Years of Victory 1802 - 1812 Read Online Free

had taken over a country on the verge of collapse, Within a few months he had shattered all her enemies save Britain and restored her national unity. Suspen ding the laws against the emigre s, he brought home a hundred thousand exiles and closed the fratricidal strife of a decade. Conciliating the old propertied classes, he drove a wedge between the Bourbon diehards in English pay and the patriotic royalists who put loyalty to France above loyalty to a family. By re-legalising religion he satisfied the traditional piety of a peasantry robbed of its altars by urban doctrinaires. For ten years, two old dames told Fanny D'Arblay, they had lost le bon Dieu but now the good Bonaparte had found him. Seeing religion as the cement of society, the shrewd Corsican appealed over the heads of fanatics and pedants to the family and the village.
    Yet in his work of restoration Bonaparte parted with none of the unique powers bequeathed by the Revolution. He used the goodwill of the Church and the emigres to widen them. The latter recovered only a fraction of their lands and none of their feudal rights; the new clergy found themselves little more than State pensioners. The Pope, despite his Concordat with the tamer of the terrible Republic, did not resume his old authority: he was rather called in to consecrate the Revolution. In return the First Consul, who made his unwilling pagan generals attend the thanksgiving celebrations in Notre Dame, consecrated, as it were, the Gallican Church. Henceforward it became his practice to grace Mass in the Tuileries chapel for ten
    1 The comparison struck at least two of the English visitors to Paris, Lady Bessborough and Farington. See Granville, I, 390-1; Farington, II, 7, 55; Two Duchesses, 176-8; Berry, II, 181; D'Arblay, III, 232-3.
    minutes every Sunday, piously transa cting business in an adjoining chamber with open doors.
    Still less had Bonaparte impaired the popular vested interests created by the Revolution. They remained the pillars on which his power depended. The Third Estate continued to inherit untrammelled opportunity; the privilege of birth was in abeyance, the career open to the talents. The peasant's land remained free from seignorial impost: the former properties of the Church in the hands of their new owners. To their enjoyment was now added security and internal tranquillity. The comfort of the blacksmith's shop at Pecquigny which so impressed the unimpressionable Miss Berry, the bright plates and dishes above the cottage dresser, the unwonted bacon hanging from the kitchen ceiling, the bit of garden at the back, these were the material benefits which the Corsican's strong rule assured. As much as his victories and his astonishing genius, they guaranteed his hold over France.
    It was a hold that tightened every day. The spring of 1802 saw a new rise in Bonaparte's popularity. Victorious peace on the Cont inent had been crowned by peace with England, the end of the blockade and the return of the French colonial empire. During the prolonged negotiations at Amiens an intelligent people had watched with almost incredulous eyes the ease with which their leader niched advantage after advantage from their adversaries. The trickery and bad faith which ultimately shocked and angered the English only excited the admiration of a people whose moral sense had been dulled by revolutionary treachery and violence. At first they had regarded the British concessions as aristocratic tricks to lure the First Consul into demands that would revive popular enthusiasm for the war in England. But after the Treaty had been signed they saw them as marks of weakness. The whole country applauded the wizard's triumph as a masterpiece of cunning.
    Bonaparte saw to it that France's gratitude for the twin blessings of peace and victory took the form he desired. The Treaties of Luneville and Amiens were commemorated not by a memorial in stone, but by a plebiscite making their author First Consul for life. By an