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The Revolution was not over. Bonaparte was to continue it under monarchical forms, and to give it at last a government. Sieyes dreamed of giving a constitution to France, but France had worn out so many constitutions during the last ten years! Bonaparte, who had used the "ideologues" as stepping stones to power, now made it clear to them that they had a master; and of Sieyes' constitution, only such portions as suited him remained. Authority was narrowing its limits. Five directors had given place to three consuls.
Immediately after, Napoleon became the first, the only one, elected for ten years. Public opinion gave him what was practically unlimited power. Disillusion and anxiety made him master of France. Some were tired of violence and disorder. Others, who had profited by the Revolution to possess themselves of national property, feared the return of the Bourbons and its restoration to its former owners. The mass of the people there fore, desired the consolidation of the new regime. Had it not been for the 18 Brumaire, it is probable that the restoration of the legitimate branch would have taken place much sooner, before the Napoleonic empire had consolidated the results of the revo lution by permanent institutions. The great mistake of the royal ists was to look upon Bonaparte as another General Monk. He re plied with disdain to the overtures of the comte de Provence— the future Louis XVIII. The royalists in their turn hastened to resume the struggle against him, thus definitely marking him as the representative of the "revolution in arms." The Revolution was further indissolubly bound to its idea of "natural frontiers," and could not surrender the conquests which the rest of Europe refused to recognise. The war had to go on, whether they liked it or not—a fact which entailed government by a soldier. With the rest of his heritage, Bonaparte had to ac cept the necessity which had made the weak directory as war like as the Convention. His term of power served merely to post pone the inevitable catastrophe.
His first work was to restore order and to regulate the administration of government. Here his lack of prejudice helped the first consul. As has already been said, being of French education, but not of French origin, he neither disliked nor re gretted the old regime. He was thus able to adopt the strong points of the old monarchical system and reject the weaknesses of revolutionary democracy. The Revolution had made the system of election universal, in the civil service, in the magistracy, and in the police : a fault which killed successive governments. Bona parte replaced the elected committees by prefects and sub-prefects, thus re-establishing and multiplying the old intendants. Unwilling
to restore completely the independence of the magistracy, of which the parlements had availed themselves against the crown, he gave the government the right to nominate magistrates, while making them, in the interests of justice, irremovable. Thus, making use of the experience both of the monarchy and of the revolution, Bonaparte framed the system known as the constitu tion of the year VIII. based on administrative centralization which subordinated the nation to the State, and which has been so convenient for governments that it has been kept in being by all the succeeding regimes. Altered only in detail, it subsists today.
At the outset Bonaparte justified the hopes aroused by his coup d'etat. The mass of the people longed for peate at home and abroad. He appeared to fill the role of peacemaker. Having rid himself of Sieyes, he associated with himself, for form's sake, two other consuls, Cambaceres and Lebrun, men of ripe age and moderate views, the latter of whom had been secretary to Chan cellor Maupeou under Louis XV. When a plebiscite was taken, the First Consul was approved by three million votes. He im mediately reassured both the solid middle class, and the revolu tionaries who had enriched themselves during the Revolution. He wiped out the last relics of Jacobinism, by suppressing the pro gressive forced loans, and the law of hostages. He re-opened the churches and pacified the Vendee by putting an end to religious persecution and thus indicating a forthcoming concordat with the Pope. With the help of a former official of the monarchy, Gaudin, who became duke of Gaeta, he reorganised the finances, and pre pared the way for a return to a stable currency.
Abroad his task was more diffi cult. There is no reason to think that Bonaparte was not sincere in trying to put an end to hostilities, though he may have wished to prove to the peace party that peace was unobtainable. The proof, in any case, was quickly forthcoming. The emperor of Russia having retired from the coalition, it remained to deal with Eng land and Austria. The first consul offered a cessation of hostili ties. It was a mistake to think that England, so long as she remained mistress of the seas, would ever allow France to retain possession of the mouths of the Scheldt. Pitt refused. Then Bonaparte made another miscalculation. A smashing victory on the Continent would, he thought, compel England to yield. He persisted in this erroneous idea until Waterloo. His history hence forth is a striving for the impossible, i.e., the capitulation of Great Britain on a point she had never admitted—the annexation of Belgium—by a France, which was powerless at sea.