Such is the aim of Napoleon:6101

"In the establishment of an educational corps," he says to himself,6102 "my principal aim is to secure the means for directing political and moral opinions."

Still more precisely, he counts on the new institution to set up and keep open for inspection a universal and complete police registry. "This registry must be organized in such a way as to keep notes on each child after age of nine years."6103 Having seized adults he wants to seize children also, watch and shape future Frenchmen in advance; brought up by him, in his hands or in sight, they become ready-made a assistants, docile subjects and more docile than their parents.6104 Amongst the latter, there are still to many unsubmissive and refractory spirits, too many royalists and too many republicans; domestic traditions from family to family contradict each other or vary, and children grow up in their homes only to clash with each other in society afterwards. Let us anticipate this conflict; let us prepare them for concord; all brought up in the same fashion, they will some day or other find themselves unanimous,6105 not only apparently, as nowadays through fear or force, but in fact and fundamentally, through inveterate habit and by previous adaptation of imagination and affection. Otherwise, "there will be no stable political state" in France;6106 "so long as one grows up without knowing whether to be a republican or monarchist, Catholic or irreligious, the State will never form a nation; it will rest on uncertain and vague foundations; it will be constantly exposed to disorder and change."—Consequently, he assigns to himself the monopoly of public instruction; he alone is to enjoy the right to manufacture and sell this just like salt and tobacco; "public instruction, throughout the Empire, is entrusted exclusively to the university. No school, no establishment for instruction whatever," superior, secondary, primary, special, general, collateral, secular or ecclesiastic, "may be organized outside of the imperial university and without the authorization of its chief."6107

Every factory of educational commodities within these boundaries and operating under this direction is of two sorts. Some of them, in the best places, interconnected and skillfully grouped, are national units founded by the government, or at its command, by the communes,— faculties, lycÉes, colleges, and small communal schools; others, isolated and scattered about, are private institutions founded by individuals, such as boarding-schools and institutions for secondary instruction, small free schools. The former, State undertakings, ruled, managed, supported and turned to account by it, according to the plan prescribed by it and for the object it has proposed, are simply a prolongation of itself; it is the State which operates in them and which, directly and entirely, acts through them: they enjoy therefore all its favor and the others all its disfavor. The latter, during the Consulate, revived or sprung up by hundreds, in all directions, spontaneously, under the pressure of necessity, and because the young need instruction as they need clothes, but haphazard, as required according to demand and supply, without any superior or common regulation—nothing being more antipathetic to the governmental genius of Napoleon:

"It is impossible,"6108 he says, "to remain longer as we are, since everybody can start an education shop the same as a cloth shop"

and furnish as he pleases, or as his customers please, this or that piece of stuff, even of poor quality, and of this or that fashion, even extravagant or out of date: hence so many different dresses, and a horrible medley. One good obligatory coat, of stout cloth and suitable cut, a uniform for which the public authority supplies the pattern, is what should go on the back of every child, youth or young man; private individuals who undertake this matter are mistrusted beforehand. Even when obedient, they are only half-docile; they take their own course and have their own preferences, they follow their own taste or that of parents. Every private enterprise, simply because it exists and thrives, constitutes a more or less independent and dissenting group, Napoleon, on learning that Sainte-Barbe, restored under the direction of M. de Lanneau, had five hundred inmates, exclaims:6109 "How does it happen that an ordinary private individual has so many in his house?" The Emperor almost seems jealous; it seems as if he had just discovered a rival in one corner of his university domain; this man is an usurper on the domain of the sovereign; he has constituted himself a centre; he has collected around him clients and a platoon; now, as Louis XIV. said, the State must have no "platoons apart." Since M. de Lanneau has talent and is successful, let him enter the official ranks and become a functionary. Napoleon at once means to get hold of him, his house and his pupils, and orders M. de Fontaines, Grand-Master of the University, to negotiate the affair; M. de Lanneau will be suitably compensated; Sainte-Barbe will be formed into a lycÉe, and M. de Lanneau shall be put at the head of it. Let it be noted that he is not an opponent, an irregular: M. de Fontaines himself praises his teaching, his excellent mind, his perfect exactitude, and calls him the universitarian of the university. But he does not belong to it, he stands aloof and stays at home, he is not disposed to become a mere cog-wheel in the imperial manufactory. Therefore, whether he is aware of it or not, he does it harm and all the more according to his prosperity; his full house empties the lycÉes; the more pupils he has the less they have. Private enterprises in their essence enter into competition with public enterprise.

For this reason, if tolerated by the latter, it is reluctantly and because nothing else can be done; there are too many of them; the money and the means to replace them at one stroke would be wanting. Moreover, with instruction, the consumers, as with other supplies and commodities, naturally dislike monopoly; they must be gradually brought to it; resignation must come to them through habit. The State, accordingly, may allow private enterprises to exist, at least for the time being. But, on condition of their being kept in the strictest dependence, of its arrogating to itself the right over them of life and death, of reducing them to the state of tributaries and branches, of utilizing them, of transforming their native and injurious rivalry into a fruitful and forced collaboration. Not only must private schools obtain from the State its express consent to be born, for lack of which they are closed and their principals punished,6110 but again, even when licensed, they live subject to the good-will of the Grand-Master, who can and must close them as soon as he recognizes in them "grave abuses and principles contrary to those professed by the University." Meanwhile, the University supports itself with their funds; since it alone has the right to teach, it may profit by this right, concede for money the faculty of teaching or of being taught alongside of it, oblige every head of an institution to pay so much for himself and so much for each of his pupils; in sum, here as elsewhere, in derogation of the university blockade, as with the continental blockade, the state sells licenses to certain parties. So true is this that, even with superior instruction, when nobody competes with it, it sells them: every graduate who gives a course of lectures on literature or on science must pay beforehand, for the year, 75 francs at Paris and 50 francs in the provinces. Every graduate who begin to lecture on law or medicine must pay beforehand 150 francs at Paris and 100 francs in the provinces.6111 There is the same annual duty on the directors of secondary schools, boarding-schools and private institutions. Moreover, to obtain the indispensable license, the master of a boarding-school at Paris must pay 300 francs, and in a province 200 francs; the principal of an institution in Paris pays 600 francs, and in the provinces 400 francs; besides that, this license, always revocable, is granted only for ten years; at the end of the ten years the titular must obtain a renewal and pay the tax anew. As to his pupils, of whatever kind, boarding scholars, day scholars, or even gratis,6112 the University levies on each a tax equal to the twentieth of the cost of full board; the director himself of the establishment is the one who fixes and levies the tax; he is the responsible collector of it, book-keeper and the debtor. Let him not forget to declare exactly the terms of his school and the number of his pupils; otherwise, there is investigation, verification, condemnation, restitution, fine, censure, and the possible closing of his establishment.

Regulations, stricter and stricter, tighten the cord around his neck and, in 1811, the rigid articles of the last decree draw so tight as to insure certain strangling at short date. Napoleon counts on that.6113 For his lycÉes, especially at the start, have not succeeded; they have failed to obtain the confidence of families;6114 the discipline is too military, the education is not sufficiently paternal, the principals and professors are only indifferent functionaries, more or less egoist or worldly. Only former subaltern officers, rude and foul-mouthed, serve as superintendents and assistant-teachers. The holders of State scholarships bring with them "habits fashioned out of a bad education," or by the ignorance of almost no education at all,6115 so that "for a child that is well born and well brought up," their companionship is lopsided and their contact as harmful as it is repulsive. Consequently, the lycÉes during the first years,6116 solely filled with the few holders of scholarships, remain deserted or scarcely occupied, whilst "the Élite of the young crowd into more or less expensive private schools."

This Élite of which the University is thus robbed must be got back. Since the young do not attend the lycÉe because they like it, they must come through necessity; to this end, other issues are rendered difficult and several are entirely barred; and better still, all those that are tolerated are made to converge to one sole central outlet, a university establishment, in such a way that the director of each private school, changed from a rival into a purveyor, serves the university instead of injuring it and gives it pupils instead of taking them away. In the first place, his high standard of instruction is limited;6117 even in the country and in the towns that have neither lycÉe nor college, he must teach nothing above a fixed degree; if he is the principal of an institution, this degree must not go beyond the class of the humanities; he must leave to the faculties of the State their domain intact, differential calculus, astronomy, geology, natural history and superior literature. If he is the master of a boarding-school, this degree must not extend beyond grammar classes, nor the first elements of geometry and arithmetic; he must leave to State lycÉes and colleges their domain intact, the humanities properly so called, superior lectures and means of secondary instruction.—In the second place, in the towns possessing a lycÉe or college, he must teach at home only what the University leaves untaught;6118 he is not deprived, indeed, of the younger boys; he may still instruct and keep them; but he must conduct all his pupils over ten years of age to the college or lycÉe, where they will regularly follow the classes as day-scholars. Consequently, daily and twice a day, he marches them to and fro between his house and the university establishment; before going, in the intermission, and after the class is dismissed he examines them in the lesson they have received out of his house; apart from that, he lodges and feeds them, his office being reduced to this. He is nothing beyond a watched and serviceable auxiliary, a subaltern, a University tutor and "coach," a sort of unpaid, or rather paying, schoolmaster and innkeeper in its employ.

All this does not yet suffice. Not only does the State recruit its day-scholars in his establishment but it takes from him his boarding-scholars. "On and after the first of November 1812,6119 the heads of institutions and the masters of boarding-schools shall receive no resident pupils in their houses above the age of nine years, until the lycÉe or college, established in the same town or place where there is a lycÉe, shall have as many boarders as it can take." This complement shall be 300 boarders per lycÉe; there are to be "80 lycÉes in full operation "during the year 1812, and 100 in the course of the year 1813, so that, at this last date, the total of the complement demanded, without counting that of the colleges, amounts to 30,000 boarding-scholars. Such is the enormous levy of the State on the crop of boarding-school pupils. It evidently seizes the entire crop in advance; private establishments, after it, can only glean, and through tolerance. In reality, the decree forbids them to receive boarding-scholars; henceforth, the University will have the monopoly of them.

The proceedings against the small seminaries, more energetic competitors, are still more vigorous. "There shall be but one secondary ecclesiastical school in each department; the Grand-Master will designate those that are to be maintained; the others are to be closed. None of them shall be in the country. All those not situated in a town provided with a lycÉe or with a college shall be closed. All the buildings and furniture belonging to the ecclesiastic schools not retained shall be seized and confiscated for the benefit of the University. "In all places where ecclesiastical schools exist, the pupils of these schools shall be taken to the lycÉe or college and join its classes." Finally, "all these schools shall be under the control of the University; they must be organized only by her; their prospectus and their regulations must be drawn up by the council of the University at the suggestion of the Grand Master. The teaching must be done only by members of the University at the disposition of the Grand Master." In like manner, in the lay schools, at Sainte-Barbe for example,6120 every professor, private tutor, or even common superintendent, must be provided with a special authorization by the University. Staff and discipline, the spirit and matter of the teaching, every detail of study and recreation,6121 all are imposed, conducted and restrained in these so-called free establishments; whatever they may be, ecclesiastic or secular, not only does the University surround and hamper them, but again it absorbs and assimilates them; it does not even leave them any external distinctive appearance. It is true that, in the small seminaries, the exercises begin at the ringing of a bell, and the pupils wear an ecclesiastic dress; but the priest's gown, adopted by the State that adopts the Church, is still a State uniform. In the other private establishments, the uniform is that which it imposes, the lay uniform, belonging to colleges and lycÉes "under penalty of being closed "; while, in addition, there is the drum, the demeanor, the habits, ways and regularity of the barracks. All initiative, all invention, all diversity, every professional or local adaptation is abolished.6122 M. de Lanneau thus wrote6123: "I am nothing but a sergeant-major of languid and mangled classes... to the tap of a drum and under military colors."

Against the encroachments of this institutional university there is no longer neither public nor private shelter, since even domestic education at home, is not respected. In 1808,6124 "among the old and wealthy families which are not in the system," Napoleon selects ten from each department and fifty at Paris of which the sons from sixteen to eighteen must be compelled to go to Saint-Cyr and, on leaving it, into the army as second lieutenants.6125 In 1813, he adds 10,000 more of them, many of whom are the sons of Conventionalists or VendÉans, who, under the title of guards of honor, are to form a corps apart and who are at once trained in the barracks. All the more necessary is the subjection to this Napoleonic education of the sons of important and refractory families, everywhere numerous in the annexed countries. Already in 1802, Fourcroy had explained in a report to the legislative corps the political and social utility of the future University.6126 Napoleon, at his discretion, may recruit and select scholars among his recent subjects; only, it is not in a lycÉe that he places them, but in a still more military school, at La FlÉche, of which the pupils are all sons of officers and, so to say, children of the army. Towards the end of 1812, he orders the Roman prince Patrizzi to send his two sons to this school, one seventeen years of age and the other thirteen6127; and, to be sure of them, he has them taken from their home and brought there by gendarmes. Along with these, 90 other Italians of high rank are counted at La FlÉche, the Dorias, the Paliavicinis, the Alfieris, with 120 young men of the Illyrian provinces, others again furnished by the countries of the Rhine confederation, in all 360 inmates at 800 per annum. The parents might often accompany or follow their children and establish themselves within reach of them. This privilege was not granted to Prince Patrizzi; he was stopped on the road at Marseilles and kept there.—In this way, through the skilful combination of legislative prescriptions with arbitrary appointments, Napoleon becomes in fact, directly or indirectly, the sole head-schoolmaster of all Frenchmen old or newcomers, the unique and universal educator in his empire.