisted in vain. When at last he surrendered, he had been long forgotten in his isolation. Thus though Bonaparte's thoughts often went back to that famous and chimerical conquest of his youth, Egypt was definitively lost to France. The negotiations with England had undergone the fluctuations inseparable from the vicissitudes of a distant war, the events of which remained still doubtful in Europe several weeks after their occurrence. The successes gained by Admiral Linois against the English before Algesiras and Cadiz, and the danger of Portugal threatened by the Spanish army, had their influence no doubt upon the English cabinet, but it was still haughty and exacting. The First Consul himself drew up a minute for the minister of foreign affairs, giving an abstract of the concessions which he was disposed to accept. "The French Government wishes to overlook nothing which may lead to a general peace, that being for the interests both of humanity and of the allies. It is for the King of England to consider if it is also for the interests of his policy, his commerce, and his nation: and if so, a distant island more or less can be no sufficient reason for prolonging the unhappiness of the world. "The question consists of three points: the Mediterranean--the Indies-- America. "Egypt will be restored to the Porte. "The Republic of the Seven Islands will be recognized. "All the ports of the Adriatic and Mediterranean occupied by French troops will be restored to the King of Naples and to the Pope. "Mahon will be restored to Spain. "Malta will be restored to the Order; and if the King of England should consider it conformable to his interests as a preponderating naval power to destroy the fortifications, that clause will be admitted. "In India, England will keep Ceylon, and so become unassailable mistress of those immense and wealthy countries. "The other establishments will be restored to the allies, including the Cape of Good Hope. "In America, all will be restored to the former possessors. The King of England is already so powerful in that part of the world that to wish for more is, being absolute master of India, to wish to be so of America also. "Portugal will be preserved in all its integrity. "Such are the conditions which the French Government is ready to sign. "The advantages which the British Government thus derive are immense: to claim greater ones is not to wish a peace which is just and reciprocally honorable. "Martinico not having been conquered by the English arms, but placed by the inhabitants in the hands of the English till France should have a government, cannot be considered an English possession. France will never give it up. "All that now remains is for the British Government to make known the course they wish to adopt; and if these conditions do not satisfy them, it will be at least proved before the eyes of the world that the First Consul has left nothing undone, and has shown himself disposed to make any sacrifice, in order that peace may be restored and humanity spared the tears and bloodshed which must inevitably result from a new campaign." The concessions were in fact great, the First Consul abandoning points which had long been disputed,--Egypt, Malta, and Ceylon; and he showed extreme annoyance when Lord Hawkesbury refused to admit the principle of complete restitution in America. Several threatening articles were inserted in the _Moniteur_, and Bonaparte urgently hurried the preparation of a fleet of gun-boats at Boulogne, which were supposed to be intended for the invasion of England. It had long been an idea of the First Consul's thus to intimidate the English Government, but it was only the people on the coast who were really alarmed. Nelson wrote immediately to the Admiralty, that "even on leaving the French harbors the landing is impossible were it only for the difficulties caused by the tides: and as to the notion of rowing over, it is impracticable humanly speaking." An attempt to land a large army on the English coast was soon to become a fixed idea in Bonaparte's mind; but then he used his armaments to disquiet the British Government. Twice Nelson attempted to destroy our fleet, and twice he failed completely: in the second attack, which was begun at night, and vigorously carried on to boarding, Admiral Latouche-Tréville compelled the English ships to withdraw, after inflicting severe losses upon them. Nevertheless, England still insisted on obtaining possession of the island of Trinidad, which belonged to Spain. The First Consul refused for a long time, but the Prince de la Paix had betrayed the hopes of his imperious ally. Bonaparte had guaranteed the throne of "Etruria" to the young Duke of Parma, and recently received in Paris the new sovereign, and his wife, the daughter of the King of Spain, and showed the nation that the prince was a simple lad, to be easily bent to his purposes. In return for so many favors, the Spanish troops had with difficulty conquered a few provinces, and King Charles IV., already reconciled to his son-in-law, the King of Portugal, concluded the treaty of Badajoz, which closed the harbors to the English, and granted an indemnity of twenty millions to France. The First Consul was extremely indignant, having counted on the threat of a war in Portugal to exercise a preponderating influence in the negotiations in London. At first he insisted that the treaty must be broken. "At the very time," said he, "when the First Consul places a prince of the house of Spain on a throne which is the fruit of the victories of the French nation, the French Republic is treated as the Republic of San Marino might with impunity be treated. Let the Prince de la Paix know that if he has been bought by England, and has drawn the king and queen into measures contrary to the honor and interest of the Republic, the last hour of the Spanish monarchy has struck." The Prince de la Paix made ample excuses, but refused to break the treaty of Badajoz. The real intention of the First Consul was to have peace: he had three vessels granted him by Portugal, and abandoned the island of Trinidad to the demands of the English Government. At one time England also claimed Tobago, but the very terms of the treaty were displeasing to Bonaparte's pride, and he assumed the insulting tone which he had been accustomed to use with foreign diplomatists. "The following is what I am directed to tell you," wrote Talleyrand: "excepting Trinidad, the First Consul will not yield, not only Tobago, but even a single rock, if there is one, with only a village of a hundred people; and the ground of the First Consul's conduct is, that in the treaty he has yielded to England to the last limit of honor, and that further there would be for the French nation dishonor. He will grant nothing more, even if the English fleets were anchored before Chaillot." Lord Hawkesbury withdrew his demands as to Tobago, and the First Consul modified his threats, both nations being eagerly desirous of peace. The preliminaries were at last signed in London, on the 1st October, 1801; and when, two days afterwards, the ratifications were brought from Paris by Colonel Lauriston, the welcome news caused an irresistible outburst of joy amongst the populace. The horses of the French envoy's carriage were unharnessed, that he might be drawn in triumph to Lord Hawkesbury's house; and everywhere in the streets there were shouts of "Long live Bonaparte!" At the banquets the First Consul's health was drunk, and cheered as loudly as the speeches in favor of the friendship of the two nations. The same excessive delight was shown in Paris, which was soon crowded with the foreigners whom war had long kept away; and Fox was received by the First Consul with such flattering attentions as made a deep impression on his mind. Party feeling had so influenced the mind of the illustrious orator as to partially efface his patriotic sentiments. A few days after the preliminaries were signed, he wrote to his friend Lord Grey, "I confess to you that I go farther than you in my hatred of the English Government: the triumph gained by France excites in me a joy I can scarcely conceal." The public joy and hopes, both in France and England, were founded on motives superior to those which inspired Fox's satisfaction, but they were not more permanent, or better founded. On the day after signing the preliminaries of London, and as if to increase the renown of his successes, the First Consul took pleasure in concluding successively treaties with Portugal, the Sublime Porte, the Deys of Algiers and Tunis, Bavaria, and finally Russia. One clause of the last treaty stipulated that both sovereigns should prevent criminal conduct on the part of emigrants from either country. The House of Bourbon and the Poles were thus equally deprived of important protection. The situation of the King of Sardinia was to be regulated in every way according to actual circumstances. Each of the conventions, and especially the treaty of peace with England contained reticences and obscurities, which were fertile in pretexts for war and in unfriendly interpretations. The First Consul wished to secure an interval of rest and leisure, to consolidate his conquests at home and abroad. He had not renounced the glorious and ill-defined project of the imperial government which he affected to exercise over Europe. "If England made a new coalition," he wrote to M. Otto, "the only result would be a renewal of the history of the greatness of Rome." It was to the honor of the First Consul, in the midst of this brilliant political and military renown, and in spite of his impulsive and ungovernable disposition, that he understood that the restoration of peace, the joy of victory, and the hope of a regular government, were unable to satisfy all the wants or regulate all the movements of the human soul. Personally without experience of religious prejudices or feelings, free from any connection with philosophical coteries, Bonaparte did not limit himself to a sense of the support which religion could lend in France to the new order which he wished to establish: he understood the higher wants of minds and consciences, and the supreme law which assigns to Heaven the regulation of human life. The doctrines of Christianity, as well as the divisions of the Christian Church, were indifferent to him; he did not understand their importance, and would have thought little of them; but he knew that, in spite of the efforts of the eighteenth century philosophy--in spite of the ravages caused by the French Revolution, the attachment and respect of many for the Catholic religion had still great power. He knew also that Catholicism could not be re-established in France, under his auspices, without the assistance and good will of the Court of Rome. No impression was made on his mind by the attempts made to persuade him to found in France an independent church freed from all connection with the Papacy, or by the arguments used in favor of Protestantism. His traditional respect, as well as the religious sentiment of the mass of the French nation, were in favor of Catholicism. His good sense, as well as his profound instinct of the means of action in government, had long urged him towards religious toleration. During his last campaign in Italy, a circular to the curés of Milan had revived the hopes of the Roman Court; and after Pope Pius VII. returned to his capital, on its evacuation by the Neapolitan troops, M. Spina, at first envoy at Turin, had followed the First Consul to Paris. He treated with Abbé Bernier who had skilfully negotiated to bring about the pacification of Vendée--a man of great ambition, determined to serve the government which could raise him to the episcopal purple. The _pourparlers_ were prolonged; the situation was difficult; the new powers founded in France by the Revolution and by victory raised pretensions which were contrary to the Roman tradition. They were, moreover, embarrassed by the unequal position of the ecclesiastics who were performing in France their sacred functions, some having submitted to the republican demands rather than leave their country and their flocks, others believing it was their duty to sacrifice everything to their former oaths. Proscribed and outlawed, they had for a long time preached, said mass, and given the sacraments in spite of an unrelenting persecution. A large number had decided to take to flight, but having now returned, the faithful were divided between them and the priests who had remained in France. Almost alone in Paris, and among those men whose opinion he was accustomed to consult, the First Consul persevered in his idea of again joining the French Church to the general Catholic body. His patience, however, was exhausted by the delay of the Holy College, and he resolved to have recourse to means which were more efficacious, and more in accordance with his character. On the 13th May, 1801, he wrote to M. Cacault, French minister at Rome, that he had determined to accept no longer the irresolution and dilatory procedure of the Court of Rome; if in five days the scheme sent from Paris, and long discussed by the Sacred College, was not accepted, Cacault must leave Rome to join, in Florence, General Murat, the commander-in-chief of the army of Italy. The emotion at the Vatican was great. Shortly before, when giving Cacault his final instructions, the First Consul said, "Forget not to treat the Pope as if he had 200,000 men at his orders." The French minister had faithfully observed this injunction, which agreed with his personal opinions: he knew the obstacles which still separated the new master of France from the Roman Court. The scheme of ecclesiastical organization proposed by Bonaparte was simple: sixty bishops named by the civil power and confirmed by the Pope, the clergy salaried by the State, the ecclesiastical jurisdiction transferred to the Council of State, and the official management of religious bodies to the temporal authority. Pius VII. agreed to accept this new condition of the Church exclusively restored to her spiritual functions. The situation in the Church of the priests who had taken the oath to the civil constitution of 1789, their reconciliation to the papacy, the tacit admission of the appropriation by the State of the ecclesiastical property, the nomination of new bishops and consequent resignation or deprivation of those already holding the titles,--such were the various questions which occupied Pope Pius VII. and his skilful minister Cardinal Consalvi. Cacault tried to persuade them that the cardinal himself must go to Paris. "Most Holy Father," said the French minister, "it is necessary that Consalvi himself carry your reply to Paris. What alarms me most is the character of the First Consul; that man is never open to persuasion. Believe me, something stronger than cold reason advises me in this matter: a mere animal instinct some would call it, but it never deceives. What inconvenience if somehow or other you appear yourself? You are blamed. What did they say? They wish for a 'Concordat' of religion; we anticipate them and bring it, there it is!" Pope Pius VII. had long felt for General Bonaparte an attraction caused by a mixed feeling of alarm and confidence. Alarm reigned in the mind of his minister, who made up his mind to set out for Paris as if he were going to martyrdom. "Since a victim is necessary," said he, "I devote myself, and go to see the First Consul: let the will of God be done!" He rode in Cacault's carriage from Rome to Florence, whence the French minister wrote to Talleyrand,-- "Citizen Minister, here I am, arrived in Florence. The cardinal secretary of state set out with me from Rome, and we have travelled together in the same carriage. We were looked upon everywhere with great astonishment. The cardinal was much afraid people should think I had withdrawn on account of a rupture, and kept saying to everybody, 'This is the French minister.' This country, crushed under the recent evils of war, shudders at the least thought of military disturbance. The Roman Government has still greater fear of its own dissatisfied subjects, especially those who have been allured to authority and pillage by the sort of revolution just gone through.... The cardinal set out this morning for Paris, and will arrive shortly before my despatch, as he goes extremely quickly. The wretched man feels that if he fails he will be irretrievably lost, and that all will be lost for Rome. He is eager to know his lot. I tried at Rome to bring the Pope to sign the Concordat only; and if he had granted me that point, I should not have left Rome; but that idea was unsuccessful. "You understand that the cardinal is not sent to Paris to sign that which the Pope has refused to sign at Rome; but being the prime minister of his Holiness, and his favorite, it is with the Pope's mind that you will be in communication. I hope the result will be an agreement as to the modifications. It is a matter of phrases and words, which can be turned in so many meanings that at last the good meaning is got hold of." The First Consul had resolved to make from the very first an impression on the mind of the pontifical envoy by the display of his power. Scarcely had the cardinal stepped out of his carriage when he received a visit from Abbé Bernier, whom he at once employed to ask an audience for him. The same day, at the Tuileries, before the crowd of courtiers who were thronging to one of the grand receptions, Cardinal Consalvi was presented to the First Consul. "My astonishment," says he in his correspondence, "was like that felt in the theatre by the sudden scene-shifting, when a cottage, prison, or wood is unexpectedly changed to the dazzling spectacle of the most magnificent court. You can easily imagine that a person arriving at Paris on the night preceding, without being told beforehand, without knowing anything of the habits, customs, and dispositions of those before whom he appeared, and who was in a measure considered responsible for the bad success of the negotiations so far as they had been carried, must, at the sight of such grandeur, as imposing as it was unexpected, have felt not only profound emotion, but even a too evident embarrassment." As the cardinal approached the three consuls, alone in the midst of a magnificent drawing-room filled with a brilliant throng, Bonaparte left him no time to speak. "I know the object of your journey to France," said he. "I wish the conferences to be immediately opened. I leave you five days' time; and I tell you beforehand that if at the expiration of the fifth day the negotiations are not finished, you must return to Rome; whilst as for me, I have decided what to do in that case." Consalvi came to Paris ardently wishing to bring to a successful completion the difficult negotiations which had been entrusted to him. His Italian cunning was not deceived as to the motive of the display of magnificence, and the rough reception of himself which signalized his first audience. He was conscientious and resolute without narrowness of mind, and he understood the immense importance to religion and politics of the restoration of agreement between France and the Court of Rome. He appeared neither astonished nor disturbed with reference to the First Consul. When they came to the discussion of the questions which had brought him to Paris, the Pope's envoy showed himself easily influenced on most of the points. Bonaparte himself summarized the whole of the Concordat in a few words: "Fifty emigrant bishops, paid by England, manage all the French clergy, and their influence must be destroyed. The authority of the Pope is necessary for that. He deprives them of their charge, or obliges them to resign. As it is said that the Catholic religion is that of the majority of the French, the exercise of it should be organized. The First Consul nominates the fifty bishops; the Pope institutes them; they name the curés, and the State pays their salaries. They take the oath: the priests who refuse to submit are removed, and those who preach against the government are referred to their superiors. After all, enlightened men will not rise against Catholicism; they are indifferent." A rather keen opposition, however, was raised among the courtiers and in the army against the Concordat, which assisted in hampering the progress of the negotiations. Most of the military men were still imbued with the spirit of the Revolution, and suspicious of the influence of the priests. The constitutional clergy, who had no serious objection to the Concordat, the only means of securing them a regular ecclesiastical standing, feared lest they should be sacrificed in favor of the priests who had refused to take the oath. Several of them were married, and had thus increased the difficulties of their position by new ties. So many personal interests and different motives kept the First Consul's advisers in a state of hostility to the claims of the Holy See. Even the preamble of the Concordat gave room to long discussions. On the refusal to apply the title "State religion" to the Catholic religion, Cardinal Consalvi agreed to the simple statement of the fact that the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion was the religion of the great majority of the French people. On the other hand, the Pope admitted the great advantage that religion should derive from the re-establishment of Catholic worship in France, and from the personal profession of it made by the consuls of the republic. He at the same time agreed to ask the old titular bishops to resign. The resignation of the constitutional bishops had been already secured. The First Consul wrote to Pius VII.: "Most holy Father, Cardinal Consalvi has showed me your Holiness' letter, and I recognize the evangelical sentiments which distinguish it. The cardinal will inform your Holiness of my intention to do all that may contribute to your happiness. It will depend only on you to find again in the French Government the support which it has always granted to your predecessors, when they have classed with their principal duties the preaching of maxims which help to confirm peace, morality, and obedience to the civil power. "It only depends on me that the tears of Europe cease to flow, that the revolutions and wars be followed by general peace and order. "On all occasions, I beg your Holiness to reckon upon the assistance of your devoted son." Cardinal Consalvi had made several concessions; the French negotiators had more than once extended as they chose the exact sense of his concessions; but he refused absolutely to entrust the regulation of the public worship to the civil authority. In view of the cardinal's conscientious obstinacy, the First Consul at last agreed to important modifications of this point. When the day for signing arrived, Joseph Bonaparte, who had always a share in diplomatic negotiations, being one of the appointed signatories, the cardinal went to his house with the Abbé Bernier, both bringing a copy of the act. At the moment when the papal envoy was taking the pen, he cast his eyes over the text of the convention, and saw that the article referring to the exercise of worship had been restored to the form which he had objected to. Reading further, and finding other changes and additions, the cardinal protested against it. Joseph Bonaparte declared that he knew nothing of it. "The First Consul wished it to be so," said Bernier with some confusion, "declaring that anything may be changed so long as it is not signed. Besides, the draft agreed upon did not please him; and he insists upon the articles being so modified." The time was short, the First Consul having announced his intention of announcing publicly the signature of the Concordat at a great banquet the same evening. The outbursts of his anger even reached the cardinal's ears. He had torn the Concordat, and threatened to declare the rupture of the negotiations if Consalvi did not consent to give way. "I underwent the agonies of death," said the cardinal. But he was convinced of his duty, and went to the Tuileries as unbending in his resolution as the First Consul in his imperious will. Bonaparte came to him as he entered the drawing-room, and called loudly, "Well, cardinal, you wish then to break! I have no need of Rome! Let it be so! I have no need of the Pope! If Henry VIII., who had not the twentieth part of my power, was able to change the religion of his country, I am much more able to do so! By that change of religion I shall change the religion through nearly the whole of Europe, wherever the influence of my power extends. Rome will be sensible of the losses she brings on herself. She will lament them, but there will be no remedy. You wished to break.... Very well! let it be so, since you wished it. When do you set out?" "After dinner, general," replied the cardinal with calmness. Consalvi did not set out. Next day, in spite of the reiterated attempt made to influence him, in spite of the weakness of the majority of his legation, the Pope's secretary of state held firm. The First Consul gave way, or pretended it, in order afterwards to withdraw the concessions granted, but sufficiently to satisfy the conscience of the cardinal, and persuade him to put his signature to the Concordat. The ratification at Rome quickly succeeded, and a legate was sent to Paris, chosen at the First Consul's express desire. After Cardinal Caprara's arrival, the publication of the Concordat was still delayed by the choosing of the new bishops. Thirteen of the former prelates, who had taken refuge in England, alone refused to resign at the command of the Holy See; and thirty-three bishops, still abroad or already returned to France, obeyed generously and without reluctance. The constitutional bishops had just dissolved their council, which Bonaparte had authorized in order to influence the Court of Rome; but he ordered its cessation as soon as the Concordat was signed. His resolution to place several constitutional priests among the new bishops annoyed and disturbed the Pope. The First Consul became angry, making charges of systematic delay which prevented him from publishing the Concordat, and introducing into their dioceses the prelates nominated during Lent. The legate quietly claimed the submission which the constitutional priests had promised. "There is haughtiness in asking it," exclaimed Bonaparte; "there would be cowardice in submitting." The conduct of the constitutional prelates remained doubtful: ten, however, were nominated. Cardinal Caprara was both less resolute and less clear-sighted than Consalvi: at one time frightened, at another easily persuaded. In spite of his resistance, "his cries and tears," he at last yielded to the pressing demands of the First Consul. On the 18th April, 1802, Easter Sunday, the Concordat was proclaimed in the streets of Paris. At eleven o'clock an immense crowd thronged Notre Dame, curious to see the legate officiating, and gaze again on the pompous ritual of the Catholic service; but still more eager to look at the First Consul in the brilliancy of his triumph and power, surrounded by his companions in arms, all compelled by his will to assist at a ceremony at variance with the opinions of several of them. The concessions of the Court of Rome and the obedience of the generals could not conceal the vast gulf that separated Revolutionary France from the religious tradition of the past. Bonaparte felt this. He wished for the Concordat, understanding its lofty aim and practical utility; he had conceded more in appearance than he intended to grant in reality. The _Te Deum_ was chanted: the bishops were confirmed, and had now set out for their dioceses. In every district, along with the Concordat, and as if invested with the same sanction, the First Consul published a series of "organic articles," regulating in detail the relations of the civil power with the religious authority. Already, when discussing the Concordat the representative of the Holy See had rejected most of Bonaparte's pretensions on that subject; but he now reproduced them, transformed, by the power of his will alone, into administrative measures, voted like the Concordat by the Corps Législatif, and having equal force for the Catholic Church, the Protestant Church, and the Jewish form of worship. The anger and sorrow of the Court of Rome had no effect in modifying the resolution of the First Consul. Cardinal Caprara was constantly passing from submission to despair. "He who is fated to treat with the First Consul," he wrote to Cardinal Consalvi, "must bear always in mind that he is treating with a man who is arbiter of the affairs of the world--a man who has paralyzed, one might say, all the other powers of Europe, who has conceived projects the execution of which seemed impossible, and who has conducted them with a success which astonishes the whole world. Nor should it be forgotten that I am appointed here in a nation where the Catholic religion has not a ruling power, even in peace. Here all the powerful personages are against her, and they strive as much as possible against the First Consul. He is the only man who watches over her. Unfortunately, her future depends on his intention, but at least that intention is sure of completion. When the First Consul is against us, things proceed with a frightful rapidity." The Pope felt obliged to protest against the organic articles in an allocution to the Consistory, and to address his claims to the First Consul, who took no notice of them. In his communications with the religious authority in France, he proved imperious and insolent. "If the morality of the gospel is insufficient to direct a bishop," he wrote Portalis, "he must act by policy, and by fear of the prosecution which government might institute against him as a disturber of the public peace. I could not be otherwise than full of sorrow at the conduct of certain bishops. Why have you not informed the _préfets_?" The ecclesiastical organization in France would have been incomplete, had Bonaparte not extended his care to the Protestant churches. In a kindly report addressed to him on the subject, it was stated that "the government, in declaring that Catholicism was in a majority in France, had no wish to authorize in its favor any political or civil pre-eminence. Protestanism is a Christian communion, bringing together, in the same faith and to the same rites, a very large number of Frenchmen. In recent times the Protestants were in the foremost ranks under the standards of liberty, and have never abandoned them. All that is secured to the various Christian communions by the articles of agreement between his Holiness and the Government of the Republic is equally guaranteed to the Protestants, _with the exception of the pecuniary subvention_." The original idea of Bonaparte had, in fact, been to leave to the Protestants the full liberty of their internal government, as well as the charge of their worship. The principle, admitted by the Constituent Assembly, of compensating the Catholic clergy for the confiscation of their property, was not applicable to the Protestant Church. On a consideration of the administrative advantages of a church paid by the state, Bonaparte decided that the law of the 18th Germinal, year X., should be drawn up, regulating the nomination of pastors and consistories after the manner of the interior government of the Protestant Church. The principle which, in this respect, equalized the Protestant and Catholic modes of worship was hailed with satisfaction by the reformers. The Jews established in France were admitted to enjoy the same privileges. At the same time that an alliance between religion and the state was being re-established in France, Chateaubriand, still a very young man, published his "Genius of Christianity." The sense of the poetic beauty of Christianity then reawakening in men's minds, the success of the book was deservedly great. It marked in recent history the epoch of literary admiration for the greatness and beauty of the gospel. We have since sadly learnt that it was only a shallow and barren admiration. Peace seemed again established in the world and the church. In spite of several difficulties and suspicions, the definitive treaty with England was at last to be signed at Amiens. But rest seemed already to weigh heavily on the new master of France, and the increasing ambition of his power could not deceive men of foresight as to the causes of disturbance in Europe which were perpetually reappearing. Scarcely were the preliminaries of peace signed in London, when the Batavian Republic-- recently composed, after the example of the French Republic, of a Directory and two Legislative Chambers--found itself again undergoing a revolution, the necessary reaction of what was being done in France. On a new constitution being proposed to the Chambers they rejected it. The Dutch Directory, with the assistance of General Augereau, effected at the Hague, in September, 1800, the _coup d'état_ which took place in Paris on the 18th Brumaire; the representatives were dismissed, and the people were assembled to pronounce upon the new constitution. Only 50,000 voters out of 400,000 electors presented themselves in the Assemblies. A president was chosen for three months. The absolute authority of the First Consul was secured in the Batavian Republic. In Switzerland, an agitation diligently kept up throughout all the cantons, rendered a government there impossible. The French minister at Berne, "a powerless conciliator of the divided parties," as Bonaparte called him, received secret instructions from him. "Citizen Verninac must, under all the circumstances, say publicly that the present government can only be considered provisional, and give them to understand that, not only does the French Government not rely upon it, but it is even dissatisfied with its composition and procedure. It is a mockery of nations to believe that France will acknowledge as the intention of the Helvetic people the will of the sixteen persons who compose the Legislative Body." The French troops had evacuated Switzerland. The First Consul was scheming to annex the canton of Valais to the two departments of Mont Terrible and Léman, which he had already taken from the Helvetian territory. After several months passed, the seeds of discord began to bear fruit; and Aloys of Reding, formerly Landamman, being overthrown, Dolder, the leader of the radicals, was raised in his place. As a concession to the patriotic wishes of the Swiss, the French troops were suddenly recalled from their territory. When freed from that constant menace, interior dissensions burst forth; the Landamman Dolder, replaced at Berne by Mulinen, took refuge in Lausanne, where he founded a new government. The cantons were already taking sides, when the First Consul launched a proclamation as the natural arbiter of the destinies of Switzerland:-- "People of Helvetia, you have been disputing for three years without understanding each other. If you are left longer to yourselves, you will kill yourselves in three years without understanding each other any better. Your history, moreover, proves that your civil wars have never been finished unless by the efficacious intervention of France. I shall therefore be mediator in your quarrels, but my mediation will be an active one, such as becomes the great nation in whose name I speak. All the powers will be dissolved. The Senate alone, assembled at Berne, will send deputies to Paris; each canton can also send some; and all the former magistrates can come to Paris, to make known the means of restoring union and tranquillity and conciliating all parties. Inhabitants of Helvetia! revive your hopes!" At the same time Bonaparte said to Mulinen, who had already escaped to Paris, "I am now thoroughly persuaded of the necessity of some definitive measure. If in a few days the conditions of my proclamation are not fulfilled, 30,000 men will enter Switzerland under General Ney's orders; and if they thus compel me to use force it is all over with Switzerland. It is time to put an end to that; and I see no middle course between a Swiss government strongly organized, and friendly to France, or no Switzerland at all." On the 15th October, 1802, General Ney received orders to enter Switzerland, and publish "a short proclamation in simple terms, announcing that the small cantons and the Senate had asked for the mediation of the First Consul, who had granted it; but a handful of men, friends of disorder, and indifferent to the evils of their country, having deceived and led astray a portion of the people, the First Consul was obliged to take measures to disperse these senseless persons, and punish them if they persisted in their rebellion." At the same time, after an imperious summons, the chiefs of the Swiss aristocracy, Mulinen, Affry, and Watteville, joined the radical deputies in Paris. There could be no long discussion, as the plan of the Helvetic Constitution was decided upon in the mind of the First Consul. He had recognized the inconveniences arising from the "unitary government:" he next abolished the old independent institutions of the cantons, and systematically weakened the central power, as the Diet, composed of twenty-five deputies, was to sit by rotation in the six principal cantons; he at the same time nominated Affry as President of the Helvetian Confederation, after carefully securing his services. Henceforward the Swiss cantons, free in their internal government, fell as a state under the rule of France. "I shall never permit in Switzerland any other influence than my own, though it should cost me 100,000 men," Bonaparte had said to the assembled deputies. "It is acknowledged by Europe that Italy, Holland, and Switzerland are at the disposition of France." At the same time (11th September, 1802), and as if to justify this haughty declaration, the territory of Piedmont was divided into six French departments, the Isle of Elba was united to France, and the Duchy of Parma was definitively occupied by our troops. For a long time the north of Italy was subjected to the laws of its conqueror, and he arrogantly made it bear the whole burden. When the Congress of Vienna had begun its sittings, Talleyrand absolutely forbade Joseph Bonaparte to allow the usurpations of France in Europe to be discussed. "You will consider it a fixed point that the French Government can listen to nothing regarding the King of Sardinia, the Stadtholder, or the internal affairs of Batavia, Germany, Helvetia, or the Italian republics. All these subjects are absolutely unknown to our discussions with England." England admitted the truce of which she stood in need. She tacitly accepted the reticences of the negotiators; and without any protest on her part the First Consul set out for Lyons, where he had summoned the 500 members of the Italian Consulte. Overwhelmed with the gifts of her conqueror, the Cisalpine Republic was now to receive from his hands a definitive constitution. Lombardy as far as the Adige, the Legations, the Duchy of Modena, had sent their deputies to France, prepared to vote by acclamation for the constitution, which had been carefully prepared by several leading Italians under the eyes of the First Consul. The Consulte of Milan had accepted it. Bonaparte reserved to himself the direction of the choice of functionaries, and the important nomination of the President of the Republic. Lyons was in grand holiday, crowded by the Italians and numerous bodies of troops. The old army of Italy, on arriving from Egypt, had been ordered to Lyons; and the populace hailed with delight the arrival of the First Consul, who was always popular personally. The Consulte opened its sittings with distinction; and soon the Italian deputies understood who was the president designed for them by the solicitude of General Bonaparte. They accepted without repugnance his proclamation:--"The Consulte has appointed a committee of thirty persons," wrote the First Consul to his colleagues; "they have reported that, considering the internal and external circumstances of the Cisalpine, it was indispensable to allow me to conduct the first magistracy, till such time as the situation may permit, and I may judge it suitable, to name a successor." To the request of the Consulte, in humble terms, the general replied, "I find no one among you who has sufficient claims upon public opinion--who would be sufficiently independent of local influences--who, in short, has rendered to his country sufficiently great services, for me to trust him with the first magistracy." The Count Melzi accepted the vice-presidentship of the Republic. On the 28th January, after reviewing the army of Egypt, the First Consul, president of the Italian Republic, started again for Paris. He was now waiting for news of the expedition which he had recently sent to St. Domingo. The horrors which signalized the violent emancipation of our negroes and their possession of the territory, was succeeded by a state somewhat regular, largely due to the unexpected authority of a black, recently a slave, who displayed faculties which are very unusual in his race. In his difficult government, Toussaint Louverture had given proofs of a generalship, foresight, courage, and gentleness which gave him the right to address Bonaparte, the object of his passionate admiration, in the following terms: "The first of the blacks to the first of the whites." Toussaint Louverture loved France, and rendered homage to it by driving from the island the Spanish and English troops. He claimed the ratification of his Constitution, and sent his sons to France to be properly educated. The instructions given by the First Consul to his brother-in-law, General Leclerc, are still secret. He had placed under his command 20,000 men, excellent troops, borrowed from the old army of the Rhine, the generals and officers of which were unwilling to resign during the peace. The squadron, in charge of Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse, was a large one. The English had been informed of the expedition, by a note signed by Talleyrand but drawn up by Bonaparte himself. "Let England know," said he, "that in undertaking to destroy the government of the negroes at St. Domingo, I have been less guided by commercial and financial considerations than by the necessity of smothering in all parts of the world every kind of inquietude and disturbance--that one of the chief benefits of peace for England at the present moment was that it was concluded at a time when the French Government had not yet recognized the organization of St. Domingo, and afterwards the power of the negroes. The liberty of the blacks acknowledged at St. Domingo, and legitimized by the French Government, would be for all time a fulcrum for the Republic in the New World. In that case the sceptre of the New World must sooner or later have fallen into the hands of the negroes; the shock resulting for England is incalculable, whereas the shock of the empire of the negroes would, with reference to France, reckon as part of the Revolution." At the same time, and in contradiction to the intentions which he announced to England, Bonaparte wrote to Toussaint Louverture: "We have conceived esteem for you, and we are pleased to recognize and proclaim the services which you have rendered to the French people. If their flag still floats over St. Domingo, it is to you and the brave blacks it is due. Called by your talents and the force of circumstances to the first command, you have overthrown the civil war, curbed the persecution of several fierce men, restored honor to religion and the worship to God, to whom everything is due. The Constitution which you have made contains many good things: the circumstances in which you are placed, surrounded on every side by enemies, without the power of being assisted or provisioned by the capital (mother country), have rendered legitimate the articles of the Constitution which otherwise are not so. We have informed your children and their tutor of our sentiments towards you. We shall send them back to you. Assist the general by your advice, your influence, and your talents. What can you desire? The liberty of the negroes? You know that in every country in which we have been, we have given it to the peoples who had it not. Hence consideration, honors, fortune! After the services which you have rendered, which you can render in this matter, with the personal feelings which we entertain for you, you ought not to be doubtful as to the position before you. Consider, general, that if you are the first of your color who has arrived at so great power, and is distinguished by his valor and military talents, you are also before God and before us the most responsible for their conduct. Count without reserve upon our esteem, and let your behavior be that which becomes one of the principal citizens of the greatest nation of the world." One of the incurable evils of a long state of slavery is the distrust begot in those who have undergone it, though it is also the defence and instinctive protection of weakness. Along with his admiration for the First Consul and his traditional attachment to France, Toussaint Louverture remained uneasy and suspicious as a slave. Already, under the orders of General Richepanse, the expedition was being prepared which was to re-establish slavery in Guadeloupe, in spite of the decrees of the Constituent Assembly and the formal declaration of the First Consul in a statement of the State of the Republic (November 30th, 1801). When the French squadron was signalled at St. Domingo, and the negro dictator ascertained the crushing force brought to impose upon him the will of the mother country, he made preparations for defence, entrusted his lieutenant, Christophe, with the guard of the shore and the town of Le Cap, ordering him to oppose the landing by threatening the white population with fire and sword should they offer to assist the French troops. Toussaint, counting upon the effect of threats, had not estimated the savage horror of slavery which animated his companions, nor the ferocity which could be displayed by men of his race when let loose upon their former masters. On entering the roads the French squadron began to fire; the negroes set the town on fire, put chains on some of the principal white men, and withdrew to the mountains or hills. Toussaint having preceded them, the army of negroes was again formed round him. The coast, however, being already taken by General Leclerc, the white population joined them; and a large number of the negroes, becoming alarmed, accepted the conditions offered by the general. Then, after offering some defence, several of Toussaint's lieutenants, one after another, surrendered. The most ferocious of them, Dessalines, had just been driven from St. Marc, where he committed great atrocities. Toussaint was pursued to his retreat, and after his entrenchments were forced he accepted a capitulation, and withdrew to his plantation at Ennery. The climate of St. Domingo caused frightful ravages to the French army, and the consequent weakness of his troops greatly increased General Leclerc's alarm. He had, moreover received peremptory orders, the severity of which he frequently modified. "Follow exactly my instructions," General Bonaparte wrote to him on the 16th of March, 1802, "and as soon as ever you have got rid of Toussaint, Christophe, Dessalines, and the leading brigands, and the masses of the blacks are disarmed, send away all the blacks and men of color who shall have played any part in the civil troubles." A certain agitation continued to reign among the blacks, and Leclerc seized upon this pretext to summon Toussaint to a conference. The vanity of the former dictator was flattered, and triumphed over his mistrust. "These white gentlemen who know everything still have need of the old negro," said he, and he set out for the French camp (June 10, 1802). Immediately arrested and cast into a frigate, he was taken to the town of Le Cap; his family had been captured as well as himself, and he found them on board the vessel that carried him to France. He was alone when he was imprisoned in the Temple, and afterwards transferred to the fortress of Joux, in the icy casemates under the canopy of the mountains. The only question asked him was where he had hidden his treasures. The dictator of the blacks gave no answer; he had fallen into a deep lethargy. On the 27th April, 1803, he at last expired, the victim of cold, imprisonment, and solitude. A few months later (November, 1803) the mournful remains of our army evacuated St. Domingo, for ever lost to the power of France. General Leclerc was dead of fever, as well as the greater part of his officers, like Richepanse at Guadeloupe. The climate of his country had avenged Toussaint Louverture; the instruments of Bonaparte had perished, the enterprise had failed. The sister of General Bonaparte returned to France, ready for higher destinies; the wife and children of the dictator of St. Domingo pined away slowly in exile. This check was insignificant in the midst of so much success for his armies, and so many easy triumphs over the subdued nations; but the jealous susceptibility of the First Consul kept increasing. He had punished Toussaint Louverture for the resistance he had encountered in St. Domingo; he was irritated against the remnants of isolated opposition which he encountered at times among a few members of the Tribunate. The treaties of peace, so brilliantly concluded after the signature of the preliminaries of London, had been ratified without difficulty by the Corps Législatif. A single article of the treaty with Russia raised strong objections; it was obscure, and assured the Czar of the repression of Polish plots in France. The republican pride was irritated at the word _subjects_ which, was found in the clause. "Our armies have fought for ten years because we were citizens," cried Chenier, "and we have become subjects! Thus has been accomplished the desire of the double coalition!" The treaty was, nevertheless, ratified by an immense majority. But the anger of the master had been roused; "The tribunes are _dogs_ that I encounter everywhere," he often exclaimed. The Tribunate and the Corps Législatif soon incurred his displeasure afresh--the one by discussing, the other by rejecting, a few preliminary articles of the new civil code. The First Consul was present at the discussions of the Council of State, often taking part in them with singular spirit and penetration, sometimes warped by personal or political prejudices. He had adopted as his own the work of the learned lawyers who had drawn up and compiled for the honor and utility of France the wisest and the simplest doctrines of civil and commercial law. "We can still risk two battles," said Bonaparte, after the rejection of the first head of the code. "If we gain them we will continue the march we have commenced. If we lose them we will enter into our winter quarters, and will advise as to the course to be taken." The second head of the code was voted; the third, relative to the deprivation of civil rights, was excessive in its rigor; it was rejected. At the same time, and as if to give proof of its independence, the Corps Législatif, which had just chosen as its president Dupuis, author of a philosophical work, then famous, upon the "Origin of all Religions," sent up as candidates for the Senate the Abbé Grégoire and Daunou. The former had been dismissed from his charge as constitutional bishop at the time of the Concordat, the second was honored of all men, moderate in a very firm opposition. The Abbé Grégoire was elected. The First Consul had presented Generals Jourdan, Lamartillière, and Berruyer, accompanying their candidature with a message. He broke out violently during a sitting of the Senate. "I declare to you," he said, "that if you appoint Daunou senator, I shall take it as a personal injury, and you know that I never suffer that!" General Lamartillière was appointed, but the slight notion of independence in the constituent bodies had troubled and displeased Bonaparte; he recoiled before the risks that awaited the Concordat and the great project of public instruction presented for the acceptance of the Corps Législatif. On the 8th of January, 1802, a message was brought in during the sitting. "Legislators," said the First Consul, "the government has resolved to withdraw the projects of law of the civil code. It is with pain that it finds itself obliged to defer to another period laws in which the interests of the nation are so much involved, but it is convinced that the time has not yet come when these great discussions can be carried on with that calm and unity of intention which they require." This was not enough to assure the repose of General Bonaparte and the docile acceptance of his wishes; Consul Cambacérès, clever at veiling absolute power with an appearance of legality, proposed to confide to the Senate the task of eliminating from the Tribunate and the Corps Législatif the fifth who ought regularly to be designated by lot. The legislative labors were suspended; the First Consul had set out for Lyons, in order to guide the destinies of the Italian Republic. He wrote thence to his colleagues: "I think that I shall be in Paris at the end of the decade, and that I shall myself be able to make the Senate understand the situation in which we find ourselves. I do not think it will be possible to continue to march forward when the constituted authorities are composed of enemies; the system has none greater than Daunou; and since, in fine, all these affairs of the Corps Législatif and the Tribunate have resulted in scandal, the least thing that the Senate can do is to remove the twenty and the sixty bad members, and replace them by well-disposed persons. The will of the nation is that the government may not be hindered from doing well, and that the head of Medusa may no longer be displayed in our Tribunes and in our Assemblies. The conduct of Sieyès in this circumstance proves perfectly that, after having concurred in the destruction of all the constitutions since 1791, he still wishes to try his hand against this one. It is very extraordinary that he does not see the folly of it. He ought to go and burn a wax taper at Notre Dame for having been delivered so happily and in a manner so unhoped for. But the older I grow the more I perceive that every one has to fulfil his destiny." When the First Consul returned to Paris, the opposition, more brilliant than effective, of a few eloquent members, had ceased in the Tribunate; the Corps Législatif had undergone the same purification. Faithful servants had been carefully chosen by the Senate--some capable of ill- temper and anger, like Lucien Bonaparte and Carnot; others distinguished by their administrative merit, like Daru--all fit to vote the great projects which the First Consul meditated. He did not, however, condescend to submit to them the general amnesty in favor of all the emigrants whose names had not yet been erased from the fatal list. Perhaps he still dreaded some remains of revolutionary passion. This act of justice and clemency was the object of a Senatus Consultum. The First Consul kept in his own hands the unsold confiscated property of emigrants--a powerful means of action, which he often exercised in order to attach to himself men and families of consideration by direct or personal restitution. He created at the same time a new instrument of government the fruit of a powerful mind and profound acquaintance with human nature. Formerly the honorary orders successively founded by kings of France had been reserved for a small number of privileged persons; in this limited circle they had been the object of great ambition and of long intrigues. By the institution of the Legion of Honor, Bonaparte resolved to extend to the entire nation, in the camp and in civil life, that rivalry of hopes and that ardent thirst for honors which formerly animated the courtiers. He had proved the importance which the military attached to arms of honor, and he was impatient of the objections which the Council of State brought before him on this subject. "People call this kind of thing a bauble," said he. "Well! it is with baubles that men are managed. I would not say it to a Tribune, but I do not believe that Frenchmen love liberty and equality; they have not been changed by ten years of Revolution; like the Gauls, they must have distinctions. It is one means more of managing men." The experience of the rulers who have succeeded him has justified the far- seeing and cynical conception of Bonaparte. It has proved once more what abuses can be brought about, and what weaknesses can be created, by an institution originally intended to appeal to noble sentiments. The passion for equality was much stronger than the First Consul thought; the institution of the Legion of Honor encountered great opposition in the purified Tribunate and Corps Législatif, and was only voted by a small majority. A great law on public instruction prepared the way for the foundation of the University, from that time one of the favorite ideas of the First Consul. Primary instruction remained neglected, as it had been practically by the Convention. The communes were entrusted with the direction and construction of schools; no salary was assured to the instructor beyond the school fees. The central schools were suppressed; their method of mixed instruction had succeeded badly. The project of the First Consul instituted thirty-two Lycées, intended for instruction in the classical languages and in the sciences. He had little taste for the free exercise of reflection and human thought; instruction in history and philosophy found no place in his programme. "We have ceased to make of history a particular study," said M. Roederer, "because history properly so called only needs to be read to be understood." The great revival of historic studies in France was soon to protest eloquently against a theory which separated the present from the past, and which left in consequence a most grievous blank in education. Military exercises were everywhere carefully organized. Six thousand four hundred scholarships, created by the State, were to draw the young into the new establishments, or into the schools already founded to which the State extended its grants and its patronage. Without being officially abolished, the freedom of secondary instruction was thus subjected to a destructive rivalry, and the action of the government penetrated into the bosom of all families. "What more sweet," said M. Roederer, "than to see one's children in a manner adopted by the State, at the moment when it becomes a question of providing for their establishment?" "This is only a commencement," said the First Consul to Fourcroy, the principal author of the project, and its clever defender before the Corps Législatif; "by and by we shall do better." The Treaty of Amiens had already been signed several months (25th March, 1802), but it had not yet been presented for the ratification of the Corps Législatif; this was the supreme satisfaction reserved for it, and the brilliant consummation of its labors. It was at the same time the price paid in advance for a manifestation long prepared for, but which, however, still remained obscure even among those most trusted by the all-powerful master of France. The destinies of the nation rested in his hands, but the power had been confided to him for ten years only; it was necessary to insure the prolongation of this dictatorship, which all judged useful at the present moment, and of which few people had foreseen the danger. Bonaparte persisted in hiding his thought; he waited for the spontaneous homage of the constituent bodies in the name of the grateful nation. Cambacérès was acquainted with this desire, and he exerted himself to prepare the votes in the Senate. A certain mistrust reigned in some minds. The Tribunate, alone permitted to speak, at length took the initiative. Its President, Chabot de l'Allier, the friend of Cambacérès made this proposal:--"The Senate is invited to give the consuls a testimony of the national gratitude." This wish, transmitted to the Senate, was at the same time carried to the Tuileries; Siméon was entrusted with presenting it to the First Consul. "I desire no other glory than that of having entirely completed the task which was imposed on me," replied Bonaparte; "I am ambitious of no other recompense than the affection of my fellow-citizens; life is only dear to me for the services I can render to my country; death itself will have for me no bitterness, if I can only see the happiness of the Republic as well assured as its glory." So many protestations of disinterestedness deceived nobody; the thirst for power betrayed itself even in the most modest words. Through ignorance, or uneasiness as to the future, the Senate made a mistake as to the measure of an ambition that knew no limit. It voted for General Bonaparte a prolongation of his powers during ten years; Lanjuinais alone protested against the dictatorship, as he had formerly protested against demagogy. The officials, badly informed, ran with eagerness to the Tuileries; they were received with evident ill-temper. The first impulse of Bonaparte was to refuse the proposal of the Senate; prudent counsels opened to him another way. It was from Malmaison, the pretty country-house dear to Madame Bonaparte, that the First Consul replied to the message of the Senate. "Senators," said he, "the honorable proof of esteem embodied in your deliberation of the 18th will be always graven upon my heart. In the three years that have just passed away, fortune has smiled upon the Republic; but fortune is inconstant, and how many men whom she has loaded with her favors have lived more than a few years! "The interest of my glory and that of my happiness would seem to assign as the term of my public life the moment when the peace of the world is proclaimed. "But you judge that I ought to make a new sacrifice for the people; I will do it if the wish of the people commands what your suffrage authorizes." In all times, and under all forms of arbitrary government, the appeal to the people has offered to power an easy resource; Cambacérès had cleverly suggested it to the First Consul. In explaining to the Council of State the reasons which rendered the vote of the Senate unacceptable, he formulated immediately the proposal which ought to be put before the nation: "Napoleon Bonaparte, shall he be consul for life?" To this first question Roederer proposed to add a second, immediately rejected by the explicit wish of the First Consul himself: "Shall he have the right of appointing his successor?" For three weeks, in all the cities and in all the villages, the registries of votes remained open. The Tribunate and the Corps Législatif presented themselves in a body at the Tuileries, in order to vote into the hands of the First Consul. The Senate had the honor of casting up the votes. It remained mute and powerless in consequence of its awkward proposal. "Come to the help of people who have made a mistake in trying to divine your purposes too deeply," said Cambacérès to the First Consul. 3,577,259 "Yeas" had agreed to the Consulate for life. Rather more than 800 "Noes" alone represented the opposition. La Fayette refused his assent; he wrote upon the registry of votes, "I should not know how to vote for such a magistracy, inasmuch as political liberty will not be guaranteed." The feeble and insufficient guarantees of political liberty were about to undergo fresh restrictions. In receiving from the Senate the return of the votes, the First Consul said, "The life of a citizen is for his country. The French people wish mine to be entirely consecrated to it; I obey its will. In giving me a new pledge--a permanent pledge of its confidence, it imposes upon me the duty of basing the legal system on far-seeing institutions." A Senatus Consultum, reforming the Constitution of the year VIII., substituted for the lists of notables, the formation of Cantonal Colleges, Colleges of Arrondissements, and Colleges of Departments, the members of which, few in number, and appointed for life by the cantonal assemblies, were to nominate candidates for selection by the executive authority. The Tribunate was limited to fifty members; the Council of State saw its importance diminished by the formation of a Privy Council. The number of senators was fixed at eighty, but the First Consul was left at liberty to add forty members at his pleasure. This assurance of the docility of the Assembly was not sufficient. The Senate was invested with the right of interpreting the constitution, of suspending it when necessary, or of dissolving the Tribunate and the Corps Législatif; but it might not adopt any measure without the initiative of the government. The First Consul reserved for himself the right of pardon and the duty of naming his successor. This last clause was forced on him by reasons of State policy, but he deferred it for a long time. His mind could only be satisfied with the principle of hereditary succession, and he had no children. Madame Bonaparte feared a divorce, the principle of which had been maintained by the First Consul in the Council of State with remarkable earnestness. The choice of a successor remained an open question, which encouraged many hopes. The brothers of the First Consul were loaded with honors; the family of the master took rank by themselves from the moment when the name they bore in common appeared with a freshness which was in part to eclipse its glory. In imitation of the Italian Consulate, the Senate proclaimed Napoleon Bonaparte Consul for life. A few prudent friends of liberty in France began to feel uneasy at this unheard-of aggrandizement of power without a curb. To the fear which France in anarchy had caused in Europe already succeeded the disquietude inspired by an absolute master, little careful of rights or engagements, led by the arbitrary instincts of his own mind, susceptible by nature or by policy, and always disposed to use his advantages imperiously. Peace was already beginning to be irksome to him; he cherished hopes of new conquests; his temper became every day more exacting, and the feebleness of the English minister furnished him with occasions of quarrel. A stranger to the liberal spirit of the English constitution, a systematic enemy to the freedom of the press, Bonaparte required from Addington and Lord Hawkesbury that they should expel from England the revolutionary libellers, whose daily insults in the journals irritated him, and the emigrant Chouans, whose criminal enterprises he dreaded. To the demands of the French minister at London was added the official violence of the _Moniteur_, edited and inspired by Barère. "What result," said the journal of the First Consul, "what result can the English Government expect by fomenting the troubles of the Church, by harboring, and re-vomiting on our territory, the scoundrels of the Côtes-du-Nord and Morbihan, covered with the blood of the most important and richest proprietors of those unfortunate departments? Does it not know that the French Government is now more firmly established than the English Government? Does it imagine that for the French Government reciprocity will be difficult? What might be the effect of an exchange of such insults--of this protection and this encouragement accorded to assassins?" The irritation was real, and its manifestations sincere; but they cloaked more serious incentives to anger, and pretensions fatal to the repose of Europe. For a long time the First Consul had repelled with scorn any intervention of England in the affairs of the new States he had created, and which the English Government had constantly refused to recognize. The complaints of Lord Hawkesbury on the subject of the French mediation in Switzerland provoked an explosion of anger and threats. "Whatever may be said or not said," wrote Talleyrand to Otto, "the resolution of the First Consul is irrevocable. He will not have Switzerland converted into a new Jersey. You will never speak of war, but you will not suffer any one to speak to you of it. With what war could they threaten us? With a naval war? But our commerce has only just started afresh, and the prey that we should afford the English would be scarcely worth while. Our West Indies are supplied with acclimatized soldiers! St. Domingo alone contains 25,000 of them. They might blockade our ports, it is true; but at the very moment of the declaration of war England would find herself blockaded in turn. The territory of Hanover, of Holland, of Portugal, of Italy, down to Tarento, would be occupied by our troops. The countries we are accused of domineering over too openly--Liguria, Lombardy, Switzerland, Holland-- instead of being left in this uncertain situation, from which we sustain a thousand embarrassments, would be converted into French provinces, from which we should draw immense resources; and we should be compelled to realize that empire of the Gauls which is ceaselessly held up as a terror to Europe. And what would happen if the First Consul, quitting Paris for Lille or St. Omer, collecting all the flat-bottomed vessels of Flanders and Holland, and preparing the means of transport for 100,000 men, should plunge England into the agonies of an invasion--always possible, almost certain? Would England stir up a continental war? But where would she find her allies? In any case, if the war on the continent were to be renewed, it would be England who would compel us to conquer Europe. The First Consul is only thirty-three years old; he has as yet only destroyed States of the second rank. Who knows but that he might have time enough yet (if forced to attempt it) to change the face of Europe, and resuscitate the Empire of the West?" The violence of these words went beyond the thought of the First Consul; he had not yet firmly made up his mind for the recommencement of hostilities. France submissive, Europe silent and resigned, accepting without a murmur the encroachments of his ambition--such were for him the conditions of peace; England could not accept them. With Piedmont and the island of Elba annexed to France, Holland and Switzerland subdued, and the Duchy of Parma occupied, England had eluded the agreements relative to the island of Malta. Profiting by the difficulties which opposed themselves to the reconstitution of the order of things guaranteed by the great powers, she had detained in her hands this pledge of empire in the Mediterranean. It was the object of continual complaints from the First Consul, and the pretext for his outburst of anger. "The whole Treaty of Amiens, and nothing but the Treaty of Amiens," Otto kept constantly repeating to Lord Hawkesbury. The minister of foreign affairs responded by a declaration equally peremptory: "The condition of the continent at the time of the Treaty of Amiens, and nothing but that condition." The mutual understandings and reticences which had enabled a truce to be arranged, little by little disappeared. The truth began to come to light. A mission of General Sébastiani to Egypt resulted in awakening general uneasiness. The report of the First Consul's envoy was textually published in the _Moniteur_; it enumerated the forces at the disposal of England and Turkey in the East, and in conclusion expressed its opinion that "6000 Frenchmen would now be sufficient to reconquer Egypt." This was, perhaps, saying more than Napoleon Bonaparte had resolved upon; and the ambassador's desire to please had responded to the remote and vague desires of the master. England was much disturbed at it, and yet more so at the haughty declarations of the First Consul in a statement of the condition of the republic. "In England," said he, "two parties contend for power. One has concluded peace and appears resolved on its maintenance; the other has sworn implacable hatred to France. Whilst this strife of parties lasts, there are measures which prudence dictates to the government. Five hundred thousand men ought to be, and shall be, ready to defend and to avenge her. Whatever be the success of her intrigues, England will not be able to draw other nations into new leagues, and the government declares with just pride that England alone could not now contend with France." The spirited indignation of the English people prevailed over the moderation and weakness of the government. George III., in a message to his Parliament, said, "In view of the military preparations which are being made in the ports of France and Holland, the king has believed it to be his duty to adopt new measures of precaution for the security of his States. These preparations are, it is true, officially intended for colonial expeditions; however, as there exists important differences of sentiment between his Majesty and the French Government, his Majesty has felt it necessary to address his Parliament, counting on its concurrence in order to assure all the measures which the honor and interests of the English people require." The public voice demanded the return to power of Pitt. "It is an astonishing and sorrowful fact," said his old adversary, Sir Philip Francis, "that in a moment like this all the eminent men of England are excluded from its government and its councils. For calm weather an ordinary amount of ability in the pilot might suffice; the storm which is now brewing calls for men of greater experience. If the vessel founders, we shall all perish with her." The ambassador from England had just arrived at Paris. Lord Whitworth was a man of resolute and simple character, without either taste or ability for the complicated manoeuvres of diplomacy; he was well received by the First Consul, and conversation soon began. "He reproaches us above all with not having evacuated Egypt and Malta," wrote the ambassador to Lord Hawkesbury. "'Nothing will make me accept that,' he said to me. 'Of the two, I would sooner see you master of the Faubourg St. Antoine than of Malta. My irritation against England is constantly increasing. Every wind that blows from England bears to me the evidence of its hatred and ill- will. If I wanted to take back Egypt by force, I could have had it a month ago, by sending 25,000 men to Aboukir; but I should lose there more than I should gain. Sooner or later Egypt must belong to France, either by the fall of the Ottoman Empire, or by some arrangement concluded with it. What advantage should I derive from making war? I can only attack you by means of a descent upon your coasts. I have resolved upon it, and shall be myself the leader. I know well that there are a hundred chances to one against me; but I shall attempt it if I am forced to it; and I assure you that such is the feeling of the troops, that army after army will be ready to rush forward to the danger. If France and England understand each other, the one, with its army of 480,000 men which is now being got in readings, and the other with the fleet which has rendered it mistress of the seas, and which I should not be able to equal in less than ten years-- they might govern the world; by their hostility they will ruin it. Nothing has been able to overcome the enmity of the English Government. Now we have arrived at this point: Do you want peace or war? It is upon Malta that the issue depends.'" Lord Whitworth attempted in vain a few protestations. "I suppose you want to speak about Piedmont and Switzerland? These are bagatelles! That ought to have been foreseen during the negotiations; you have no right to complain at this time of day." The warlike ardour of the Parliament and the English nation was the answer to the hostile declaration of the First Consul. He had counted upon a more confirmed desire for peace, and upon the disquietude his threats would produce. He attempted once more the effect produced by one of those outbursts of violence to which he was subject, and of which he was accustomed to make use. The message of George III. to Parliament was known to the First Consul when, on Sunday, March 13, 1803, the ambassador of England presented himself at the Tuileries. Bonaparte was still in the apartment of his wife; when Lord Whitworth was announced, he entered immediately into the salon. The crowd was large; the entire corps diplomatique was present. The First Consul, advancing towards Lord Whitworth, said, "You have news from London;" then, without leaving the ambassador time to answer: "So you wish for war!" "No," replied Lord Whitworth; "we know too well the advantages of peace." "We have already made war for ten years; you wish to make it for another fifteen years; you force it upon me." He strode with long steps before the amazed circle of diplomats. "The English wish for war," said he, drawing himself up before the ambassadors of Russia and Spain-- Markoff and Azara; "but if they are the first to draw the sword, I will not be the last to put it back in the scabbard. They will not evacuate Malta. Since there is no respect for treaties, it is necessary to cover them over with a black pall!" The First Consul returned to Lord Whitworth, who remained motionless in his place. "How is it they have dared to say that France is arming? I have not a single vessel of the line in our ports! You want to fight; I will fight also. France may be killed, my lord; but intimidated, never!" "We desire neither the one nor the other," replied the ambassador; "we only aspire to live on a good understanding with her." "Then treaties must be respected," cried Bonaparte. "Woe to those who don't respect treaties." He went away his eyes sparkling, his countenance full of wrath--when he stopped for a moment; the sentiment of decorum had again taken possession of his mind. "I hope," said he to Lord Whitworth, "that the Duchess of Dorset [Footnote: Wife of Lord Whitworth.] is well, and that after having passed a bad season in Paris, she will be able to pass a good one there." Then suddenly, and as if his former anger again seized him: "That depends upon England. If things so fall out that we have to make war, the responsibility, in the eyes of God and man, will rest entirely upon those who deny their own signature, and refuse to execute treaties." It was one of Bonaparte's habits to calm himself suddenly after an outburst of violence. A few days were passed by Talleyrand and Lord Whitworth in sincere efforts to plan pacific expedients; the ambassador had received from the English Cabinet its ultimatum: "1. The cession of the isle of Lampedusa. 2. The occupation of Malta for ten years. 3. The evacuation of the Batavian Republic and Switzerland. 4. An indemnity for the King of Sardinia. On these conditions England would recognize the Kingdom of Etruria and the Cisalpine Republic." The warmth of public opinion in England had obliged the minister to take up a fixed attitude; the consequences could not be doubtful. In vain Lord Whitworth retarded to the utmost limits of his power the departure for which he had received orders. The advances of Talleyrand and the concessions of the First Consul did not seriously touch the essence of the questions in dispute. The decision of Napoleon remained the same: "I will not let them have two Gibraltars in the Mediterranean, one at the entrance and another in the middle." The ambassador quitted Paris on the 12th of May, journeying by short stages, as if still to avert the inevitable rupture between the two nations; at the same time General Andréossy, accredited at the court of George III., quitted London. The two ambassadors separated on the 17th of May at Dover, sorrowful and grave, as men who had striven to avert indescribable sorrows and struggles from their country and the world. It was the harsh and barbarous custom of the English navy to fall upon the merchant vessels of an enemy's country immediately peace was broken. Two French ships of commerce were thus captured on the day following the departure of General Andréossy for Paris. The First Consul replied to this act of hostility by causing to be arrested, and soon afterwards interned at various places in his territory, all the English sojourning or travelling in France. Some had recently received from Talleyrand the most formal assurances of their safety. "Many English addressed themselves to me," said Napoleon in his "Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène;" "I constantly referred them to their government. On it alone their lot depended." England did not claim its citizens, it resolutely persisted in leaving upon its author the full weight of this odious act, disapproved by his most faithful adherents. No Frenchmen were annoyed on English soil. Europe was agitated and disquieted, still entrenched in its neutrality, more or less malevolent, and terrified at the consequences it foresaw from the renewal of the strife between France and England. "If General Bonaparte does not accomplish the miracle that he is preparing at this moment," said the Emperor of Germany, Francis II., "if he does not pass the straits, he will throw himself upon us, and will fight England in Germany." "You inspire too much fear in all the world, for it to dream now of fearing England," cried Philippe de Cobentzel, ambassador of Austria at Paris. It was upon this universal fear that the First Consul had counted. Already his troops had invaded Hanover, without England thinking it possible to defend the patrimonial domains of its sovereign. The Hanoverian army did not attempt to resist: Marshal de Walmoden concluded with General Mortier at Suhlingen a convention which permitted the former to retire beyond the Elbe with arms and baggage, on condition of not serving against France in the present war. These resolutions not having been ratified by George III., the Hanoverian army was disbanded after laying down its arms; 30,000 Frenchmen continued to occupy Hanover. The uneasiness of Germany continued to increase. The Emperor of Russia offered himself as mediator; the King of Prussia offered to arrange for the neutrality of the north; but the First Consul remained deaf to these advances. He sent Gouvion de Saint Cyr into the gulf of Tarento, formerly evacuated after the peace of Amiens. The forces intended for this expedition were to live at the expense of the kingdom of Naples. "I will no more suffer the English in Italy than in Spain or Portugal," he had said to Queen Caroline. "At the first act of complicity with England, war will give me redress for your enmity." The attitude of Spain was doubtful, and its language little satisfactory. By the threat of invasion by Augereau, whose forces were already collected at Bayonne, the First Consul acted on the disgraceful terrors of the Prince de la Paix; he only exacted money from his powerless ally. As he now found it impossible to occupy Louisiana, Bonaparte conceived the idea of ceding it to the United States for a sum of 80,000,000 francs, which the Americans hastened to pay. Holland was to furnish troops and vessels, Etruria and Switzerland soldiers. It was upon a maritime enterprise that the efforts and thoughts of the First Consul were at this moment entirely concentrated. The attempt at an invasion of England which the Directory had formerly wished to impose on him, and which he had rejected with scorn on the eve of the campaign in Egypt, had become the object of his most serious hopes. To throw 150,000 men into England on a calm day by means of a flotilla of flat-bottomed boats, which should be rowed across whilst the great vessels of the English navy would be immovable through the absence of wind--such was the primitive conception of the enterprise. Bonaparte prepared for it with that persevering activity, and that marvellous pre-arrangement of details with a view to the entire plan, which he knew how constantly to carry out in administration as in war. To the original project of the Directory he had added more masterly combinations, which still remained secret. A squadron was preparing at Brest, under the orders of Admiral Ganteaume; the Dutch vessels, commanded by Admiral Verhuell, were collected at Texel; Admiral Latouche-Tréville, clever and daring, was to direct the squadron of Toulon destined for a decisive manoeuvre. Admiral Brueix was entrusted with the conduct of the flotilla of the Channel; everywhere boats had been requisitioned, gun-boats and pinnaces were in course of construction; the departments, the cities, the corporate bodies, offered gifts of vessels or maritime provisions; the forests of the departments of the north fell under the axe. Camps had been formed at Boulogne, at ?taples, at St. Omer; fortifications rose along the coast; the First Consul undertook a journey through the Flemish and Belgian departments, accompanied by Madame Bonaparte and all the splendor of a royal household. The presence of the Legate in the _cortège_ was to impress with respect and confidence the minds of the devout populations of the north. The first point at which Napoleon Bonaparte stayed his progress was at Boulogne; he pressed forward the works, commenced, and ordered new ones. On his return from the triumphal march to Brussels and back, he resumed himself the direction of his great enterprise. Established in the little chateau of Pont de Briques at the gate of Boulogne, he hastened over to St. Cloud, and returned, with a rapidity which knew no fatigue. Without cessation, on the shore, in the workshops, in the camps, he animated the sailors, the workmen, and the soldiers with the indomitable activity of his soul. The minister of marine, Decrès, clever, penetrating, with a nature gloomy and mournful, suggested all the difficulties of the expedition, and yielded to the imperial will that dominated all France. Admiral Brueix, already ill, and soon afterwards dying, was installed in a little house which overlooked the sea, witnessing the frequent experiments tried on the new vessels, sometimes even the little encounter that took place with the English ships. The First Consul braved all inclemencies of weather; he was eager "to play his great game." "I received your letter of the 18th Brumaire," wrote he to Cambacérès. "The sea continues to be very bad, and the rain to fall in torrents. Yesterday I was on horseback or in a boat all day. That is the same thing as telling you I was continually wet. At this season nothing can be accomplished without braving the water. Fortunately for my purpose, it suits me perfectly, and I was never better in health." Already the night expeditions, intended to exercise the sailors and inure the soldiers, had commenced; the ardor of the chief spread to the army. On the 7th of January, 1804, the minister of marine wrote from Boulogne to the First Consul: "In the flotilla they are beginning to believe firmly that the departure will be more immediate than is generally supposed, and they have promised to prepare seriously for it. They shake off all thoughts of danger, and each man sees only C?sar and his fortunes. The ideas of all the subalterns do not pass the limits of the roadstead and its currents. They argue about the wind, and the anchorage, and the line of bearing. As for the crossing, that is your affair. You know more about it than they do, and your eyes are worth more than their telescopes. They have implicit faith in everything that you do. The admiral himself is in just the same condition. He has never presented you any plan, because in fact he has none. Besides, you have not yet asked him for it; it will be the moment of execution which will decide him. Very possibly he will be obliged to sacrifice a hundred vessels to draw down the enemy upon them, whilst the rest, setting out at the moment of the defeat of the others, will go across without hindrance." The First Consul, ceasingly watching the sea which protected his enemies, wrote to Cambacérès on November 16th: "I have passed these three days in the midst of the camp and the port. I have seen from the heights of Ambleteuse the coasts of England, as one sees the Calvaire from the Tuileries. You can distinguish the houses, and the movements going on. It is a ditch, which shall be crossed as soon as we shall have the audacity to attempt it." So many preparations, pushed forward with such ardor, disquieted England. The most illustrious of her naval officers--Nelson, Lord Cornwallis, and Lord Keith--were ordered to blockade the French ports, and hinder the return of distant squadrons. Everywhere corps of volunteers were formed, and actively exercised on the coasts. Men of considerable note in the political or legal world--Pitt and Addington, as well as the great lords and the great judges--clothed themselves in uniform, and commanded regiments. Pitt proposed to fortify London. Insurrectionary movements were being fomented in Ireland; the French squadron at Brest was destined to aid them. In the midst of this warlike and patriotic agitation, it was only natural that the excitement should gain a party, naturally restless and credulous. The French emigrants could not but feel a desire for action, in the hope of taking an active part in the general struggle waged against the enemy who kept them far from their country by the very fact of his existence and his power. The First Consul had offered an amnesty to all the emigrants, restored their property to some, and attracted a certain number of them round his own person; he had recalled the priests, and re-established the Catholic religion; but he had repelled the advances of the House of Bourbon. His hostility to the restoration of the monarchy had always been flagrant; the throne might be re-erected, but it should be for his own profit. He alone was the obstacle to the hopes cherished by the exiled princes and their friends, in presence of the re-establishment of order and the public prosperity. Delivered from his yoke, that pressed heavily upon her, France would salute with enthusiasm the return of her legitimate sovereign. It was in England even, and amongst the circle that surrounded the Count d'Artois, that expression was given to these hopes and ignorant illusions as to the true state of men's minds in France. The Princes of the House of Condé, recently enrolled with their little army in the service of England, held themselves ready to fight, without conspiring. Louis XVIII. lived in Germany, withdrawn from the centre of warlike preparations; he was cold, sensible, and prudent; he thought little of plots, and had a healthier judgment than his brother as to the chances which might restore his fortune. The actual resources, the noisy agents of the emigration, were collected in England: there were found the chiefs of the Chouans, with Georges Cadoudal at their head; there dwelt the generals who had had the misfortune to abandon their country or betray their honor--Willot, Dumouriez, Pichegru; there were hatched chimerical projects, impressed from the first with the fatal errors and the terrible ignorance which doom to inevitable sterility the hopes and the efforts of exiles. By his counsels, or his orders, Georges Cadoudal had taken part in the plot which had been discovered in 1801. After the failure of the infernal machine of St. Réjant he had felt regret, and some repugnance, for such proceedings. He proposed to go to Paris, with twenty or twenty-five resolute men, to attack the guard of the First Consul while he passed along the street, and strike him in the midst of his defenders. In order to profit by this bold stroke intrigues were to be carried on beforehand with discontented generals, who might be able to dispose the forces necessary for the sudden overthrow of the consular government. Bonaparte dead, the Count d'Artois and his son the Duc de Berry, secretly brought into France, would rally their friends round them, and proclaim the restoration of the House of Bourbon. Two principal actors were indispensable to the execution of the project; Georges at Paris, unknown to the prying police of the First Consul; and General Moreau, favorable to the fall of Bonaparte, if not to his assassination. A nearly complete rupture had succeeded to the professed regard which for a long time covered the secret jealousy of the First Consul with respect to his glorious companion-in-arms. At the summit of his power and glory, Napoleon Bonaparte was never exempt from a recollection of rivalry with regard to the former chiefs of the republican army, his old rivals, and who had not bowed before the prestige of his recognized superiority. He liked neither Kléber, nor Masséna, nor Gouvion St. Cyr. As regards Moreau, he experienced a concealed uneasiness; it was the only military name that had been mentioned as that of a possible successor to himself. Wounded susceptibilities, and the quarrels of women, had aggravated a situation naturally delicate and strained. Moreau was spirited as well as modest; he felt himself injured; he dwelt in the country, living in grand style, sought after by the discontented, and speaking of Bonaparte without much reserve. The emigrant conspirators believed that circumstances were favorable for engaging him in their plans. General Pichegru had formerly been his friend. Moreau had long concealed the proofs of the former treason; perhaps he regretted having given them up at the moment of his comrade's just disgrace: he was known to be favorable to the return of Pichegru to France. It was in the name of Pichegru, and for his interests, that Moreau was to be approached. The first agent sent to Moreau was soon arrested; he has said in his "Mémoires," "Moreau would have nothing to do with conspiracy, and said, 'he must cease to waste men and things.'" Other emissaries had no better success. An active intriguer, General Lajolais, an old friend of Pichegru, meanwhile left Paris for London; he repeated the bitter words of Moreau respecting the First Consul--words which created illusions and hopes. On the 21st August, 1803, Georges landed at the cliff of Biville, crossing the rocks by the footpaths of smugglers. The police had for some time been on the traces of the conspiracy: they were, perhaps, actively concerned in it. A few Chouans, obscure companions of Cadoudal, were arrested and put in prison, without their trial being proceeded with; their chief succeeded in reaching Paris safely, where he hid himself. Two successive arrivals completed the band of conspirators; on January 16th, 1804, General Pichegru, the Marquis de la Rivière, Jules and Armand de Polignac, landed in France. On the same day, and by a coincidence which suggests the idea of a certain knowledge of the situation, the First Consul said in his statement as to the condition of the republic,-- "The British Government will attempt to cast, and has perhaps already cast upon our shores, a few of those monsters which it has nourished during the peace, in order to injure the land which gave them birth. But they will no longer find the impious bands who were the instruments of their first crimes; terror has dissolved them, or justice has purged our country of their presence. They will no longer find that credulity they abused, or that hatred which once sharpened their daggers. Surrounded everywhere by the public power, everywhere within the grasp of the tribunals, these horrible wretches will be able henceforth neither to make rebels, nor to resume with impunity their profession as brigands and assassins." The conspirators succeeded in assuring themselves that, contrary to the hopes of some English diplomatists, an insurrection was no longer possible in Vendée or Brittany. Already a certain amount of discouragement was influencing their minds as to the success of their perilous enterprise. At their first interview, by night, on the Boulevard of La Madeleine, Moreau showed himself cold towards Pichegru. Georges, who had accompanied the latter, was dissatisfied and gloomy. "This looks bad," said he, at once. The two generals conferred. Moreau displayed no repugnance towards the overthrow of the First Consul; he would form no project of conspiracy, but he believed himself sure of becoming the master of power if Bonaparte happened to disappear; he was, and he remained, a republican. He reproached Pichegru with being mixed up with men unworthy of him. The general had more than once bitterly felt this. "You are with us (_avec nous_)," the Chouans used to say to him. "No gentlemen," cried Pichegru, one day; "I am in your company (_chez vous_)." "Poor man!" said the conqueror of Holland, on quitting the conqueror of Hohenlinden, "he also has his ambition, and wishes to have a turn at governing France: he would not be its master for twenty-four hours." Georges Cadoudal laughed scornfully; "Usurper for usurper! I love better the one who is ruling now than this Moreau, who has neither heart nor head!" The conspirators felt their danger. Their preliminary interviews had led to no result; the murmurs of discontent had not developed into serious promises, still less into effective actions. La Rivière lost hope every day; the First Consul every day became better informed as to what was going on. He had recently suppressed the ministry of police; Fouché continued, without authority, the profession which he had always practised with enthusiasm; he informed Napoleon as to the result of his researches. The latter had ardently cherished a hope of pursuing, and striking down at one blow, enemies of diverse origin, dangerous on different accounts. Amongst the Chouans arrested in the month of August, two had remained obstinately silent, and had been shot; a third was less courageous. "I have secret information which makes me believe that they only came here to assassinate me," wrote Bonaparte to Cambacérès. Querelle revealed all he knew of the plot; he named the place of disembarkation; General Savory was sent there in disguise, ordered to wait for that arrival of a prince, as had been promised to the conspirators. Already his doom was determined on in the mind of the First Consul. Fresh arrests had taken place in Paris, for a servant of Georges had given information. One of his principal officers, Bouvet de Lozier, vainly attempted to kill himself; rescued from death, he asked to see the chief judge. Régnier sent in his place Réal, the counsellor of state, more penetrating and more clever than himself. It is supposed that the latter was no stranger to the drawing up of the deposition of Bouvet, who implicated General Moreau in the gravest manner. "Here is a man who comes back from the gates of the tomb, still surrounded by the shadows of death, who demands vengeance upon those who by their perfidy have thrown him and his party into the abyss where they now find themselves. Sent to sustain the cause of the Bourbons, he finds himself compelled either to fight for Moreau, or to renounce an enterprise which was the sole object of his mission. Monsieur was to pass into France, to put himself at the head of the royalist party. Moreau promised to unite himself to the cause of the Bourbons; the royalists arrived in France, and Moreau retracts. He proposes to them to work for him, and to get him named Dictator. Hence the hesitation, the dissension, and the almost total loss of the royalist party. I know not what weight you will attach to the assertions of a man snatched an hour ago from the death to which he had devoted himself, and who sees before him the fate which an offended government has in reserve for him. But I cannot withhold the cry of despair, or refrain from attacking the man who has reduced me to this." Réal hastened to the Tuileries. The First Consul was less astonished than himself; he was acquainted with the interviews of Moreau and Pichegru. He was well aware that the opinions of Moreau were quite opposed to any thought of monarchical restoration. The general returned to Paris, after a visit to Grosbois, on the morning of the 15th of February; he was arrested on the bridge of Charenton, and taken to the Temple. Lajolais was arrested at the same time. The trial was directed to take place before the civil tribunal of the Seine. Cambacérès had proposed a military commission. "No," said the First Consul; "it would be said that I desire to disembarrass myself of Moreau, and to get him judicially assassinated by own creatures." The jury was chosen in the department of the Seine; a report upon the causes of the arrest of Moreau was sent to the Senate, the Corps Législatif, and the Tribunate. The commotion in Paris was great, and the public instinct was favorable to General Moreau. The presumed accomplices of his crime had not yet fallen into the hands of the government. People refused to believe him guilty, a traitor to the opinions of a lifetime, and mixed up in a royalist conspiracy. The attitude of the general was firm and calm. For a moment, the First Consul conceived the idea of seeing him. "I pardon Moreau," said he; "let him own everything to me, and I will forget the errors of a foolish jealousy." General Lajolais had recounted the details of the interviews of Moreau with Pichegru; the accused persisted in denying everything. "Ah, well," replied Napoleon, "since he will not open with me, it will be necessary for him to yield to justice." Anger broke forth, in spite of the efforts of the First Consul to preserve the appearance of a sorrowful justice. The brother of Moreau, was a member of the Tribunate; he had loudly pleaded in favor of the accused. "I declare," cried he, "to the assembly, to the entire nation, that my brother is innocent of the atrocious crimes that are imputed to him. Let him be given the means of justifying himself, and he will do so. I demand that he may be judged by his natural judges," The president of the Tribunate dared to style the accusation against Moreau a _denunciation_; the First Consul warmly criticised this expression. "The greatness of the services rendered by Moreau is not a sufficient motive for screening him from the rigor of the laws," cried he. "There is no government in existence where a man by reason of his past services may screen himself from the law, which ought to have the same grasp on him as on the meanest individual. What! Moreau is already guilty in the eyes of the highest powers of the State, and you will not even consider him as accused!" "Paris and France have only one sentiment, only one opinion," wrote he to Comte Melzi, vice-president of the Italian Republic. The pursuit had become rigorous. It was known that Pichegru and Georges were hidden in Paris; the gates of the city were closed, egress by the river watched by armed vessels. The Corps Législatif voted a measure condemning to death whoever should conceal the conspirators, to the number of sixty. Whoever should be cognizant of them without denouncing them, was liable to six years in irons. One night General Pichegru went to ask asylum of Barbé-Marbois, formerly intendant of St. Domingo, transported, like himself, to Sinnamari, and now become a minister of the First Consul. Barbé-Marbois did not hesitate to receive him. When he avowed it afterwards to Napoleon, the latter warmly congratulated him upon it. A few days passed by; General Pichegru, shamefully betrayed by one of his former officers, was arrested on the 28th of February, bravely resisting the agents of the police. Georges, seized in the street on the 9th of March, blew out the brains of the first gendarme who seized the bridle of his horse. La Rivière and Polignac were also in prison. Moreau had given up his system of absolute denials; at the prayer of his wife and his friends he wrote to the First Consul, simply recounting his relations with Pichegru, without asking pardon, and without denying the past transactions, seeking to disengage his cause from the Royalist conspiracy --less haughty, however, than he had till then appeared. Bonaparte had the letter affixed to the process of the trial. He appeared moved at the situation of Pichegru. "A fine end!" said he to Réal: "A fine end for the conqueror of Holland. It will not do for the men of the Revolution to devour each other. I have long had a dream about Cayenne; it is the finest country in the world for founding a colony. Pichegru has been proscribed, as he knows; ask him how many men and how much money he wants to create a great establishment; I will give them to him, and he will retrieve his glory by rendering a service to France." The general did not reject the proposition, but he persisted in his silence. "I will speak before the tribunal," said he. Before the supreme day when the trial was about to take place before human justice, Pichegru had appeared before a more august tribunal; on the morning of the 6th of April he was found dead in his bed, strangled, it was said, by his own hands. The royalist conspirators at first proudly avowed the aim of their enterprise. "What did you come to do in Paris?" asked the prefect of the police of Georges Cadoudal. "I came to attack the First Consul." "What were your means?" "I had as yet little enough; I counted on collecting them." "Of what nature were your means of attack?" "By means of living force." "Where did you count on finding this force?" "In all France." "And what was your project?" "To put a Bourbon in the place of the First Consul." "Had you many people with you?" "No, because I was not to attack the First Consul until there was a French prince in Paris, and he has not yet arrived." This was the prince for whom General Savary had been, waiting in vain for nearly a month on the cliff of Biville. The anger of the First Consul continued to increase. "The Bourbons think they can get me killed like a dog," said he. "My blood is worth more than theirs; I shall make no more of their case than of Moreau or Pichegru; the first Bourbon prince who falls into my hands, I will have shot remorselessly." The Comte d'Artois and the Duc de Berry were announced, and did not arrive. Napoleon stretched forth his arm to seize an innocent prince, whose misfortune it was to be within his reach. On the 10th of March, 1804, he wrote to General Berthier: "You will do well, citizen minister, to give orders to General Ordener, whom I place at your disposal, to repair at night, by post, to Strasburg. He will travel under another name than his own, and see the general of division. The aim of his mission is to throw himself upon Ettenheim, invest the city, and carry away from it the Duc d'Enghien, Dumouriez, an English colonel, and any other individual who may be in their suite. The general of division, the marshal of the barracks of gendarmes, who has been to reconnoitre Ettenheim, as well as the commissary of police, will give him all necessary information." The young Duc d'Enghien, son of the Duc de Bourbon, and grandson of the Prince of Condé, resided in fact at Ettenheim, in the grand duchy of Baden. Drawn at times to Strasburg, by his taste for the theatre, he was held fast in this little city by a passionate attachment for the Princess Charlotte of Rohan, who lived there. He was young and brave, and was waiting for the call from England to take part in the war. He was not implicated in the plot hatched round the Comte d'Artois, and was absolutely ignorant of it. A few emigrants--very few in numbers, and without political importance--resided near him; one of them was the Marquis de Thumery, whose name, mispronounced with a German accent, gave rise to the error which supposed the presence of Dumouriez at Ettenheim. This supposition might for a moment deceive the First Consul as to the complicity of the Duc d'Enghien; it was cleared up when, after having violated the territory of the Grand Duke of Baden (for which Talleyrand was careful to apologize), he learnt the arrival of the unfortunate prince at Strasburg; all the papers seized at Ettenheim were in his hands. The first movement of the Duc d'Enghien had been to defend himself. "Are you compromised?" asked a German officer who was at his house. "No!" replied the young man with astonishment. Resistance was useless; he surrendered. There was one single ground of accusation against him: like all the princes of his house, and thousands of emigrants, he had borne arms against France. Nearly all the nobility had been permitted again to tread the soil of their country: he alone was about to expiate the fault of all. The minister of France at Baden, Massias, felt compelled to bear witness that "the conduct of the Prince had always been innocent and guarded." A few days later the _Moniteur_ had to announce the assembling of emigrants, with a staff of officers and bureaux of officials round a prince of the House of Bourbon. Massias had beforehand given the lie to this rumor. The Duc d'Enghien was brought to Paris; detained for a few hours at the barriers, he was then conducted to the chateau of Vincennes. On the same morning the First Consul had sent this order to his brother- in-law, General Murat, whom he had just named governor of Paris: "General, in accordance with the orders of the First Consul, the Duc d'Enghien is to be conducted to the castle of Vincennes, where arrangements are made to receive him. He will probably arrive at his destination to-night. I pray you to make such arrangements as shall provide for the safety of this prisoner at Vincennes, as well as on the road from Meaux by which he comes. The First Consul has ordered that the name of this prisoner, and everything relative to him, shall be kept a profound secret. In consequence, the officer entrusted with his guard ought not to be made acquainted with the name and rank of his prisoner; he travels under the name of Plessis." Bonaparte was at Malmaison, gloomy and agitated; since the day when the order had been given to arrest the Duc d'Enghien, the intimate companions of the First Consul had no doubt as to his fatal resolution. Cambacérès had warmly insisted upon the deplorable consequences of such an act; Madame Bonaparte had cast herself at his feet, but he raised her up ill- temperedly. "You have grown very saving over the blood of the Bourbons," said he bitterly to Cambacérès. "I shall not allow myself to be killed without being able to defend myself." The fatal moment approached. Madame de Remusat, playing at chess with Napoleon, heard him repeating in a low voice the noble words of Augustus pardoning Cinna, and she believed the prince saved: he had just entered the castle of Vincennes, and already the judges were awaiting him. Murat had loudly declared his repugnance for the functions imposed on him by his brother-in-law. "He wants to stain my uniform with blood," said he with anger. He was not called to Vincennes. General Savary, devoted without reserve to the First Consul, had set out with a corps of gendarmes. Already the Duc d'Enghien, weighed down by fatigue, was asleep; he was roused up at midnight. A captain, as judge advocate, was entrusted with a first examination. He being asked his names, Christian names, age, and place of birth, in reply said "he was named Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon, Duc d'Enghien, born at Chantilly, the 2nd of August, 1772." Being asked at what time he quitted France, in reply he said, "I cannot say precisely, but I think it was on the 16th July, 1789, that I set out with the Prince de Condé my grandfather, my father the Comte d'Artois, and the children of the Comte d'Artois." Being asked where he had resided since leaving France, in reply he said, "On leaving France I passed with my parents, whom I always accompanied, by Mons and Brussels; thence we returned to Turin, to the palace of the king, where we remained nearly sixteen months. Thence, always with my parents, I went to Worms and the neighborhood, upon the banks of the Rhine. Lastly the Condé corps was formed, and I was with it throughout the war. I had before that made the campaign of 1792, in Brabant, with the Bourbon corps, in the army of Duke Albert. We terminated the last campaign in the environs of Gr?tz, and I asked permission of the Cardinal de Rohan to go into his country, to Ettenheim, in Brisgau, the former bishopric of Strasburg. For two years and a half I remained in this country, with the permission of the Elector of Baden." Being asked if he had ever passed into England, and if that power had always accorded him a grant of money, in reply he said he had never been there; that England always accorded him a grant of money, and that he had only that to live upon. Being asked if he kept up correspondence with the French princes in London, and if he had seen them for some time, he said that naturally he kept up a correspondence with his grandfather, and that equally naturally he corresponded with his father, whom he had not seen, so far as he could recollect, since 1794 or 1795. Being asked if he knew General Pichegru, and if he had any relations with him, he said, "I believe I have never seen him; I have had no relations with him. I know that he has desired to see me. I am thankful not to have known him, after the vile means of which it is said he has desired to make use, if it is true." Being asked if he knew the ex-general Dumouriez, and if he had had relations with him, he said, "On the contrary, I have never seen him." Being asked if, since the peace, he had not kept up correspondence with the interior of the republic, he said, "I have written to a few friends who are still attached to me, who have been my companions in war, about their affairs and my own; these correspondences are not, I think, those to which it is intended to refer." Upon the minute of the examination, beneath his signature, the Duc d'Enghien wrote, "I earnestly entreat to have a private audience with the First Consul. My name, my rank, my way of thinking, and the horror of my situation, make me hope that he will not refuse me my request." The request was foreseen, and the answer, according to instructions given, that under no pretext would the First Consul be willing to receive the Duc d'Enghien. At two o'clock in the morning the military commission was assembled, presided over by General Hullin, formerly life-guard of Louis XVI., and one of the insurgent leaders before the Bastille. The same questions were addressed to the prince, more briefly--less explicitly, as if the time was short, and the enemy threatening. Sometimes the president interfered with an appearance of rude benevolence. General Savary did not speak. When the examination was finished he rose up. "Now this is my concern," said he. The judges deliberated a moment. The sentence, signed in blank, was already in their hands. The Governor of Vincennes, Harel, appeared at the gate carrying a light. He had formerly delivered to Bonaparte the conspirators of the plot of Aréna and Topino-Lebrun; to-day he preceded in the sombre corridors the prisoner, escorted by a piquet of troops. The prince did not pale; he reiterated his request for an audience, which was harshly denied. Already the grave was dug in the ditch of the chateau; a detachment of gendarmes waited for the condemned. The Duke stopped. "Comrades," said he loudly, "there is without doubt among you a man of honor who will charge himself with receiving and transmitting my last thoughts." And as a young officer stepped out of the ranks, "Has any one here a pair of scissors?" asked the Prince. He cut a lock of his hair, and joining it in the form of a ring, he pronounced in low tones the name of the person for whom he intended this souvenir; then pushing back with his hands the bandage with which they wished to cover his eyes, he made one step towards the soldiers: they fired, and he was dead. General Savary went to tell his master that he was obeyed. Shakespeare has depicted remorse with that terrible truthfulness which carries home to our minds the horror of crime. Lady Macbeth passes before us haunted by a vision, and ceaselessly washing her blood-stained hands. During all his life, even in his exile, Napoleon vainly sought to wash off the innocent and illustrious blood which he caused to flow in the fosse of Vincennes on the 20th of March, 1804. The men whom he had employed as the instruments of his heinous crime struggled like himself under this terrible responsibility. In vain has Bonaparte reproached Talleyrand with having perfidiously urged him on in the fatal path; in vain has Réal affirmed that an order reached his house during the night assuring to the prisoner a new examination, unfortunately forestalled by his death. All explanations, and all accusations have failed before the severe justice of history and the infallible instinct of the public conscience. The odious burden of a cowardly assassination was constantly weighing upon him who had ordered it. The blood of his victim created round him an abyss that all the efforts of supreme power could never succeed in filling up. When the news spread in Paris, on March 21st, it was received with stupor; people wept, even at Malmaison. Caulaincourt, previously entrusted with the explanatory letter for the Elector of Baden, complained bitterly of the stain upon his honor. Fourcroy was sent to dissolve the Corps Législatif; Fontanes, who presided over the assembly, replied to the counsellor of state without making allusion to the catastrophe, the intelligence of which the latter had mixed up with matters of business. His speech was modified in the _Moniteur_. Fontanes had the courage to protest against the approbation which had been attributed to him. The same journal contained the judgment of the military commission which had condemned the Duc d'Enghien; like the speech of Fontanes, the wording had been altered. Alone amongst the public functionaries of every rank or origin, young Chateaubriand, minister of France to the republic of Valais, felt himself constrained to give in his resignation. Louis XVIII. sent back the collar of the Golden Fleece to the King of Spain, who remained the ally of Napoleon. The courts of Russia and Sweden put on mourning for the Duc d'Enghien. Thus was preparing in Europe, under the impulse of public opinion, the third coalition, which was to unite all the sovereigns against France. Alone till then, England had hatched against us the plots in which its diplomatic agents were found compromised; but the denunciations of the First Consul against Spencer and Drake vanish, and lose all importance in presence of the crime committed at Vincennes. Prussia, long and obstinately faithful to its policy of neutrality, and recently disposed to draw nearer to us, began to incline towards Russia, with whom she soon concluded an alliance. Austria evinced neither regret nor anger, but the action of the German powers was silently influencing her. The First Consul broke out against the Emperor Alexander, violently hurling a gross insult at him. "When England meditated the assassination of Paul I., if it had been known that the authors of the plot could be found at a place on the frontiers, would not you have been inclined to have them seized?" General Hédouville, ambassador of France at St. Petersburg, received the order to set out in forty-eight hours. "Know for your direction," said he to the chargé d'affaires, "that the First Consul does not wish for war, but he does not fear it with anybody." In presence of this general perturbation of Europe, of the loud indignation of some and the dull uneasiness of others--in order to respond to the denunciations of the royalists, who understood the fatal consequences of the blow that Bonaparte had dealt to his own glory, the First Consul resolved to take at length the last step which separated him from supreme greatness. A year before he had been appointed Consul for life of the French Republic: the murderer of a prince of the house of Bourbon, he raised again on his own account the overturned throne. Still without children, he founded in his person an hereditary monarchy, assured of finding in the nation the assent of admiration as of lassitude and fear. Eight days had scarcely passed since the execution of the Duc d'Enghien; the brothers of the First Consul were absent and discontented. Cambacérès was opposed to the projects which he had divined in the mind of Napoleon Bonaparte. In his place, Fouché, always eager to serve the man whose favor he courted, cleverly prepared the minds of the Senate. No equivocation was possible as to the desires of Napoleon. On March 27th the first assembly of the state addressed to the supreme chief this humble request: "You found a new era," said the Senate, "but you ought to make it eternal. Splendor is nothing without duration. You are harassed by circumstances, by conspirators, by the ambitious. You are also in another sense harassed by the uneasiness which agitates all Frenchmen. You can conquer the times, master circumstances, put a curb on conspirators, disarm the ambitious, tranquillize all France, by giving it institutions which shall cement your edifice, and prolong for the children what you have done for the fathers. In town and country if you could interrogate all Frenchmen one after another, no one would speak otherwise than we. Great Man, complete your work by rendering it as immortal as your glory; you have drawn us forth from the chaos of the past, you make us blessed in the benefits of the present--make us sure of the future." The clever manoeuvre of Fouché gave Napoleon the opportunity of declaring himself; he wished to be invited to speak. His answer was not, and could not, be ready; he asked of the Senate time to reflect. Meanwhile he set himself to sound the courts of Europe. On the morrow of the insult he had offered to all the sovereigns by the murder of the Duc d'Enghien, their good-will was doubtful: the earnest adhesion of Prussia and Austria astonished and satisfied him; he was at war with England, embroiled with Russia; the rest of Europe seemed to be at his feet. Clever at managing those of whom he had need, he wished to assure himself of the disposition of the army still agitated by the arrest of Moreau. He wrote to General Soult, who commanded the camp of Saint Omer: "Citizen General Soult, I have received your letter. The Councils-General of the departments, the Electoral Colleges, and all the great bodies of the State, ask that an end should be at last put to the hopes of the Bourbons, by placing the republic in safety from the shocks of elections and the uncertainty of the life of a single man. But up to this moment I have decided upon nothing; meanwhile I desire that you should instruct me in great detail as to the opinion of the army on a measure of this nature. You perceive that I would not be drawn into it except with the sole object of the nation's interest, for the French people have made me so great and so powerful that I can desire nothing more." The malcontents in the army were silent; the ambitious, the courtiers, the faithful and devoted servants of the great general, brought him the protestation of their devotion; the addresses from the departments succeeded each other in great numbers. On April 25 the First Consul sent a message to the Senate: "Your address of the 6th Germinal has not ceased to be present to my thoughts," said he. "You have judged the hereditary succession of the chief magistrate to be necessary to shelter the French people from the plots of our enemies, and the agitation born of rival ambitions. Many of our institutions have at the same time appeared to you to require to be improved in order to assure without reversal the triumph of equality and public liberty, and to offer to the government and the nation the double guarantee of which they have need. In proportion as I have fixed my attention on these great objects, I have perceived more and more that, under circumstances as novel as they are important, the counsels of your wisdom and of your experience are necessary to me in order to fix all my ideas. I invite you then to let me become completely acquainted with all your thoughts. I desire that on the 14th July this year we shall be able to say to the French people: Fifteen years ago, by a spontaneous movement, you rushed to arms; you required liberty, equality, and glory. To-day, this best of all national wealth, assured to you without fear of reversal, is protected from all tempests. Institutions conceived and commenced in the midst of the storms of internal and external war, developed with constancy, have been brought to their climax amidst the noise of the efforts and plots of our mortal enemies, by the adoption of all that the experience of ages and of peoples has demonstrated as fit to guarantee the laws which the nation has judged necessary for its dignity, its liberty, and its honor." On the day following the 14th of July, 1789, the Duc de Rochefoucauld said, with prophetic sadness, "It is very difficult to enter into true liberty by such a gate." General Bonaparte was destined to confirm this solemn truth, so often and so sorrowfully misunderstood by our country. France, exhausted and disgusted by the enthusiasms of demagogy and the bloody tyranny of the Terror, had been tossed by shock after shock into the arms of the conqueror who promised her order and energy in government; she had forgotten for a time those great and salutary conquests of the liberty which she unreservedly yielded up at his feet. By a tardy return towards the convictions of the past, Carnot alone raised his voice in the Tribunate to recall the Republic, abandoned by all, in the name of that liberty which he wrongly attributed to it. "Was liberty then always to be shown to man without his being able to enjoy it? Was it ceaselessly offered for his desires, like a fruit to which he could not stretch forth his hand without being in danger of death? No! I cannot consent to regard this gift, so universally preferable to all others, without which the others are nothing, as a simple illusion. My heart tells me that liberty is possible, that its rule is easy and more stable than any arbitrary or oligarchic government. You say that Bonaparte has effected the salvation of his country, that he has restored public liberty; is it then a recompense to offer up to him this same liberty as a sacrifice?" On the 3rd of May, on the proposal of Curée and the report of Jard- Panvillier, the Tribunate sent to the Senate a proposal to the effect: "Firstly, that Napoleon Bonaparte, at present Consul for life, be appointed Emperor, and in this capacity entrusted with the government of the French Republic. Secondly, that the title of Emperor and the imperial power be hereditary in his family, from male to male, in order of primogeniture. Thirdly and lastly, that in deciding as regards the organization of the constituted authorities upon the modifications required by the establishment of hereditary power--equality, liberty, and the rights of the people, be preserved in their integrity." The Senate was resolved not to lose the fruits of its initiative; the project of the senatus-consultum was ready, and was immediately carried to the First Consul, accompanied by the views of all the great bodies of the State. When it returned to the Senate, amended and modified by the will of the supreme chief, the authority which the senators had sought to arrogate to themselves had been taken away. "The senators, if they were allowed to do it, would go on to absorb the Corps Législatif, and, who knows? perhaps even to restore the Bourbons," said the First Consul to the Council of State. "They wish at once to legislate, to judge, and to govern. Such a union of powers would be monstrous; I shall not suffer it!" The Tribunate ceased to exist as an assembly, and could no longer discuss except in sections; the Corps Législatif were permitted to debate in secret committees only. A High Court was to be constituted, to judge the crimes of personages too important for the jurisdictions of ordinary tribunals. In order to satisfy the vanity of Joseph and Louis Bonaparte, alone entitled to the succession of the empire, two officers were borrowed from the constitution devised by Sieyès, and from mediaeval history; the one became Grand Elector, and the other Constable. Sagacious and docile counsellor of the First Consul in their apparent equality, Cambacérès was appointed arch-chancellor of the empire, and Lebrun became arch-treasurer. Four honorary marshals [Footnote: Kellermann, Pérignon, Lefèvre, Sérurier.] and fourteen active marshals [Footnote: Murat, Berthier, Masséna, Lannes, Soult, Brune, Ney, Augereau, Moncey, Mortier, Davout, Jourdan, Bernadotte, Bessières.] were grouped around the restored throne. Alone and beforehand the Senate decided upon the destinies of France, arrogantly called upon to ratify decisions over which it exercised no authority; on May 19th, 1804, at the close of the sitting, all the senators went together to St. Cloud, and by the voice of Cambacérès prayed his _Imperial Majesty_ that the organic arrangements might come into force immediately. "For the glory, as for the happiness of the country, we proclaim at this very moment Napoleon Bonaparte Emperor of the French." Those present cried, "Long live the Emperor!" Only the sanction of the law of hereditary succession was submitted to the popular vote. By the force of his genius as much as by the splendor of his military glory, Napoleon had conquered France more completely than Italy or Egypt.