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$Title{Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Chapter VIII}
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$Author{Tarbell, Ida M.}
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$Subject{napoleon
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catholic
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$Date{1906}
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Title:       Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Book:        Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte
Author:      Tarbell, Ida M.
Date:        1906

Chapter VIII

Return Of The Emigres - The Concordat - Legion Of Honor - Code Napoleon

     But there were wounds in the French nation more profound than those
caused by lack of credit, by neglect and corruption.  The body which in 1789
made up France had, in the last ten years, been violently and horribly
wrenched asunder.  One hundred and fifty thousand of the richest, most
cultivated, and most capable of the population had been stripped of wealth and
position, and had emigrated to foreign lands.

     Napoleon saw that if the emigres could be reconciled, he at once
converted a powerful enemy into a zealous friend.  In spite of the opposition
of those who had made the Revolution and gained their positions through it, he
accorded an amnesty to the emigres, which included the whole one hundred and
fifty thousand, with the exception of about one thousand, and this number, it
was arranged, should be reduced to five hundred in the course of a year.
More, he provided for their wants.  Most of the smaller properties confiscated
by the Revolution had been sold, and Napoleon insisted that those who had
bought them from the state should be assured of their tenure; but in case a
property had not been disposed of, he returned it to the family, though rarely
in full.  In case of forest lands, not over three hundred and seventy-five
acres were given back. Gifts and positions were given to many emigres, so that
the majority were able to live in ease.

     A valuable result of this policy of reconciliation was the amount of
talent, experience, and culture which he gained for the government. France had
been run for ten years by country lawyers, doctors, and pamphleteers, who,
though they boasted civic virtue and eloquence, and though they knew their
Plutarch and Rousseau by heart, had no practical sense, and little or no
experience.  The return of the emigres gave France a body of trained
diplomats, judges, and thinkers, many of whom were promptly admitted to the
government.

     More serious than the amputation of the aristocracy had been that of the
Church.  The Revolution had torn it from the nation, had confiscated its
property, turned its cathedrals into barracks, its convents and seminaries
into town halls and prisons, sold its lands, closed its schools and hospitals.
It had demanded an oath of the clergy which had divided the body, and caused
thousands to emigrate.  Not content with this, it had tried to supplant the
old religion, first with a worship of the Goddess of Reason, afterwards with
one of the Supreme Being.

     But the people still loved the Catholic Church.  The mass of them kept
their crucifixes in their houses, told their beads, observed fast days.  No
matter how severe a penalty was attached to the observance of Sunday instead
of the day which had replaced it, called the "decade," at heart the people
remembered it.  "We rest on the decade," said a workman once, "but we change
our shirts on Sunday."

     Napoleon understood the popular heart, and he proposed the
reestablishment of the Catholic Church.  The Revolutionists, even his warmest
friends among the generals, opposed it.  Infidelity was a cardinal point in
the creed of the majority of the new regime.  They not only rejected the
Church, they ridiculed it.  Rather than restore Catholicism, they advised
Protestantism.  "But," declared Napoleon, "France is not Protestant; she is
Catholic."

     In the Council of State, where the question was argued, he said: "My
policy is to govern men as the greatest number wish to be governed. . . . I
carried on the war of Vendee by becoming a Catholic; I established myself in
Egypt by becoming a Mussulman; I won over the priests in Italy by becoming
Ultramontane.  If I governed Jews I should reestablish the temple of Solomon.
. . . It is thus, I think, that the sovereignty of the people should be
understood."

     Evidently this was a very different way of understanding that famous
doctrine from that which had been in vogue, which consisted in forcing the
people to accept what each idealist thought was best, without consulting their
prejudices or feelings.  In spite of opposition, Napoleon's will prevailed,
and in the spring of 1802 the Concordat was signed.  This treaty between the
Pope and France is still in force in France.  It makes the Catholic Church the
state church, allows the government to name the bishops, compels it to pay the
salaries of the clergy, and to furnish cathedrals and churches for public
worship, which, however, remain national property.  The Concordat provided for
the absolution of the priests who had married in the Revolution, restored
Sunday, and made legal holidays of certain fete days.  This arrangement was
not made at the price of intolerance towards other bodies.  The French
government protects and contributes towards the support of all religions
within its bounds, Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or Mohammedan.  The Concordat
was ridiculed by many in the government and army, but undoubtedly it was one
of the most statesmanlike measures carried out by Napoleon.

     "The joy of the overwhelming majority of France silenced even the boldest
malcontents," says Pasquier; "it became evident that Napoleon, better than
those who surrounded him, had seen into the depths of the nation's heart."

     It is certain that in reestablishing the Church Napoleon did not yield to
any religious prejudice, although the Catholic Church was the one he
preferred.  It was purely a question of policy.  In arranging the Concordat he
might have secured more liberal measures - measures in which he believed - but
he refused them.

          "Do you wish me to manufacture a religion of caprice for my own
     special use, a religion that would be nobody's?  I do not so understand
     matters.  What I want is the old Catholic religion, the only one which is
     imbedded in every heart, and from which it has never been torn.  This
     religion alone can conciliate hearts in my favor; it alone can smooth away
     all obstacles."

     In discussing the subject at St. Helena he said to Las Cases:

          "When I came to the head of affairs, I had already formed certain
     ideas on the great principles which hold society together.  I had weighed
     all the importance of religion; I was persuaded of it and I and resolved
     to reestablish it.  You would scarcely believe in the difficulties that I
     had to restore Catholicism.  I would have been followed much more
     willingly if I had unfurled the banner of Protestantism. . . . It is sure
     that in the disorder to which I succeeded, in the ruins where I found
     myself, I could choose between Catholicism and Protestantism.  And it is
     true that at that moment the disposition was in favor of the latter.  But
     outside the fact that I really clung to the religion in which I had been
     born I had the highest motives to decide me.  By proclaiming
     Protestantism, what would I have obtained?  I should have created in
     France two great parties about equal, when I wished there should be longer
     but one.  I should have excited the fury of religious quarrels, when the
     enlightenment of the age and my desire was to make them disappear
     altogether.  These two parties in tearing each other to pieces would have
     annihilated France and rendered her the slave of Europe, when I was
     ambitious of making her its mistress.  With Catholicism I arrived much
     more surely at my great results.  Within, at home, the great number would
     absorb the small, and I promised myself to treat with the latter so
     liberally that it would soon have no motive for knowing the difference.

          "Without, Catholicism saved me the Pope; and with my influences and
     our forces in Italy I did not despair sooner or later, by one way or
     another, of finishing by ruling the Pope myself."

     When the Church fell in France, the whole system of education went down
with her.  The Revolutionary governments tried to remedy the condition, but
beyond many plans and speeches little had been done. Napoleon allowed the
religious bodies to reopen their schools, and thus primary instruction was
soon provided again; and he founded a number of secondary and special schools.
The greatest of his educational undertakings was the organization of the
University.  This institution was centralized in the head of the state as
completely as every other Napoleonic institution.  It exists to-day but little
changed - a most efficient body, in spite of its rigid state control.  This
university did nothing for woman.

     "I do not think we need trouble ourselves with any plan of instruction
for young females," Napoleon told the Council.  "They cannot be brought up
better than by their mothers.  Public education is not suitable for them,
because they are never called upon to act in public. Manners are all in all to
them, and marriage is all they look to.  In times past the monastic life was
open to women; they espoused God, and, though society gained little by that
alliance, the parents gained by pocketing the dowry."

     It was with the education of the daughters of soldiers, civil
functionaries, and members of the Legion of Honor, who had died and left their
children unprovided for, that he concerned himself, establishing schools of
which the well-known one at St. Denis is a model.  The rules were prepared by
Napoleon himself, who insisted that the girls should be taught all kinds of
housework and needlework - everything, in fact, which would make them good
housekeepers and honest women.

     The military schools were also reorganized at this time.  Remembering his
own experience at the Ecole Militaire, Napoleon arranged that the severest
economy should be practised in them, and that the pupils should learn to do
everything for themselves.  They even cleaned, bedded, and shod their own
horses.

     The destruction of the old system of privileges and honors left the
government without any means of rewarding those who rendered it a service.
Napoleon presented a law for a Legion of Honor, under control of the state,
which should admit to its membership only those who had done something of use
to the public.  The service might be military, commercial, artistic,
humanitarian; no limit was put on its nature; anything which helped France in
any way was to be rewarded by membership in the proposed order.  In fact, it
was the most democratic distinction possible, since the same reward was given
for all classes of service and to all classes of people.

     Now the Revolutionary spirt spurned all distinction; and as free
discussion was allowed on the law, a severe arraignment of it was made.
Nevertheless, it passed.  It immediately became a power in the hands of the
First Consul, and such it has remained until to-day in the government. Though
it has been frequently abused, and never, perhaps, more flagrantly than by the
present Republic, unquestionably the French "red button" is a decoration of
which to be proud.

     The greatest civil achievement of Napoleon was the codification of the
laws.  Up to the Revolution, the laws of France had been in a misty,
incoherent condition, feudal in their spirit, and by no means uniform in their
application.  The Constituent Assembly had ordered them revised, but the work
had only been begun.  Napoleon believed justly that the greatest benefit he
could render France would be to give her a complete and systematic code.  He
organized the force for this gigantic task, and pushed revision with
unflagging energy.

     His part in the work was interesting and important.  After the laws had
been well digested and arranged in preliminary bodies, they were submitted to
the Council of State.  It was in the discussion before this body that Napoleon
took part.  That a man of thirty-one, brought up as a soldier, and having no
legal training, could follow the discussions of such a learned and serious
body as Napoleon's Council of State always was, seems incredible.  In fact, he
prepared for each session as thoroughly as the law-makers themselves.  His
habit was to talk over, beforehand generally with Cambaceres and Portalis, two
legislators of great learning and clearness of judgment, all the matters which
were to come up.

     "He examined each question by itself," says Roederer, "inquiring into all
the authorities, times, experiences; demanding to know how it had been under
ancient jurisprudence, under Louis XIV., or Frederick the Great. When a bill
was presented to the First Consul, he rarely failed to ask these questions: Is
this bill complete?  Does it cover every case Why have you not thought of
this?  Is that necessary?  Is it right or useful?  What is done nowadays and
elsewhere?"

     At night, after he had gone to bed, he would read or have read to him
authorities on the subject.  Such was his capacity for grasping any idea, that
he would come to the Council with a perfectly clear notion of the subject to
be treated, and a good idea of its historical development. Thus he could
follow the most erudite and philosophical arguments, and could take part in
them.  He stripped them at once of all conventional phrases and learned terms,
and stated clearly what they meant.  He had no use for anything but the plain
meaning.  By thus going directly to the practical sense of a thing, he
frequently cleared up the ideas of the revisers themselves.

     In framing the laws, he took care that they should be worded so that
everybody could understand them.  Thus, when a law relating to liquors was
being prepared, he urged that wholesale and retail should be defined in such a
way that they would be definite ideas to the people.  "Pot and pint must be
inserted," he said.  "There is no objection to those words.  An excise act
isn't an epic poem."

     Napoleon insisted on the greatest freedom of speech in the discussions on
the laws, just as he did on "going straight to the point and not wasting time
on idle talk." This clear-headedness, energy, and grasp of subject, exercised
over a body of really remarkable men, developed the Council until its
discussions became famous throughout Europe.  One of its wisest members,
Chancellor Pasquier, says of Napoleon's direction that "it was of such a
nature as to enlarge the sphere of one's ideas, and to give one's faculties
all the development of which they were capable.  The highest legislative,
administrative, and sometimes even political matters were taken up in it (the
Council).  Did we not see, for two consecutive winters, the sons of foreign
sovereigns come and complete their education in its midst?"

     It was the genius of the head of the state, however, which was the most
impressive feature of the Council of State.  De Molleville, a former minister
of Louis XVI., said once to Las Cases:

          "It must be admitted that your Bonaparte, your Napoleon, was a very
     extraordinary man.  We were far from understanding him on the other side
     of the water.  We could not refuse the evidence of his victories and his
     invasions, it is true; but Genseric, Attila, Alaric had done as much; so
     he made more of an impression of terror on me than of admiration.  But
     when I came here and followed the discussions on the civil code, from that
     moment I had nothing but profound veneration for him.  But where in the
     world had he learned all that?  And then every day I discovered something
     new in him.  Ah, sir, what a man you had there!  Truly, he was a prodigy."

     The modern reader who looks at France and sees how her University, her
special schools, her hospitals, her great honorary legion, her treaty with the
Catholic Church, her code of laws, her Bank - the vital elements of her life,
in short - are as they came from Napoleon's brain, must ask, with De
Molleville, How did he do it - he a foreigner, born in a half- civilized
island, reared in a military school, without diplomatic or legal training,
without the prestige of name or wealth?  How could he make a nation?  How
could he be other than the barbaric conqueror the English and the emigres
first thought him.

     Those who look at Napoleon's achievements, and are either dazzled or
horrified by them, generally consider his power superhuman.  They call it
divine or diabolic, according to the feeling he inspires in them; but, in
reality, the qualities he showed in his career as a statesman and law- giver
are very human ones.  His stout grasp on subjects; his genius for hard work;
his power of seeing everything that should be done, and doing it himself; his
unparalleled audacity, explain his civil achievements.

     The comprehension he had of questions of government was really the result
of serious thinking.  He had reflected from his first days at Brienne; and the
active interest he had taken in the Revolution of 1789 had made him familiar
with many social and political questions.  His career in Italy, which was
almost as much a diplomatic as a military career, had furnished him an
experience upon which he had founded many notions.  In his dreams of becoming
an Oriental law-giver he had planned a system of government of which he was to
be the centre.  Thus, before the 18th Brumaire made him the Dictator of
France, he had his ideas of centralized government all formed, just as, before
he crossed the Great Saint Bernard, he had fought, over and over, the battle
of Marengo, with black- and red-headed pins stuck into a great map of Italy
spread out on his study floor.

     His habit of attending to everything himself explains much of his
success.  No detail was too small for him, no task too menial.  If a thing
needed attention, no matter whose business it was, he looked after it. Reading
letters once before Madame Junot, she said to him that such work must be
tiresome, and advised him to give it to a secretary.

     "Later, perhaps," he said, "Now it is impossible; I must answer for all.
It is not at the beginning of a return to order that I can afford to ignore a
need, a demand."

     He carried out this policy literally.  When he went on a journey, he
looked personally after every road, bridge, public building, he passed, and
his letters teemed with orders about repairs here, restorations there. He
looked after individuals in the same way; ordered a pension to this one, a
position to that one, even dictating how the gift should be made known so as
to offend the least possible the pride of the recipient.

     When it came to foreign policy, he told his diplomats how they should
look, whether it should be grave or gay, whether they should discuss the opera
or the political situation.

     The cost of the soldiers' shoes, the kind of box Josephine took at the
opera, the style of architecture for the Madeleine, the amount of stock left
on hand in the silk factories, the wording of the laws, all was his business.

     He thought of the flowers to be scattered daily on the tomb of General
Regnier, suggested the idea of a battle hymn to Rouget de l'Isle, told the
artists what expression to give him in their portraits, what accessories to
use in the battle pieces, ordered everything, verified everything.  "Beside
him," said those who looked on in amazement, "the most punctilious clerk would
have been a bungler."

     Without an extraordinary capacity for work, no man could have done this.
Napoleon would work until eleven o'clock in the evening, and be up again at
three in the morning.  Frequently he slept but an hour, and came back as fresh
as ever.  No secretary could keep up to him, and his ministers sometimes went
to sleep in the Council, worn out with the length of the session.  "Come,
citizen ministers," he would cry, "we must earn the money the French nation
gives us." The ministers rarely went home from the meetings that they did not
find a half-dozen letters from him on their tables to be answered, and the
answer must be a clear, exact, exhaustive document.  "Get your information so
that when you do answer me, there shall be no 'buts,' no 'ifs,' and no
'becauses,'" was the rule Napoleon laid down to his correspondents.

     He had audacity.  He dared do what he would.  He had no conventional
notions to tie him, no master to dictate to him.  The Revolution had swept out
of his way the accumulated experience of centuries - all the habits, the
prejudices, the ways of doing things.  He commenced nearer the bottom than any
man in the history of the civilized world had ever done, worked with imperial
self-confidence, with a conviction that he "was not like other men;" that the
moral laws, the creeds, the conventions, which applied to them, were not for
him.  He might listen to others, but in the end he dared do as he would.