NAPOLEON was a very young and unsophisticated Corsican when, in October, 1795, he commanded the troops that protected the Convention, in session in the Tuileries, against the Paris “sections” and the National Guard which had deserted to the royalists. He was still young, but a man rotten with ambition when, after Waterloo, he fled to Paris, and, in the Palace of the ÉlysÉe, signed his abdication of the throne of his adopted country. In the twenty years intervening he had raised himself to the highest position in the army, and he had won the confidence of an unsettled people so that they turned to him for governmental guidance, and made him consul for ten years, then consul for life and then emperor.

In the two decades he had done great harm, for, abroad, he had embroiled in war every country of Europe, and at home he had exhausted France of her young men and had left the country poorer in territory than when he was first made consul. Nevertheless, by the inevitable though sometimes inscrutable law of balance, the evil he had wrought was not without its compensating good. The countries of Europe learned as never before the meaning of the feeling of nationality and of the value of coÖperation, while France—which, with her dependencies, Napoleon, at the height of his career, had spread over three-fifths of the map of western Europe—had gained self-confidence and stability and had crystallized the passionate chaos of the Revolutionary belief in the rights of man.

Aside from his military and political genius Napoleon’s character underwent a striking development as his horizon enlarged. He belonged to a good but unimportant family which dwelt in a small town. His early manner of living was of the simplest, yet he grew to a love of splendor and to a knowledge of its usefulness in impressing the populace and in buying their approbation.

Paris is connected with Napoleon throughout his whole career. He first appears when but a lad, brought to the Military School with several other boys by a priest. He lived in modest lodgings, at one time near the markets, and at another near the Place des Victoires.

In 1795 the Convention drew up a new constitution by which the government was vested in a Directory of five members. Even in its early days Napoleon wrote from Paris to his brother of the change following upon the turbulent, sordid period of the Revolution. “Luxury, pleasure and art are reviving here surprisingly,” he said. “Carriages and men of fashion are all active once more, and the prolonged eclipse of their gay career seems now like a bad dream.”

In the midst of this agreeable change to which even his natural taciturnity adapted itself he met and married Josephine, widow of the Marquis de Beauharnais who had been guillotined under the Terror. They both registered their ages incorrectly, Napoleon adding and Josephine subtracting so that the discrepancy between them, she being older, might appear less. This marriage introduced Napoleon to a class of people into whose circle he would not otherwise have penetrated on equal terms, and he learned from them many social lessons which he put to good use later. Yet Talma, the actor, when accused of having taught Napoleon how to walk and how to dress the part of emperor, denied that he could have given instruction to one whose imagination was all-sufficient to make him imperial in speech and bearing. No descendant of a royal line ever wore more superb robes than Napoleon the emperor on state occasions, and the elegance of the throne on which he sat was not less than that of his predecessors.

Bonaparte had risen slowly in the army because of his open criticism of his superiors, but by the time of his marriage he had become a general, and three days after his wedding he was despatched to Italy to meet the allied Italians and Austrians. Less than two years later the war was ended by the Peace of Campo Formio. In the two months preceding its negotiation Bonaparte had won eighteen battles, and had collected enough indemnity to pay the expenses of his own army, to send a considerable sum to the French army on the Rhine and a still greater amount to the government at home.

When it came to making gifts to Paris he had the splendid beneficence of the successful robber. Indemnities were paid in pictures as well as in money, bronzes and marbles filled his treasure trains, and the Louvre was enriched at Italy’s expense. Of the wealth of rare books, of ancient illuminated manuscripts, of priceless paintings and statuary pillaged from Italy’s libraries, monasteries, churches and galleries, even from the Vatican itself, no count has ever been made. With such treasures as Domenichino’s “Communion of Saint Jerome” and Raphael’s “Transfiguration” under its roof and with booty arriving from the northern armies as well as the southern, it is small wonder that the Louvre became the richest storehouse in the world. After Napoleon’s fall many of the works of art were returned whence they had come, but enough were left to permit the great palace to hold its reputation.

In the turmoil of the Revolution it had been impossible for any one person to please everybody. Napoleon was distrusted by a large body of the Parisians for the part that he had played in the support of the Convention in October, 1795, and these people Bonaparte set himself to conciliate. The Directory, also, was jealous of him. It meant that the victorious general must tread gently and not seem to have his head turned by the honors paid to his successes. There were festivals at the Louvre where his trophies looked down upon the brilliant scene, and at the Luxembourg, superbly decorated, upon the occasion of his formal presentation to the Directory of the treaty of Campo Formio. There were gala performances at the theaters at which the audience rose delightedly at Napoleon if he happened to be present, and the Institute elected him a life member. This honor gave him the excuse of wearing a civilian’s coat, and, although when in Italy he had dined in public like an ancient king, here he lived quietly on the street whose name was changed to “Victory Street,” by way of compliment, and showed himself but little in public, the more to pique the curiosity of the crowd which acclaimed Josephine as “Our Lady of Victories.”

If he had had any hope of being made a member of the government at this time, he soon saw that he was not yet popular enough to carry a sudden change, and that, indeed, it behooved him, as he himself said, to “keep his glory warm.” To that end he set about arousing public sentiment against England. He concluded, however, that an invasion was not expedient at that time, and set sail for Egypt, taking with him the flower of the French army not only for their usefulness to himself, but that their lack might embarrass the government if need for them should arise in his absence.

A curious bit of testimony to the non-religious temper of the time is the bit of information that though Bonaparte included in his traveling library the Bible, the Koran and the Vedas, they were catalogued under the head of “Politics.”

In the next year and a half Napoleon met with both successes and reverses. He learned that, as he had foreseen, the Directory was involved in a war with Italy which threatened its financial credit and its stability, while at home its tyrannical rule was adding daily to its enemies. Bonaparte saw his chance and determined to leave Egypt, to put himself at the head of the Italian armies and then to go to Paris, fresh from the victories which he was sure to win, and to present himself to the people as their liberator. Leaving his army and setting sail with a few friends he touched at Corsica where he learned that France was even riper for his coming than he had supposed, and accordingly abandoned the Italian plan and went directly home. So hopefully did the people look to him for relief from their troubles that his whole journey from Lyons to Paris was one long ovation, while his reception by the Parisians was of an enthusiasm which betrayed much of their feeling toward the government and promised much to the man who would bring about a change.

Napoleon was only too glad to accommodate them. He tested the opinion of the chiefs of the Directory and skillfully put each man into a position where he felt forced to support the general. Josephine played her part in the political intrigue; Lucien Bonaparte, who had been elected President of the Five Hundred by way of compliment to his brother, played his. According to pre-arrangement the Council of the Ancients sitting in the Tuileries decreed that both houses should adjourn at once to Saint Cloud that they might be undisturbed by the unrest of Paris, and that Bonaparte be appointed to the command of the Guard of the Directory, of the National Guard, and of the garrison of Paris, that he might secure the safety of the Legislature.

Napoleon, who was waiting for the order at his house (not far north of the present OpÉra) rode to the Tuileries and accepted his commission. The next day, at Saint Cloud, he utilized his popularity with the soldiers to force the dissolution of the Directory. The result was gained by trickery but it was nevertheless satisfactory to the people who went quietly about their affairs in Paris while the excitement was on at Saint Cloud and expressed themselves afterwards as amply pleased with the coup d’État. A new constitution was adopted. The government was vested in three consuls, Napoleon, on December 15, 1799, being made First Consul for ten years. All three consuls were given apartments in the Tuileries but one of the others had the foresight never to occupy a building from which he might be ejected by the one who said to his secretary when he entered it, “Well, Bourienne, here we are at the Tuileries. Now we must stay here.”

Stay there he did, and the palace saw a more brilliant court than ever it had sheltered under royalty. Josephine was a woman of taste and tact, and the building which Marie Antoinette found bare even of necessary furnishings at the end of her enforced journey from Versailles, the wife of the First Consul arrayed in elegance and used as a social-political battle field in which she was as competent as was her husband in the open. “I win battles,” Napoleon said, “but Josephine wins hearts.” Dress became elegant once more and not only women but men were as richly attired as if the Revolution with its plain democratic apparel had not intervened. Once more men wore knee breeches and silk stockings, and it was only the aristocrats whose property had been confiscated who advertised their poverty by wearing trousers, “citizen fashion.”

“Citizen,” as a title, fell into disuse, and once again “Monsieur” and “Madame” were used as terms of address. At first the consuls were addressed as “Citoyen premier consul,” “Citoyen second consul,” and “Citoyen troisiÈme consul.” The clumsiness of these titles induced M. de Talleyrand to propose as abbreviations “Hic, Haec, Hoc.” “These would perfectly fit the three consuls,” he added; “Hic for the masculine, Bonaparte; haec for the feminine, CambacÉrÈs, who was a lady’s man, and hoc, the neutral Lebrun, who was a figurehead.”

Napoleon’s acquaintance with other capitals spurred him to emulate their beauties and his knowledge of engineering helped him to bring them into being in his own. He opened no fewer than sixty new streets, often combining in the result civic elegance with the better sanitation whose desirability he had learned from his care of the health of his armies. He swept away masses of old houses on the CitÉ, he tore down the noisome prisons of the ChÂtelet and the tower of the Temple and laid out squares on their sites, he built sidewalks, condemned sewage to sewers instead of allowing it to flow in streams down the center of the streets, introduced gas for lighting, and completed the numbering of houses, an undertaking which had been hanging on for seventy-five years.

He added to the convenience of the Parisians by building new bridges, two commemorating the battles of Austerlitz and Jena, and one, the only foot-bridge across the river, called the “Arts” because it leads to the School of Fine Arts and the Institute which houses the Academy of Fine Arts. He made living easier by opening abattoirs and increasing the number of markets. He helped business enterprises by constructing quays along the Seine and by establishing the Halle aux Vins where wine may be stored in bond until required by the merchants. This market also relieved such congestion as had turned the old Roman Thermes into a storehouse for wine casks. New cemeteries on the outskirts, one of them the famous PÈre Lachaise, the names upon whose tombs read like a roster of the nineteenth century’s great, lessened the crowding of the graveyards and the resulting danger in the thickly settled parts of the city.

The First Consul’s methods of reducing to order the disorder of France grew more and more stifling, his basic principle more and more that of centralization. Independence of thought as it found expression in politics, he silenced as he silenced the newspapers and censored all literary output. He set in action the modern machinery of the University of France, and he supervised the planning of the entire elementary school system, so centralized, that it is possible to know in Paris to-day, as he did, “What every child of France is doing at this moment.”

Unhampered trade and commerce, improved methods of transportation, a definite financial system headed by the Bank of France, a uniform code of laws—all these contributions to stability were entered into in detail by the marvelous visualizing mind whose vision could pierce the walls of the Tuileries and foresee that battle would be waged at the spot called Marengo on the map lying on the table.

Early in 1800 war was renewed in Italy and Napoleon in person superintended the perilous crossing of the Alps. Yet although the news of the victory at Marengo was celebrated in Paris with cheers and bonfires, the successes of the French armies in Italy and in Germany did not secure full popularity to the First Consul in Paris, for on Christmas Eve, 1800, an attempt was made upon his life as he was driving through a narrow street near the Tuileries. The bomb which was meant to kill him fell too far behind his carriage, however, and the only result of the plot was that he was provided with an excuse for ridding himself by exile and execution of some two hundred men whom he looked upon as his enemies.

In 1802 the Peace of Amiens put a temporary stop to the war, and Napoleon looked to France to reward him for winning glory and territory for the French flag. Already he was impatient of the ten-year limitation of his power, and it was his own suggestion that the people should be asked, “Shall Napoleon Bonaparte be made Consul for life?” This referendum resulted overwhelmingly in his favor. He was appointed Consul for life with the right not only to choose his successor but to nominate his colleagues. Then he encouraged French manufactures, he regulated taxes, he established art galleries in Paris and the departments, incidentally banishing the artists’ studios whose establishment had been allowed in the Louvre and in the side chapels of the church of the Sorbonne. He offered exemption from military service to students and other people to whom it would be a hardship, such as the only sons of widows, he assisted scientific men, among them our own Robert Fulton who, in 1803, built a steamboat which sank in the Seine. The nobility, whom Napoleon encouraged to return from exile, were allowed to use their titles, thereby establishing a precedent for the time when he himself would be creating dukes. For the moment he declared an aristocracy of merit by founding the Legion of Honor to which men are eligible by distinguished service to France in any field. The nation felt a soundness and a comfort that it had not known for many a long year.

Even the outside nations that had been at war with France thought it safe to visit it again and Paris was full of travelers who admired the new rue de Rivoli whose arcades run parallel with the Tuileries gardens. They found, too, that the old names of before the Revolution were being adopted once more—the Place de la Revolution became again the Place Louis XV—and the old etiquettes and elegances of royalty resumed. Josephine’s aristocratic connections helped to relate the old nobility with the new court and its “new” members whose fortunes had risen with their leader’s. Much of the glitter of the Tuileries came from the great number of soldiers always in evidence, for Napoleon’s suspicious nature caused him to have a large military escort wherever he went. His professional zeal prompted the careful review of the troops which he made every Sunday, and which was one of the “sights” for the tourists of the day who looked with an approach to awe upon the exact lines of grenadiers drilled to an astonishing accuracy.

As in the days of Francis I and Louis XIV the classical in art and language touched the pinnacle of popularity. With the government in the hands of “Consuls” it was appropriate that the legislative body should be called the “Tribunate.” The Tribunate held its sessions in the Palais Royal which had been called Equality Palace during the Revolution and was now christened Palace of the Tribunate.

It was through the Tribunate that Napoleon manipulated the offer of the title of Emperor which was made to him in 1804. It came as the crown of his ambition because it was the recognition of both his military skill and his political and administrative ability. He expressed his feeling when he refused the suggestion for an imperial seal of “a lion resting” and proposed instead “an eagle soaring.”

Success is a heady draught. At the beginning of his career Bonaparte used to compliment his generals by saying, “You have fought splendidly.” After a time he said, “We have fought splendidly.” Still later his comment was, “You must allow that I have won a splendid battle.”

With the pope Napoleon had made an arrangement, the Concordat, by which he restored the Roman Catholic as the national church of France. The papal power was not accepted as in other countries, but the treaty gave him a hold over the pope so that when the new emperor, to conciliate the royalists who were all Romanists, summoned him to assist at his coronation, Pius VII felt himself constrained to obey. He was lodged in the Pavilion of Flora, the western tip of Henry IV’s south wing of the Louvre, overlooking the Seine.

Napoleon and Josephine had been married only with the civil ceremony, as was the custom during the Revolution. On the day before the coronation Cardinal Fesch, Napoleon’s uncle, married them with the religious ceremony in the chapel of the Tuileries. The celebration of the Concordat had been conducted magnificently in Notre Dame, but the coronation on December 2, 1804, was the most splendid of the many splendid scenes upon which the Gothic dignity of the cathedral had looked down. In preparation, many small buildings round about were pulled down and many streets suppressed or widened. Decorated with superb tapestries, resounding with the solemn voices of the choir, the ancient church held a scene brilliant with the uniforms of generals and the rich costumes of officers of state and of representatives from all France, aflutter with plumes and glittering with the beauty and the jewels of the fairest women of the court. It was a scene unique in history, for never before had a man of the people commanded so superb a train every one of whom was alert with a personal interest in a ceremony which meant his own elevation as well as that of the aspirant to the power of that Charlemagne whose sword and insignia he had caused to be brought for the occasion.

The pope and his attendants advanced in dignified procession, acclaimed by the solemn hail of the intoning clergy. Before the high altar the Holy Father performed the service of consecration, anointing for his office the man who had been chosen to it by the will of the people. Then, as he was about to replace the gold laurel wreath of the victor with a replica of Charlemagne’s crown, Napoleon characteristically seized it and placed it on his own head.

With his own hands, too, he crowned Josephine. She was dressed like her husband in flowing robes of purple velvet heavily sown with the golden bee which Napoleon had copied from those found in the tomb of ChildÉric, father of Clovis, and which he had adopted as the imperial emblem because he wanted one older than the royalist fleur-de-lis. Followed by ladies of the court, her mantle borne by her sisters-in-law, who had been made princesses, Josephine knelt, weeping, before Napoleon, who placed her crown lightly on his own head and then laid it upon that of his empress. David’s famous picture hanging in the Louvre has saved this moment for posterity.

On the night before the coronation the city was plastered by royalist wits with placards which read: “Final performance of the French Revolution. For the benefit of a poor Corsican family.”

A fortnight later the emperor and empress were entertained by the city fathers at a banquet. The HÔtel de Ville had been gorgeously done over for the coronation, the throne room being hung with red velvet sown with the imperial bee. On the return of the distinguished guests to the Tuileries the streets were illuminated, and on the CitÉ a display of fireworks lighted up the ancient buildings.

The “poor Corsican family” did indeed profit by the successes of its prosperous member. After the coronation the imperial court far exceeded in elegance the court of the Consulate. Many of the ancient offices—Grand Almoner, Grand Marshal, Grand Chamberlain—were revived from the days of the Bourbons; many of them, indeed, were held by members of the old nobility; and it was one of Louis XVI’s former ambassadors to Russia who held the post of Master of Ceremonies, instructing, rehearsing