The Modern Regime Volume I Part 12

VI. Irreconcilable divisions.

Difficulty of organizing a legislative power.--Fraudulent and violent elections for ten years.--Spirit and diffusion of hatred against the men and dogmas of the Revolution.

--Probable composition of a freely elected a.s.sembly.--Its two irreconcilable divisions.--Sentiments of the army.

--Proximity and probable meaning of a new coup d'etat.

It remained to frame a legislative power as a counterpoise to this executive power, so concentrated and so strong.--In organized and tolerably sound communities this point is reached through an elective parliament which represents the public will; it represents this because it is a copy, a faithful reduction of that will on a small scale; it is so organized as to present a loyal and proportionate expression of diverse controlling opinions. In this case, the electoral selection has worked well; one superior right, that of election, has been respected, or, in other words, the pa.s.sions excited have not proved too strong, which is owing to the most important interests not having proved too divergent.--Unfortunately, in France, rent asunder and discordant, all the most important interests were in sharp antagonism; the pa.s.sions brought into play, consequently, were furious; no right was respected, and least of all that of election; hence the electoral test worked badly, and no elected parliament was or could be a veritable expression of the public will. Since 1791, the elections, violated and deserted, had brought intruders only to the legislative benches, under the name of mandatories. These were endured for lack of better; but n.o.body had any confidence in them, and n.o.body showed them any deference. People knew how they had been elected and how little their t.i.tle was worth. Through inertness, fear, or disgust, the great majority of electors had not voted, while the voters at the polls fought among themselves, the strongest or least scrupulous expelling or constraining the rest. During the last three years of the Directory the electoral a.s.sembly was often divided; each faction elected its own deputy and protested against the election of the other. The government then chose between the two candidates elected, arbitrarily and always with barefaced partiality; and again, if but one candidate was elected, and that one an adversary, his election was invalidated. In sum, for nine years, the legislative body, imposed on the nation by a faction, was scarcely more legitimate than the executive power, another usurper, and which, later on, filled up or purged its ranks. Any remedy for this defect in the electoral machine was impossible; it was due to its internal structure, to the very quality of its materials. At this date, even under an impartial and strong government, the machine could not have answered its purpose, that of deriving from the nation a body of sober-minded and respected delegates, providing France with a parliament capable of playing its own part, or any part whatever, in the conduct of public business.

For, suppose

* that the new governors show uncommon loyalty, energy, and vigilance, remarkable political abnegation and administrative omnipresence,

* that the factions are contained without suppression of free speech,

* the central powers neutral yet active,

* no official candidature,

* no pressure from above,

* no constraint from below,

* the police-commissioners respectful and gendarmes protecting the entrance to every electoral a.s.sembly,

* all proceedings regular, no disturbance inside, voting perfectly free, the electors numerous, five or six millions of Frenchmen gathered at the polls,

and guess what choice they will make.

After Fructidor, there is a renewal of religious persecution and of excessive civil oppression; the brutality and unworthiness of the rulers have doubled and diffused hatred against the men and the ideas of the Revolution.--In Belgium, recently annexed, the regular and secular clergy had just been proscribed in a ma.s.s,[2112] and a great rural insurrection had broken out. The uprising had spread from the Waes country and the ancient seignory of Malines, around Louvain as far as Tirlemont, and afterward to Brussels, to Campine, to South Brabant, to Flanders, to Luxembourg, in the Ardennes, and even to the frontiers of Liege; many villages had to be burned, and many of their inhabitants killed, and the survivors keep this in mind. In the twelve western departments,[2113] at the beginning of the year 1800, the royalists were masters of nearly the whole country and had control of forty thousand armed men in regimental order; undoubtedly these were to be overcome and disarmed, but they were not to be deprived of their opinions, as of their guns.--In the month of August, 1799,[2114] sixteen thousand insurgents in Haute Garonne and the six neighboring departments, led by Count de Paulo, had unfurled the royal white flag; one of the cantons, Cadours, "had risen almost entirely;" a certain town, Muret, sent all its able-bodied men. They had penetrated even to the outskirts of Toulouse, and several engagements, including a pitched battle, were necessary to subdue them. On one occasion, at Montrejean, 2000 were slain or drowned. The peasants fought with fury, "a fury that bordered on frenzy;" "some were heard to exclaim with their last breath, 'Vive le Roi!' and others were cut to pieces rather than shout, 'Vive la Republique!'"--From Ma.r.s.eilles to Lyons the revolt lasted five years on both banks of the Rhone, under the form of brigandage; the royalist bands, increased by refractory conscripts and favored by the inhabitants whom they spared, killed or pillaged the agents of the republic and the buyers of national possessions.[2115] There were thus, in more than thirty departments, intermittent and scattered Vendees. In all the Catholic departments there was a latent Vendee. Had the elections been free during this state of exasperation it is probable that one-half of France would have voted for men of the ancient regime--Catholics, Royalists, or, at least, the Monarchists of 1790.

Let the reader imagine facing this party, in the same chamber, about an equal number of representatives elected by the other party; the only ones it could select, its notables, that is to say, the survivors of preceding a.s.semblies, probably Const.i.tutionalists of the year IV and the year V, Conventionalists of the Plain and of the Feuillants of 1792, from Lafayette and Dumolard to Daunou, Thibaudeau and Gregoire, among them Girondists and a few Montagnards, Barere,[2116] with others, all of them wedded to the theory the same as their adversaries to traditions.

To one who is familiar with the two groups, behold two inimical doctrines confronting each other; two irreconcilable systems of opinions and pa.s.sions, two contradictory modes of conceiving sovereignty, law, society, the State, property, religion, the Church, the ancient regime, the Revolution, the present and the past; it is civil war transferred from the nation to the parliament. Certainly the Right would like to see the First Consul a Monck, which would lead to his becoming a Cromwell; for his power depends entirely on his credit with the army, then the sovereign force; at this date the army is still republican, at least in feeling if not intelligently, imbued with Jacobin prejudices, attached to revolutionary interests, and hence blindly hostile to aristocrats, kings, and priests.[2117] At the first threat of a monarchical and Catholic restoration it will demand of him an eighteenth Fructidor[2118]; otherwise, some Jacobin general, Jourdan, Bernadotte, or Augereau, will make one without him, against him, and they fall back into the rut from which they wished to escape, into the fatal circle of revolutions and coups d'etat.

VII. Establishment of a new Dictatorship.

The electoral and legislative combinations of Sieyes.

--Bonaparte's use of them.--Paralysis and submission of the three legislative bodies.--The Senate as the ruler's tool.

--Senatus-consultes and Plebiscites.--Final establishment of the Dictatorship.--Its dangers and necessity.--Public power now able to do its work.

Sieyes comprehended this: he detects on the horizon the two specters which, for ten years, have haunted all the governments of France, legal anarchy and unstable despotism; he has found a magic formula with which to exorcise these two phantoms; henceforth "power is to come from above and confidence from below."[2119]--Consequently, the new const.i.tutional act withdraws from the nation the right to elect its deputies; it will simply elect candidates to the deputation and through three degrees of election, one above the other; thus, it is to take part in the choice of its candidates only through "an illusory and metaphysical partic.i.p.ation."[2120] The right of the electors of the first degree is wholly reduced to designating one-tenth among themselves; the right of those of the second degree is also reduced to designating one-tenth among themselves; the right of those of the third degree is finally reduced to designating one-tenth of their number, about six thousand candidates. On this list, the government itself, by right and by way of increasing the number, inscribes its own high functionaries; evidently, on such a long list, it will have no difficulty in finding men who, as simple tools, will be devoted to it. Through another excess of precaution, the government, on its sole authority, in the absence of any list, alone names the first legislature. Last of all, it is careful to attach handsome salaries to these legislative offices, 10,000 f., 15,000 f., and 30,000 f. a year; parties canva.s.s with it for these places the very first day, the future depositaries of legislative power being, to begin with, solicitors of the antechamber.--To render their docility complete, there is a dismemberment of this legislative power in advance; it is divided among three bodies, born feeble and pa.s.sive by inst.i.tution. Neither of these has any initiative; their deliberations are confined to laws proposed by the government. Each possesses only a fragment of function; the "Tribunat" discusses without pa.s.sing laws, the "Corps Legislatif" decrees without discussion, the conservative"

Senat" is to maintain this general paralysis. "What do you want?" said Bonaparte to Lafayette.[2121] "Sieyes everywhere put nothing but ghosts, the ghost of a legislative power, the ghost of a judiciary, the ghost of a government. Something substantial had to be put in their place. Ma foi, I put it there," in the executive power.

There it is, completely in his hands; other authorities to him are merely for show or as instruments.[2122] The mutes of the Corps Legislatif come annually to Paris to keep silent for four months; one day he will forget to convoke them, and n.o.body will remark their absence.--As to the Tribunat, which talks too much, he will at first reduce its words to a minimum "by putting it on the diet of laws;"

afterward, through the interposition of the senate, which designates retiring members, he gets rid of troublesome babblers; finally, and always through the interposition of the senate, t.i.tular interpreter, guardian, and reformer of the const.i.tution, he ventilates and then suppresses the Tribunat itself.--The senate is the grand instrument by which he reigns; he commands it to furnish the senatus-consultes of which he has need. Through this comedy played by him above, and through another complementary comedy which he plays below, the plebiscite, he transforms his ten-year consulate into a consulate for life, and then into an empire, that is to say, into a permanent, legal, full, and perfect dictatorship. In this way the nation is handed over to the absolutism of a man who, being a man, cannot fail to think of his own interest before all others. It remains to be seen how far and for how long a time this interest, as he comprehends it, or imagines it, will accord with the interest of the public. All the better for France should this accord prove complete and permanent; all the worse for France should it prove partial and temporary. It is a terrible risk, but inevitable. There is no escape from anarchy except through despotism, with the chance of encountering in one man, at first a savior and then a destroyer, with the certainty of henceforth belonging to an unknown will fashioned by genius and good sense, or by imagination and egoism, in a soul fiery and disturbed by the temptations of absolute power, by success and universal adulation, in a despot responsible to no one but himself, in a conqueror condemned by the impulses of conquest to regard himself and the world under a light growing falser and falser.

Such are the bitter fruits of social dissolution: the authority of the state will either perish or become perverted; each uses it for his own purposes, and n.o.body is disposed to entrust it to an external arbitrator, and the usurpers who seize it only remain trustee on condition that they abuse it; when it works in their hands it is only to work against its office. It must be accepted when, for want of better or fear of worse, through a final usurpation, it falls into the only hands able to restore it, organize it, and apply it at last to the service of the public.

[Footnote 2101: "The Revolution," P.193 and following pages, also p.224 and following pages. The provisions of the const.i.tution of the year III, somewhat less anarchical, are a.n.a.logous; those of the "Mountain"

const.i.tution (year II) are so anarchical that n.o.body thought of enforcing them.]

[Footnote 2102: "The Revolution," vol. III., pp.446, 450, 476.]

[Footnote 2103: Sauzay, "Histoire de la persecution revolutionnaire dans le departement du Doubs," X., 472 (Speech of Briot to the five-hundred, Aug.29, 1799): "The country seeks in vain for its children; it finds the chouans, the Jacobins, the moderates, and the const.i.tutionalists of '91 and '93, clubbists, the amnestied, fanatics, scissionists and antiscissionists; in vain does it call for republicans."]

[Footnote 2104: "The Revolution," III., 427, 474.--Rocquain, "L'etat de la France au 18 Brumaire," 360, 362: "Inertia or absence of the national agents. .. It would be painful to think that a lack of salary was one of the causes of the difficulty in establishing munic.i.p.al administrations.

In 1790, 1791, and 1792, we found our fellow-citizens emulously striving after these gratuitous offices and even proud of the disinterestedness which the law prescribed." (Report of the Directory, end of 1795.) After this date public spirit is extinguished, stifled by the Reign of Terror.--Ibid., 368, 369: "Deplorable indifference for public offices.... Out of seven town officials appointed in the commune of Laval, only one accepted, and that one the least capable. It is the same in the other communes."--Ibid., 380 (Report of the year VII): "General decline of public spirit."--Ibid., 287 (Report by Lacuee, on the 1st military division, Aisne, Eure-et-Loire, Loiret, Oise, Seine, Seine-et-Marne, (year IX): "Public spirit is dying out and is even gone."]

[Footnote 2105: Rocquain, Ibid., p.27 (Report of Francois de Nantes, on the 8th military division,Vaucluse, Bouches-du-Rhone, Var, Ba.s.ses-Alpes, and Alpes-Maratimes, year IX): "Witnesses, in some communes, did not dare furnish testimony, and, in all, the justices of the peace were afraid of making enemies and of not being re-elected. It was the same with the town officials charged with prosecutions and whom their quality as elected and temporary officials always rendered timid."--Ibid., 48: "All the customs-directors complained of the partiality of the courts. I have myself examined several cases in which the courts of Ma.r.s.eilles and Toulon decided against the plain text the law and with criminal partiality.--Archives nationales, series F7, Reports "on the situation, on the spirit of the public," in many hundreds of towns, cantons, and departments, from the year III to the year VIII and after.]

[Footnote 2106: Cf. "The Revolution," III., book IX., ch. I.--Rocquain, pa.s.sim.--Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Revolution francaise," III., parts 9 and 10.--Archives nationales, F7, 3250 (Letter of the commissioner of the executive directory, Fructidor 23, year VII): "Armed mobs on the road between Saint-Omer and Arras have dared fire on the diligences and rescue from the gendarmerie the drawn conscripts."--Ibid., F7, 6565.

Only on Seine-inferiure, of which the following are some of the reports of the gendarmerie for one year.--Messidor, year VII, seditious mobs of conscripts and others in the cantons of Motteville and Doudeville.

"What shows the perverted spirit of the communes of Gremonville and of Heronville is that none of the inhabitants will make any declaration, while it is impossible that they should not have been in the rebels'

secrets."--Similar mobs in the communes of Guerville, Millebose,and in the forest of Eu: "It is stated that they have leaders, and that drilling goes on under their orders.--Vendemiarie 27, year VIII.) "Twenty-five armed brigands or drafted men in the cantons of Reaute and Bolbec have put farmers to ransom."--(Nivose 12~ year VIII.) In the canton of Cuny another band of brigands do the same thing.--(Germinal 14, year VIII.) Twelve brigands stop the diligence between Neufchatel and Rouen; a few days after, the diligence between Rouen and Paris is stopped and three of the escort are killed.--a.n.a.logous scenes and mobs in the other departments.]

[Footnote 2107: "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. I., 260. Under the Directory," one day, in order to dispatch a special courier, the receipts of the Opera had to be taken because they were in coin. Another day, it was on the point of sending every gold piece in the musee of medals to be melted down (worth in the crucible from 5000 to 6000 francs)."]

[Footnote 2108: "Theorie const.i.tutionnelle de Sieyes." (Extract from unpublished memoirs by Boulay de la Meurthe.) Paris, 1866, Renouard.]

[Footnote 2109: "Correspondance de Napoleon 1er," x.x.x.. 345.

("Memoires.")--"Memorial de Sainte-Helene"]

[Footnote 2110: "Extrait des Memoires" de Boulay de la Meurthe, p.50.

(Words of Bonaparte to Roederer about Sieyes, who raised objections and wanted to retire.) "If Sieyes goes into the country, draw up for me at once the plan of a const.i.tution. I will summon the primary a.s.semblies in a week and make them accept it after discharging the (Const.i.tuant) committees."]

[Footnote 2111: "Correspondance de Napoleon ler" x.x.x., 345, 346.

("Memoires.") "Circ.u.mstances were such as to still make it necessary to disguise the unique magistracy of the president."]

[Footnote 2112: The Revolution," III., 458, 417.--"Mercure britannique," nos. for November 1798 and January 1799. (Letters from Belgium.)--"More than 300 millions have been seized by force in these desolated provinces; there is not a landowner whose fortune has not been ruined, or sequestrated, or fatally sapped by forced levies and the flood of taxes which followed these, by robberies of movable property and the bankruptcy due to France having discredited claims on the emperor and on the governments, in short through confiscation."--The insurrection breaks out, as in Vendee, on account of the conscription; the war-cry of the insurgents is, "Better die here than elsewhere."]

[Footnote 2113: De Martel, "Les Historiens fantaisistes," part 2 (on the Pacification of the West, according to reports of the royalist leaders and of the republican generals).]

[Footnote 2114: Archives nationales, F7, 3218. (Summary of dispatches arranged according to dates.-Letters of Adjutant-General Vicose, Fructidor 3, year VII.--Letters of Lamagdelaine, commissioner of the executive Directory, Thermidor 26 and Fructidor 3, year VII.)--"The rascals who led the people astray had promised them, in the King's name, that they should not be called on for further taxes, that the conscripts and requisitionnaires should not leave, and, finally, that they should have the priests they wanted."--Near Montrejean "the carnage was frightful, nearly 2000 men slain or drowned and 1000 prisoners."--(Letter of M. Alquier to the first consul, Pluviose 18, year VIII.) "The insurrection of Thermidor caused the loss of 3000 cultivators.--(Letters of the department administrators and of the government commissioners, Nivose 25 and 27, Pluviose 13, 15, 25, 27, and 30, year VIII.)--The insurrection is prolonged through a vast number of isolated outrages, with sabers or guns, against republican functionaries and partisans, justices of the peace, mayors, etc. In the commune of Balbeze, fifty conscripts, armed deserters with their knapsacks, impose requisitions,give b.a.l.l.s on Sunday, and make patriots give up their arms.

Elsewhere, this or that known patriot is a.s.saulted in his house by a band of ten or a dozen young folks who make him pay a ransom, shout "Vive le Roi!" etc.--Cf. "Histoire de I' insurrection royaliste de l'an VII," by B. Lavigne, 1887.]

[Footnote 2115: Archives nationales, F7, 3273 (Letter of the commissioner of the executive Directory, Vaucluse, Fructidor 6, year VII.): "Eighty armed royalists have carried off, near the forest of Suze, the cash-box of the collector, Bouchet, in the name of Louis XVIII. These rascals, it must be noted, did not take any of the money belonging to the collector himself."--(Ibid., Thermidor 3, year VII.) "On looking around among our communes I find all of them under the control of royalist or town-councillors. That is the spirit of the peasants generally.... Public spirit it so perverted, so opposed to the const.i.tutional regime, that a miracle only will bring them within the pale of freedom."--Ibid., F7, 3199. (Similar doc.u.ments on the department of Bouches-du-Rhone.) Outrages continue here far down into the consulate, in spite of the vigor and mult.i.tude of military executions.--(Letter of the sub-prefect of Tarascon, Germinal 15, year IX.) "In the commune of Eyragues, yesterday, at eight o'clock, a band of masked brigands surrounded the mayor's house, while some of them entered it and shot this public functionary without anybody daring to render him any a.s.sistance.... Three-quarters of the inhabitants of Eyragues are royalists."--In series F7, 7152 and those following may be found an enumeration of political crimes cla.s.sified by department and by the month, especially for Messidor, year VII.]

[Footnote 2116: Barere, representative of Hautes Pyrenees, had preserved a good deal of credit in this remote department, especially in the district of Argeles, with populations which knew nothing about the "Mountain." In 1805, the electors presented him as a candidate for the legislative body and the senate; in 1815, they elected him deputy.]

[Footnote 2117: "Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. I., 158. At the time the concordat was under consideration the aversion to "priest rule" was very great in the army; there were secret meetings held against it. Many of the superior officers took part in them, and even some of the leading generals. Moreau was aware of them although he did not attend them. In one of these gatherings, things were carried far enough to resolve upon the a.s.sa.s.sination of the first consul. A certain Donnadieu, then of a low rank in the army, offered to strike the blow.

General Oudinot, who was present, informed Davoust, and Donnadieu, imprisoned in the Temple, made revelations. Measures were at once taken to scatter the conspirators, who were all sent away more or less farther off; some were arrested and others exiled, among them General Mounier, who had commanded one of Desaix's brigades at Marengo. General Lecourbe was also one of the conspirators.]

[Footnote 2118: On the 18th Fructidor Napoleon used grape-shot and artillery to sweep the royalists off the streets of Paris. (SR.)]