Latest / A Brief History of France From Caesars to Waterloo / 35 - A Brief History of France From Caesars to Waterloo by Agnes Mary Frances Robinson

Transcript

35 - A Brief History of France From Caesars to Waterloo by Agnes Mary Frances Robinson · A Brief History of France From Caesars to Waterloo

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Section thirty five of a short History of France by
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Mary Duclo. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Read by Pamelinagami, Part four, Chapter three Napoleon, Part one
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Napoleon first Consul resembles the Emperor Napoleon only as the
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: larva of some bright insect is like its future gorgeous self.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: The Consul was a man of peace. He was a
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: great administrator. No man ever mastered so thoroughly the minutest
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: machinery of government. He was su Lee and Colbert and
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: neckcare in one a great financier too. The ruined France
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: of the directory became prosperous under his management. And one
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: of the legislators of all time. He considered the Code
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Napoleon his most enduring monument, and indeed the others of
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: all unlike the flowers of the field. As head of
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: the state, he was careful not to offend the democratic
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: sentiment of the French. His first to act is a plebecit,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: which grounds his government on the consent of the people.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: He is scrupulous not to overstep his privilege, and sometimes
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: exasperates combasse As the second Consul, who remembers the speedier
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: methods of the convention, by the care with which he
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: refers any administrative measure to the control of the Council,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: never a ruler more circumspect than he more eager to
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: profit by the experience of the great political bodies, the
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Senate the Council of State. With them, he undertakes the
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: task of definitively reorganizing France and elaborates a constitution which,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: in its essentials, has resisted more than one change of dynasty,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: because it has the qualities chiefly necessary in national affairs solidity, simplicity,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: economy and order. The Revolution, in its various attempts at
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: a constitution, had organized the communes, the Canton, and the
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: departments of France, but had not discovered the connecting link
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: needed to attach the mechanism of provincial life to the
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: vital center Paris. At one period, during the reign of Terror,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: the ubiquitous Societe populare, established in every town, almost in
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: every village of the Republic, had served as an efficient,
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: if non official, means of communication with the Jacobin government.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: But whether in town or country, the Jacobins now were
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: in disgrace or non existent. The local aristocracy had emigrated
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: or perished on the scaffold, there was a gap between
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: the consuls and the communes, a solution of continuity fatal
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: to unity and order. Buonaparte revived the intendants with a
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: difference instituted. I mean to say, in every department a
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: prefect an agent charged with the supervision of all the
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: affairs of a province, the collection and assessing of taxes,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: local expenditure, the administration of justice and police, the conduct
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: of elections, the execution of the government's decrees, et cetera.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: The prefect is the vicar of the central power, the
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: instrument of its will, and also the channel of its information.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: The first Consul corrected what might seem too rigid in
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: his system by a complete absence of political color in
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: the men he chose to work it. He cast his
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: net very wide. If a man were a good administrator,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: he took him, were he Jacobin or girondin fullon, or
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: even aristocrat. A Larochefoucot was prefect of sen Et Marne
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: and the ex Duke of Bethune Sharhost, one of the
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: twelve twelve mayors of Paris. Here we touched the secret
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: of the success of Napoleon's administration. He took account of realities,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: not of theories. Nothing could be more unlike the absolute,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: the ferocious idealism of a Robespierre or a Saint just
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: which invented a system doubtless excellent in cloud cuckoo Land,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: and then applied it relentless to an actual society which
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: wrapped in the fervor of their dream they never seemed
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: to have envisaged. Napoleon, on the other hand, was nothing
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: if not practical and full of compromise. He took what
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: he found ready to his hand, looked at it well,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: and turned it to the best advantage. And the result
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: was something at once so supple and so strong, so
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: exquisitely suited to its environment, that for fourscore years it
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: served France with scarce a change, and even to day
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: supports solidly all of France's recent superstructures. Out of this
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: new world of civil servants and state officials, the first
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Consul created, by the choice of the functionaries he appointed,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: and by the consideration with which he surrounded them, a
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: new aristocracy of his own making. The service of the
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: state was a task so great that it conferred a
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: sort of nobility on the man who performed it adequately
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: to be useful to one's country was the one thing needful.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Napoleon placed so high the importance of the civil servant
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: that until eighteen eighty or thereabouts, the functionionaire of France
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: retained the first rank at any rate. In provincial society.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Fifty years ago, and even thirty years ago, a prefect
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: was a very considerable personage, and even greater than he
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: was monsieur le premier president the chief magistrate of the
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: local courts of justice. Below prefect and President came a
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: number of other officials collector of taxes, registrar, functionaries of
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: the post office, the rivers and forests, the roads and bridges,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: the university, the clergy. For Napoleon made his peace with
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: the Church, and that was perhaps the master stroke of
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: his magic Wand by the Concorda or Convention of eighteen
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: o one, it was agreed between the first Consul and
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: the Pope that the civil power should name the bishops
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: and archbishops, subject to the ordination of the Pope, and
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: that these, in their turn should appoint the curee and vigors,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: subject to the ratification of the state. No claim on
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: the forfeited church lands was to disturb in their rights
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: of possession the holders of pionnacionaut. Thus peace was secured,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: and the peasants and the provincial bourgeoisie conciliated by the
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: restoration of a beloved religion which no longer threatened their
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: tenure of its forfeited fields. Many an honest country lawyer,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: seated in his comfortable, confiscated priory, listened with tears in
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: his eyes to the first peal of those church bells that,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: for the last ten years had hung mute and useless
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: in the belfry. This world of civil servants, magistrates, professors,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: priests is all the more obedient to orders that it
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: is constantly in movement. The turning wheel of fortune and
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: of state affairs leaves them no time to root and
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: take on too many local interests, And from one end
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: of France to the other they will find wheresoever they
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: may be appointed, the same order, the same method, the
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: same unity. There is, of late in France, a strong
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: reaction against the centralization of Napoleon's system. But we may
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: suppose it suited the country, since it has lasted so long.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: The French like to depend on the central power for
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: their administration, and then to rail at that administration, which,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: though evidently imperfect, is, on the whole I think more
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: efficient than that of any other country. The daily life
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: of the nation still appears singularly well organized on Napoleon's bedrock.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Judge what it must have seemed following on the confusion
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: of the Directory. Not since the last days of Enriquatre
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: had France enjoyed a period of such promise and prosperity.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: During the four years in which Buonaparte worked with Portalis,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Tonche Cambassas and the other jurisconsults at the making of
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: an unparalleled civil code, France was admirably governed. Von de pacified,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: the church conciliated, and everywhere Napoleon showed himself open to compromise,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: respectful of realities, willing to reckon with the force of
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: a tradition. He knew how to make a sacrifice and
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: accept a compensation, how to give and take, and out
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: of shreds and patches he made an enduring fabric as
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: the Romans, with their slender bricks, built monuments that stand today. Meanwhile,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: victory followed victory abroad. The mismanagement of the Directory had lost,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: or at least endangered, all of Bonaparte's earlier conquests, but
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: the first Consul soon redeemed their blunders. His initial dash
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: was to secure that left bank of the Rhine, which
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: to the sons of the Revolution seemed the essential bulwark
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: and natural frontier of France. Next he pounced on Milan
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: and acclaimed in Lombardy by shouts of joy. He reasserted
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: the power of France across the Alps by a splendid
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: victory at Marengo. The next battle was at Hohenlinden. These
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: are immortal names. For the second time, the Holy Roman
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Empire was obliged to to recognize and sanction the pretensions
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: of France and award her Alsace, Belgium, Savoy, and also
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: to admit the existence of her affiliated republics in Lombardy,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Switzerland and Holland. Austria made peace at Luneville in eighteen
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: oh one, and England in eighteen o two signed the
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Piece of Omnia. France had made short work of her enemies. Victory, peace, success, order,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: prosperity bring a monarch many friends, but Napoleon had still
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: irreconcilable foes. They were the same that Louis the sixteenth
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: had feared the Jacobins the emigres. Nothing could reconcile the
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: first to the final loss of liberty. They had curbed
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: their necks for a moment in wartime to a yoke
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: of their own choosing. They had, and Mara's phrase, opposed
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: the despotism of freedom to the despotism of kings. But
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: that had been a matter of military necessity, a temporary
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: derogation and interlude. The sovereign people had yielded none of
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: its rights, which now were confiscated by one man to
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: all intents and purposes. A monarch Napoleon, in their sight,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: was as clearly an invading brigand chief as in the
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: eyes of the stubbornness defenders of the altar and the throne,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: and the ultra royalists. Although they had seen their friends
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: and kinsfolk driven in herds to the place of butchery
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: and slaughtered there like animals, loathed the Corsican usurper even
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: worse than Rosepierre in their eyes, might, though never so seemly,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: could never stand for right. Strange to think that these
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: obscure royalist conspirators a hundred years ago were fighting for
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: the same principle right not might, which the democracies of
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: the world to day defend in arms against the encroachments
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: of the central empires. Bonaparte felt the danger of their
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: fervent fanaticism all round him. His friends compared his rule
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: to those last years of ant Riquet, which were the
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: halcyon time of France. He could not but remember how
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: the knife of Ravayac had cut short that reign of prosperity,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: and he too was in constant danger. His own generals,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: jealous of his supremacy, conspired with his enemies in London.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: The West Country, only nominally pacified, was a hotbed of
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: plots and murderous purposes. As for the Jacobins, there one
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: religion was the state. In defense of their adored republic.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: The honestest of them would stick at nothing. On Christmas
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Eve eighteen hundred, an attempt was made to blow up
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Bonaparte by the explosion of an infernal machine. As he
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: drove to the opera. There was an immense sensation in
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: the theater, women shedding tears, every one cheering the first consul.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: The windows of his wife's carriage were shattered, Her daughter's
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: neck was cut by the fragments of glass. Nine persons
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: were killed, twenty died of their injuries. Brave as he was,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Napoleon was superstitious, and he was not an hereditary king,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: inured from his childhood to the risks of the Metier
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: de Roois. This attempt made a deep impression on his sensibility.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: He thought it the work of fanatical republicans, and transported
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty Jacobins without a particle of evidence
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: against them. Miserable man. He sent two of them to
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: die on the island of Saint Helena. But Fouchet, his
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: chief of police, himself an ex Jacobin, assured the First
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Council that the real culprits were the emegre, who, in
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: foreign countries devised at their ease the plots they found
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: means to execute. In Paris at the bare idea, Napoleon
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: laws sang foix am I a dog? He would say,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: to be shot down in the street, and are my
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: murderers a sort of sacred animals? This nervous rage must
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: be his excuse. But no, there can be no excuse
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: for the assassination of the Duke of Agien. It was
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: in eighteen o four that a fresh conspiracy, vaster and
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: still more formidable, was framed among the enemies of Bonaparte.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Two of his generals, Pichegru the conqueror of Holland Moro,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: who gained the victory of Hohenlinden, and a bretonneomen George Cadoudal,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: the very soul of the Royalist rising in the West,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: with three hundred Royalist gentlemen, were affiliated to the plot.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Their scheme was to make a dash at Napoleon's sword
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: in hand, kidnap him one evening on the road to Malmaison,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: his country house, or assail him in the midst of
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: his consular guards during some ceremony on the Esplanade desi valid.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Revolt rather than murder were their object, and what they
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: chiefly desired was to give the tyrant a taste of
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: English hospitality. War had broken out afresh with England. Still,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: their swords were not for show, and they were prepared
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: to kill him if he resisted. The police were informed.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: In time, one of Georges Cadudal's friends sold him for
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: a hundred thousand crowns. The consul was all aflame, with
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: a passion of wrath and a feverish lust for revenge.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: It was rumored that one of the younger Bourbon princes
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: was as deep in the affair as Piesche Grew or George.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: The real culprit seems to have been the Duke of Peris,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: but Napoleon's suspicions fell on the Duke of Onngien, one
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: of the youngest and most lovable of the Bourbon at
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: that time, living in retirement in the Duchy of Baden,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: in the society of a woman with whom he was
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: devotedly in love. Bonaparte had no more evidence of this
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: young man's complicity than he had required four years before
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: when he exiled the Jacobins. He acted on a Corsican impulse.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: Peachgrew had been arrested in February, George on the ninth
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: of March. On the fifteenth, the young Duke of Ongian
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: was captured in his own house a few leagues on
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: the further side of the Rhine, was hurried in secrecy
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: through France by the picket of dragoons who had carried
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: him off, spirited to the castle of Vincennes just outside Paris,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: tried there in the dead of night by a hastily
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: assembled court martial and shot in a foss of the
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: fortifications at two o'clock in the morning. This lawless, reckless crime,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: which violated the territory of a peaceful neighbor and outraged
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: all the codes and conventions of international law, never ceased
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: to haunt Napoleon, and more than any other action of
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: his life, discredited him in the eye of Europe. He
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: who loved order and discipline and regularity, He who had
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: organized his country, he who loathed the misrule and anarchy
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: of the revolution, had shown himself in this mad vengeance,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: this unwarranted vendetta, as utterly estranged from the spirit of
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: law as a mare or a Danton. In later years,
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: I think he would have given several of his victories
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: to recall it. He mentions it in his testament, not
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: without remorse. He excuses himself by saying that the Count
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: of Artois maintained sixty paid assassins at his orders in
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: the French capital in his latter days. He laid the
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: blame on Tolerant and invoked the excuse of the tyrant
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: who sacrificed Thomas A. Beckett. Why did my servant give
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: me no chance of recalling the impulse of my wrath
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: end of section thirty five,