The World's Greatest Books - Volume 12 Part 17

Such is the social edifice erected by Napoleon Bonaparte, its architect, proprietor, and princ.i.p.al occupant from 1799 to 1814. It is he who has made modern France. Never was an individual character so profoundly stamped on any collective work, so that, to comprehend the work, we must first study the character of the man.

Contemplate in Guerin's picture the spare body, those narrow shoulders under the uniform wrinkled by sudden movements, that neck swathed in its high, twisted cravat, those temples covered by long, smooth, straight hair, exposing only the mask, the hard features intensified through strong contrasts of light and shade, the cheeks hollow up to the inner angle of the eye, the projecting cheek-bones, the ma.s.sive, protuberant jaw, the sinuous, mobile lips, pressed together as if attentive; the large, clear eyes, deeply sunk under the broad arched eyebrows, the fixed oblique look, as penetrating as a rapier, and the two creases which extend from the base of the nose to the brow as if in a frown of suppressed anger and determined will. Add to this the accounts of his contemporaries who saw or heard the curt accent, or the sharp, abrupt gesture, the interrogating, imperious, absolute tone of voice, and we comprehend how, the moment they accosted him, they felt the dominating hand which seizes them, presses them down, holds them firmly, and never relaxes its grasp.

Now, in every human society a government is necessary, or, in other words, an organisation of the power of the community. No other machine is so useful. But a machine is useful only as it is adapted to its purpose; otherwise it does not work well, or it works adversely to that purpose. Hence, in its construction, the prime necessity of calculating what work it has to do, also the quant.i.ty of the materials one has at one's disposal.

During the French Revolution, legislators had never taken this into consideration; they had const.i.tuted things as theorists, and likewise as optimists, without closely studying them, or else regarding them as they wished to have them. In the national a.s.semblies, as well as with the public, the task was deemed easy and ordinary, whereas it was extraordinary and immense, for the matter in hand consisted in effecting a social revolution and in carrying on a European war.

What is the service which the public power renders to the public? The princ.i.p.al one is the protection of the community against the foreigner, and of private individuals against each other. Evidently, to do this, it must _in all cases_ be provided with indispensable means, namely, diplomats, an army, a fleet, a.r.s.enals, civil and criminal courts, prisons, a police, taxation and tax-collectors, a hierarchy of agents and local supervisors, who, each in his place and attending to his special duty, will co-operate in securing the desired effect. Evidently, again, to apply all these instruments, the public power must have, _according to the case_, this or that form of const.i.tution, this or that degree of impulse and energy; according to the nature and gravity of external or internal danger, it is proper that it should be concentrated or divided, emanc.i.p.ated from control or under control, authoritative or liberal. No indignation need be cherished beforehand against its mechanism, whatever this may be. Properly speaking, it is a vast engine in the human community, like any given industrial machine in a factory, or any set of organs belonging to the living body.

Unfortunately, in France, at the end of the eighteenth century, a bent was taken in the organisation of this machine, and a wrong bent. For three centuries and more the public power had unceasingly violated and discredited spontaneous bodies. At one time it had mutilated them and decapitated them. For example, it had suppressed provincial governments _(etats)_ over three-quarters of the territory in all the electoral districts; nothing remained of the old province but its name and an administrative circ.u.mscription. At another time, without mutilating the corporate body, it had enervated and deformed it, or dislocated and disjointed it.

Corporations and local bodies, thus deprived of, or diverted from, their purpose, had become unrecognisable under the crust of the abuses which disfigured them; n.o.body, except a Montesquieu, could comprehend why they should exist. On the approach of the revolution they seemed, not organs, but excrescences, deformities, and, so to say, superannuated monstrosities. Their historical and natural roots, their living germs far below the surface, their social necessity, their fundamental utility, their possible usefulness, were no longer visible.

_II.--The Body-Social of a Despot_

Corporations, and local bodies being thus emasculated, by the end of the eighteenth century the princ.i.p.al features of modern France are traced; a creature of a new and strange type arises, defines itself, and issues forth its structure determining its destiny. It consists of a social body organised by a despot and for a despot, calculated for the use of one man, excellent for action under the impulsion of a unique will, with a superior intelligence, admirable so long as this intelligence remains lucid and this will remain healthy; adapted to a military life and not to civil life and therefore badly balanced, hampered in its development, exposed to periodical crises, condemned to precocious debility, but able to live for a long time, and for the present, robust, alone able to bear the weight of the new dominion and to furnish for fifteen successive years the crushing labour, the conquering obedience, the superhuman, murderous, insensate effort which its master, Napoleon, exacts.

However clear and energetic the ideas of Napoleon are when he sets to work to make the New Regime, his mind is absorbed by the preoccupations of the sovereign. It is not enough for him that his edifice should be monumental, symmetrical, and beautiful. First of all, as he lives in it and derives the greatest benefit from it, he wants it habitable, and habitable for Frenchmen of the year 1800. Consequently, he takes into account the habits and dispositions of his tenants, the pressing and permanent wants for which the new structure is to provide. These wants, however, must not be theoretic and vague, but verified and defined; for he is a calculator as close as he is profound, and deals only with positive facts.

To restore tranquillity, many novel measures are essential. And first, the political and administrative concentration just decreed, a centralisation of all powers in one hand, local powers conferred by the central power, and this supreme power in the hands of a resolute chief equal in intelligence to his high position; next, a regularly paid army, carefully equipped, properly clothed, and fed, strictly disciplined, and therefore obedient and able to do its duty without wavering or faltering, like any other instrument of precision; an active police force and _gendarmerie_ held in check; administrators independent of those under their jurisdiction--all appointed, maintained, watched and restrained from above, as impartial as possible, sufficiently competent, and, in their official spheres, capable functionaries; finally, freedom of worship, and, accordingly, a treaty with Rome and the restoration of the Catholic Church--that is to say, a legal recognition of the orthodox hierarchy, and of the only clergy which the faithful may accept as legitimate--in other words, the inst.i.tution of bishops by the Pope, and of priests by the bishops. This done, the rest is easily accomplished.

The main thing now is to dress the severe wounds the revolution has made--which are still bleeding--with as little torture as possible, for it has cut down to the quick; and its amputations, whether foolish or outrageous, have left sharp pains or mute suffering in the social organism.

Above all, religion must be restored. Before 1789, the ignorant or indifferent Catholic, the peasant at his plough, the mechanic at his work-bench, the good wife attending to her household, were unconscious of the innermost part of religion; thanks to the revolution, they have acquired the sentiment of it, and even the physical sensation. It is the prohibition of the ma.s.s which has led them to comprehend its importance; it is the revolutionary government which has transformed them into theologians.

From the year IV. (1795) the orthodox priests have again recovered their place and ascendancy in the peasant's soul which the creed a.s.signs to them; they have again become the citizen's serviceable guides, his accepted directors, the only warranted interpreters of Christian truth, the only authorised dispensers and ministers of divine grace. He attends their ma.s.s immediately on their return, and will put up with no other.

Napoleon, therefore, as First Consul, concludes the Concordat with the Pope and restores religion. By this Concordat the Pope "declares that neither himself nor his successors shall in any manner disturb the purchasers of alienated ecclesiastical property, and that the ownership of the said property, the rights and revenues derived therefrom, shall consequently remain incommutable in their hands or in those of their a.s.signs."

There remain the inst.i.tutions for instruction. With respect to these, the restoration seems more difficult, for their ancient endowment is almost entirely wasted; the government has nothing to give back but dilapidated buildings, a few scattered investments formerly intended for the maintenance of a college scholarship, or for a village schoolhouse.

And to whom should these be returned, since the college and the schoolhouse no longer exist? Fortunately, instruction is an article of such necessity that a father almost always tries to procure it for his children; even if poor, he is willing to pay for it, if not too dear; only, he wants that which pleases him in kind and in quality, and, therefore, from a particular source, bearing this or that factory stamp or label.

The state invites everybody, the communes as well as private persons, to the undertaking. It is on their liberality that it relies for replacing the ancient foundations; it solicits gifts and legacies in favour of new establishments, and it promises "to surround these donations with the most invariable respect." Meanwhile, and as a precautionary measure, it a.s.signs to each its eventual duty; if the commune establishes a primary school for itself, it must provide the tutor with a lodging, and the parents must compensate him; if the commune founds a college or accepts a _lycee,_ it must pay for the annual support of the building, while the pupils, either day-scholars or boarders, pay accordingly.

In this way the heavy expenses are already met, and the state, the manager-general of the service, furnishes simply a very small quota; and this quota, mediocre as a rule, is found almost null in fact, for its main largess consists in 6,400 scholarships which it establishes and engages to support; but it confers only about 3,000 of them, and it distributes nearly all of these among the children of its military or civil employees, so that the son's scholarship becomes additional pay for the father; thus, the two millions which the state seems, under this head, to a.s.sign to the _lycees,_ are actually gratifications which it distributes among its functionaries and officials. It takes back with one hand what it bestows with the other.

This being granted, it organises the university and maintains it, not at its own expense, however, but at the expense of others, at the expense of private persons and parents, of the communes, and, above all, at the expense of rival schools and private boarding-schools, of the free inst.i.tutions, and all this in favour of the university monopoly which subjects these to special taxation as ingenious as it is multifarious.

Whoever is privileged to carry on a private school, must pay from two to three hundred francs to the university; likewise, every person obtaining permission to lecture on literature or on science.

_III.--The New Taxation, Fiscal and Bodily_

Now, as to taxes. The collection of a direct tax is a surgical operation performed on the taxpayer, one which removes a piece of his substance; he suffers on account of this, and submits to it only because he is obliged to. If the operation is performed on him by other hands, he submits to it voluntarily or not; but if he has to do it himself, spontaneously and with his own hands, it is not to be thought of. On the other hand, the collection of a direct tax according to the prescriptions of distributive justice is a subjection of each taxpayer to an amputation proportionate to his bulk, or at least to his surface; this requires delicate calculation and is not to be entrusted to the patients themselves; for not only are they surgical novices and poor calculators, but, again, they are interested in calculating falsely.

To this end, Napoleon establishes two divisions of direct taxation: one, the real-estate tax, which has no bearing on the taxpayer without any property; and the other the personal tax, which does affect him, but lightly. Such a system favours the poor; in other words, it is an infraction of the principle of distributive justice; through the almost complete exemption of those who have no property, the burden of direct taxation falls almost entirely on those who own property. If they are manufacturers, or in commerce, they support still another burden, that of the license tax, which is a supplementary impost proportioned to their probable gains. Finally, to all these annual and extra taxes, levied on the probable or certain income derived from invested or floating capital, the exchequer adds an eventual tax on capital itself, consisting of the _mutation_ tax, a.s.sessed on property every time it changes hands through gift, inheritance, or by contract, obtaining its t.i.tle under free donation or by sale, and which tax, aggravated by the _timbre_, is enormous, since, in most cases, it takes five, seven, nine, and up to ten and one-half per cent, on the capital transmitted.

One tax remains, and the last, that by which the state takes, no longer money, but the person himself, the entire man, soul and body, and for the best years of his life, namely, military service. It is the revolution which has rendered this so burdensome; formerly it was light, for, in principle, it was voluntary. The militia, alone, was raised by force, and, in general, among the country people; the peasants furnished men for it by casting lots. But it was simply a supplement to the active army, a territorial and provincial reserve, a distinct, sedentary body of reinforcements, and of inferior rank which, except in case of war, never marched; it turned out but nine days of the year, and, after 1778, never turned out again. In 1789 it comprised in all 75,260 men, and for eleven years their names, inscribed on the registers, alone const.i.tuted their presence in the ranks.

Napoleon put this military system in order. Henceforth every male able-bodied adult must pay the debt of blood; no more exemptions in the way of military service; all young men who had reached the required age drew lots in the conscription and set out in turn according to the order fixed by their drafted number.

But Napoleon is an intelligent creditor; he knows that this debt is "most frightful and most detestable for families," that his debtors are real, living men, and therefore different in kind, that the head of the state should keep these differences in mind, that is to say, their condition, their education, their sensibility and their vocation; that, not only in their private interest, but again in the interest of the public, not merely through prudence, but also through equity, all should not be indistinguishably restricted to the same mechanical pursuit, to the same manual labour, to the same indefinite servitude of soul and body.

Napoleon also exempts the conscript who has a brother in the active army, the only son of a widow, the eldest of three orphans, the son of a father seventy-one years old dependent on his labour, all of whom are family supports. He joins with these all young men who enlist in one of his civil militias, in his ecclesiastical militia, or in his university militia, pupils of the ecole Normale, seminarians for the priesthood, on condition that they shall engage to do service in their vocation, and do it effectively, some for ten years, others for life, subject to a discipline more rigid, or nearly as rigid, as military discipline.

_IV.--The Prefect Absolute_

Yet another inst.i.tution which Napoleon gave to the Modern Regime in France is the Prefect of a Department. Before 1870, when this prefect appointed the mayors, and when the council general held its session only fifteen days in the year, this Prefect was almost omnipotent; still, at the present day, his powers are immense, and his power remains preponderant. He has the right to suspend the munic.i.p.al council and the mayor, and to propose their dismissal to the head of the state. Without resorting to this extremity, he holds them with a strong hand, and always uplifted over the commune, for he can veto the acts of the munic.i.p.al police and of the road committee, annul the regulations of the mayor, and, through a skilful use of his prerogative, impose his own. He holds in hand, removes, appoints or helps appoint, not alone the clerks in his office, but likewise every kind and degree of clerk who, outside his office, serves the commune or department, from the archivist down to and comprising the lowest employees, such as forest-guards of the department, policemen posted at the corner of a street, and stone-breakers on the public highway.

Such, in brief, is the system of local and general society in France from the Napoleonic time down to the date 1889, when these lines are written. After the philosophic demolitions of the revolution, and the practical constructions of the consulate, national or general government is a vast despotic centralised machine, and local government could no longer be a small patrimony.

The departments and communes have become more or less vast lodging-houses, all built on the same plan and managed according to the same regulations, one as pa.s.sable as the other, with apartments in them which, more or less good, are more or less dear, but at rates which, higher or lower, are fixed at a uniform tariff over the entire territory, so that the 36,000 communal buildings and the eighty-six department hotels are about equal, it making but little difference whether one lodges in the latter rather than in the former. The permanent taxpayers of both s.e.xes who have made these premises their home have not obtained recognition for what they are, invincibly and by nature, a syndicate of neighbours, an involuntary, obligatory a.s.sociation, in which physical solidarity engenders moral solidarity, a natural, limited society whose members own the building in common, and each possesses a property-right more or less great according to the contribution he makes to the expenses of the establishment.

Up to this time no room has yet been found, either in the law or in minds, for this very plain truth; its place is taken and occupied in advance by the two errors which in turn, or both at once, have led the legislator and opinion astray.

THOMAS CARLYLE

Frederick the Great

Frederick the Great, born on January 24, 1712, at Berlin, succeeded to the throne of Prussia in 1740, and died on August 17, 1786, at Potsdam, being the third king of Prussia, the regal t.i.tle having been acquired by his grandfather, whose predecessors had borne the t.i.tle of Elector of Brandenburg.

Building on the foundations laid by his great-grandfather and his father, he raised his comparatively small and poor kingdom to the position of a first-cla.s.s military power, and won for himself rank with the greatest of all generals, often matching his troops victoriously against forces of twice and even thrice their number. In Thomas Carlyle he found an enthusiastic biographer, somewhat p.r.o.ne, however, to find for actions of questionable public morality a justification in "immutable laws" and "veracities," which to other eyes is a little akin to Wordsworth's apology for Rob Roy. But whether we accept Carlyle's estimate of him or no, the amazing skill, tenacity, and success with which he stood at bay virtually against all Europe, while Great Britain was fighting as his ally her own duel in France in the Seven Years' War, const.i.tutes an unparallelled achievement. "Frederick the Great" was begun about 1848, the concluding volumes appearing in 1865. (Carlyle, see LIVES AND LETTERS.)

_I.--Forebears and Childhood_

About the year 1780 there used to be seen sauntering on the terrace of Sans-Souci a highly interesting, lean, little old man of alert though slightly stooping figure, whose name among strangers was King Friedrich II., or Frederick the Great of Prussia, and at home among the common people was _Vater Fritz_--Father Fred. A king every inch of him, though without the trappings of a king; in a Spartan simplicity of vesture. In 1786 his speakings and his workings came to _finis_ in this world of time. Editors vaguely account this man the creator of the Prussian monarchy, which has since grown so large in the world.

He was born in the palace of Berlin, about noon, on January 24, 1712; a small infant, but of great promise and possibility. Friedrich Wilhelm, Crown Prince of Prussia, father of this little infant, did himself make some noise in the world as second king of Prussia.

The founder of the line was Conrad of Hohenzollern, who came to seek his fortune under Barbarossa, greatest of all the kaisers. Friedrich I. of that line was created Elector of Brandenburg in 1415; the eleventh in succession was Friedrich Wilhelm, the "Great Elector," who in 1640 found Brandenburg annihilated, and left it in 1688 sound and flourishing, a great country, or already on the way towards greatness; a most rapid, clear-eyed, active man. His son got himself made King of Prussia, and was Friedrich I., who was still reigning when his grandson, Frederick the Great, was born. Not two years later Friedrich Wilhelm is king.

Of that strange king and his strange court there is no light to be had except from the book written by Frederick's little sister, Wilhelmina, when she grew to size and knowledge of good and evil--a flickery wax taper held over Frederick's childhood. In the breeding of him there are two elements noticeable, widely diverse--the French and the German. Of his infantine history the course was in general smooth. The boy, it was said, was of extraordinary vivacity; only he takes less to soldiering than the paternal heart could wish. The French element is in his governesses--good Edict-of-Nantes ladies.

For the boy's teachers, Friedrich Wilhelm has rules for guidance strict enough. He is to be taught useful knowledge--history of the last hundred and fifty years, arithmetic, fortification; but nothing useless of Latin and the like. Spartan training, too, which shall make a soldier of him.

Whereas young Fritz has vivacities, a taste for music, finery, and excursions into forbidden realms distasteful and incomprehensible to Friedrich Wilhelm. We perceive the first small cracks of incurable division in the royal household, traceable from Fritz's sixth or seventh year; a divulsion splitting ever wider, new offences super-adding themselves. This Fritz ought to fashion himself according to his father's pattern, and he does not. These things make life all bitter for son and for father, necessitating the proud son to hypocrisies very foreign to him had there been other resource.

The boy in due time we find (at fifteen) attached to the amazing regiment of giants, drilling at Potsdam; on very ill terms with his father, however, who sees in him mainly wilful disobedience and frivolity. Once, when Prussia and Hanover seem on the verge of war over an utterly trivial matter, our crown prince acquires momentary favour.