Nothing but memories now remains to France, or to the human race, of the splendors of Marengo, of Austerlitz, Jena, and Wagram; but the work which Napoleon did while Europe allowed him a few years of peace will endure for ages. Had the Treaty of Amiens been lasting, had England kept faith, had the old world dynasties been willing to accept at that time those necessary changes which have since cost so much labor, blood, and treasure, Napoleon might have gone down to history, not as the typical fighter of modern times, but as the peerless developer, organizer, administrator, and lawgiver. In his many-sided character there was the well-rounded man of peace, who delighted in improvement, in embellishment, in the growth of commerce, agriculture, and manufactures; in the progress of art, science, and literature; in the thorough training of the young, the care of the weaker members of society, the just administration of wise laws, the recognition of merit of all kinds. The orderly march of the legions of industry was no less satisfying to him than the march of armies. We have read so much of his battles that we have come to think of him as a man who was never so happy as when at war. This view is superficial and incorrect. It appears that he was never more energetic, capable, effective, never more at ease, never more cheerful, contented, kind, and magnetic than in the work connected with his schools, hospitals, public monuments, public improvements of all sorts, the codification of the laws, the encouragement and development of the various industries of France. No trophy of any of his campaigns did he exhibit with more satisfaction than he took in showing to visitors a piece of sugar made by Frenchmen from the beet—a triumph of home industry due largely to his stimulating impulse.

In all such matters his interest was intelligent, persistent, and intense. Few were the months given to him in which to devote himself to such labor; but he took enormous strides in constructing a new system for France which worked wonders for her, and which has had its influence throughout the civilized world.

The men of the Revolution had sketched a grand scheme of state education, but it remained a sketch. Napoleon studied their scheme, improved it, adopted it, and put it into successful operation. His thorough system of instruction, controlled by the State, from the primary schools to the Lyceums and the Technological Institute remain in France to-day substantially as he left them.

Under the Directory society had become disorganized and morals corrupt. Napoleon, hard at work on finance, laws, education, military and civil administration, inaugurated the reform of social abuses also. With his removal to the Tuileries, February 1800, may be dated the reconstruction of society in France. The beginnings of a court formed about him, and into this circle the notoriously immoral women could not enter. It must have been a cruel surprise to Madame Tallien—coming to visit her old friend Josephine—when the door was shut in her face by the usher. Of course it was by Napoleon’s command that this was done, never by Josephine’s. Applying similar rules to the men, Napoleon compelled Talleyrand to marry the woman with whom he openly lived; and even the favorite Berthier, too scandalously connected with Madame Visconti, was made to take a wife. Sternly frowning upon all flaunting immoralities, the First Consul’s will power and example so impressed itself upon the nation that the moral tone of society throughout the land was elevated, and a loftier moral standard fixed.

Under the Directory the material well-being of the country, internally, had been so neglected that even the waterways fell into disuse. Under the consular government the French system of internal improvements soon began to excite the admiration of Europe. Englishmen, coming over after the peace, and expecting to see what their editors and politicians had described as a country ruined by revolution, were amazed to see that in many directions French progress could give England useful lessons. Agriculture had doubled its produce, for the idle lands of former grandees had been put into cultivation. The farmer was more prosperous, for the lord was not on the lookout to seize the crop with feudal dues as soon as made. Nor was the priest seen standing at the gate, grabbing a tenth of everything. Nor were state taxes levied with an eye single to making the burden as heavy as peasant shoulders could bear.

Wonder of wonders! the man in control had said, and kept saying, “Better to let the peasant keep what he makes than to lock it up in the public treasury!” The same man said, “Beautify the markets, render them clean, attractive, healthy—they are the Louvres of the common people.” It was such a man who would talk with the poor whenever he could, to learn the facts of their condition. In his stroll he would stop, chat with the farmer, and, taking the plough in his own white hands, trace a wobbly furrow.

Commerce was inspired to new efforts, for the First Consul put himself forward as champion of liberty of the seas, combatting England’s harsh policy of searching neutral vessels and seizing goods covered by the neutral flag.

Manufactures he encouraged to the utmost of his power, by shutting off foreign competition, by setting the example of using home-made goods, and by direct subsidies. He even went so far as to experiment with the government warehouse plan, advancing money out of the treasury to the manufactures on the deposit of products of the mills.

No drone, be he the haughtiest Montmorency, whose ancestor had been in remote ages a murderer and a thief, could hold office under Napoleon. Unless he were willing to work, he could not enter into the hive. For the first time in the political life of the modern French, men became prouder of the fact that they were workers, doers of notable deeds, than that they were the fifteenth cousin of some spindle-shanked duke whose great-great-grandfather had held the stirrup when Louis XIII. had straddled his horse.

Having founded the Bank of France, January, 1800, Napoleon jealously scrutinized its management, controlled its operations, and made it useful to the State as well as to the bankers. He watched the quotations of government securities, took pride in seeing them command high prices, and considered it a point of honor that they should not fall below eighty. When they dropped considerably below that figure, some years later, the Emperor went into the market, made “a campaign against the Bears,” and forced the price up again—many a crippled bear limping painfully off the lost field.

The First Consul also elaborated a system of state education. Here he was no Columbus, no creator, no original inventor. His glory is that he accomplished what others had suggested, had attempted, but had not done. He took hold, gave the scheme the benefit of his tremendous driving force, and pushed it through. It will be his glory forever that in all things pertaining to civil life he was the highest type of democrat. Distinctions of character, merit, conduct, talent, he could understand; distinctions of mere birth he abhorred. The very soul of his system was the rewarding of worth. In the army, the civil service, the schools, in art and science and literature, his great object was to discover the real men,—the men of positive ability,—and to open to these the doors of preferment.

Remembering the sufferings he and his sister had endured at the Bourbon schools where the poor scholars were cruelly humiliated, he founded his training-schools, military and civil, upon the plan which as a boy he had sketched. The young men at his military academies kept no troops of servants, and indulged in no hurtful luxury. They not only attended to their own personal needs, but fed, curried, and saddled their own horses.

It was such a man as Napoleon who would turn from state business to examine in person an ambitious boy who had been studying at home for admission into one of the state schools, and who had been refused because he had not studied under a professor. “This boy is competent; let him enter the school,” wrote Napoleon after the examination: and the young man’s career was safe.

It was such a man who would invite the grenadiers to the grand banquets at the palace, and who would direct that special courtesies should be shown these humblest of the guests.

It was such a man who would read every letter, every petition addressed to him, and find time to answer all. Never too proud or too busy to hear the cry of the humblest, to reward the merit of the obscurest, to redress the grievance of the weakest, he was the man to make the highest headed general in the army—Vandamme himself, for instance,—apologized to the obscure captain who had been wantonly insulted. Any private in the ranks—the drummer boy, the grenadier—was free to step out and speak to Napoleon, and was sure to be heard as patiently as Talleyrand or Murat or CambacÉrÈs in the palace. If any difference was made, it was in favor of the private soldier. Any citizen, male or female, high or low, could count with absolute certainty on reaching Napoleon in person or by petition in writing, and upon a reply being promptly given. One day a careless secretary mislaid one of these prayers of the lowly, and the palace was in terror at Napoleon’s wrath until the paper was found. Josephine might take a petition, smile sweetly on the supplicant, forget all about it, and suavely assure the poor dupe when meeting him next that his case was being considered. Not so Napoleon. He might not do the sweet smile, he might refuse the request, but he would give the man his answer, and if his prayers were denied, would tell him why. The Revolution having levelled all ranks, there were no visible marks of distinction between man and man. Napoleon was too astute a politician not to pander to mankind’s innate craving for outward tokens of superiority. The Legion of Honor was created against stubborn opposition, to reward with ribbons, buttons, and pensions those who had distinguished themselves by their own efforts in any walk of life. It embraced merit of every kind,—civil, military, scientific, literary, artistic. Men of all creeds, of every rank, every calling, were eligible. The test of fitness for membership was meritorious service to the State. Such at least was Napoleon’s theory: whether he or any one else ever strictly hewed to so rigid a line may be doubted. His order of nobility had this merit: it was not hereditary, it carried no special privileges, it could not build up a caste, it kept alive the idea that success must be founded upon worth, not birth. In theory such an order of nobility was democratic to the core. Lafayette, whom Napoleon had freed from captivity, recalled to France, and reinstated in his ancestral domain, scornfully declined to enter this new order of nobility. So did many others—some because they were royalists, some because they were republicans. In a few years the institution had become so much a part of national life that the restored Bourbons dared not abolish it.

“I will go down to posterity with the Code in my hand,” said Napoleon with just pride, for time has proven that as a lawgiver, a modern Justinian, his work has endured. Early in his consulate he began the great labor of codifying the laws of France,—a work which had often been suggested, and which the Convention had partially finished, but which had never been completed.

To realize the magnitude of the undertaking, we must bear in mind that, under the Old Order, there were all sorts of law and all kinds of courts. What was right in one province was wrong in another. A citizen who was familiar with the system in Languedoc would have found himself grossly ignorant in Brittany. Roman law, feudal law, royal edicts, local customs, seigniorial mandates, municipal practices, varied and clashed throughout the realm. The Revolution had prostrated the old system and had proposed to establish one uniform, modern, and equitable code of law for the whole country; but the actual carrying out of the plan was left to Napoleon.

Calling to his aid the best legal talent of the land, the First Consul set to work. Under his supervision the huge task was completed, after the steady labor of several years. The Civil Code and the Code of Civil Procedure, the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, were the four parts of the completed system, which, adopted in France, followed the advance of the Empire and still constitutes the law of a large portion of the civilized world.

Every statute passed under Napoleon’s eye. He presided over the meetings when the finished work of the codifiers came up for sanction, and his suggestions, reasoning, experience, and natural wisdom left their impress upon every page. “Never did we adjourn,” said one of the colaborers of Napoleon, “without learning something we had not known before.” It is the glory of this Code that it put into final and permanent shape the best work of the Revolution. It was based upon the great principle that all citizens were legally equals; that primogeniture, hereditary nobility, class privileges, and exemptions were unjust; that property was sacred; that conscience was free; that state employment should be open to all, opportunities equal to all, state duties and state burdens the same to all; that laws should be simple, and legal proceedings public, swift, cheap, and just; and that personal liberty, civil right, should be inviolable.

Recognizing his right as master-builder, his persistence, zeal, active coÖperation in the actual work, and the modern tone which he gave to it, the world does him no more than justice in calling it the Code NapolÉon.

Another great distinctive work of the First Consul is the Concordat; and here his claim to approval must ever remain a question. Those who believe that the State should unite with the Church and virtually deny to posterity the right to investigate the most important of subjects, will always strain the language of praise in giving thanks to Napoleon for the Concordat. On the contrary, those who believe that the State should not unite with the hierarchy of any creed, but should let the question of religion alone,—leave it to be settled by each citizen for himself,—will forever condemn the Concordat as the colossal mistake of Napoleon’s career.

It will be remembered that the Revolution had confiscated the enormous, ill-gotten, and ill-used wealth of the Catholic Church, but in lieu of this source of revenue had provided ample salaries to the clergy, to be paid from the public treasury. It is not true that the Christian worship was forbidden or religion abolished. Throughout the Reign of Terror the Catholic Church continued to be a state institution. Only those priests who refused to take the oath of allegiance to the New Order were treated as criminals. It was not till September, 1794, that the Convention abolished the salaries paid by the State, thus separating Church and State. After this all creeds were on a level, and each citizen could voluntarily support that which he preferred,—Catholic, Protestant, or the Theophilanthropist.

It was the princely bishop, archbishop, and cardinal who had brought reproach upon the Church under the Old RÉgime; it was the humble parish priest who had maintained some hold upon the love and the respect of the people. When the Revolution burst upon the land, it was the prince of the Church who fled to foreign shores; it was the parish priest who remained at the post of duty. Bravely taking up the cross where the cardinals and bishops had dropped it, the curÉs reorganized their Church, pledged themselves to the new order of things, and throughout France their constitutional Church was at work—a voluntary association, independent of Rome, and supporting itself without help from the State. In one very essential particular it stood nearer to the Christ standard than the Church it replaced—it charged no fees for administering the sacraments.

This revived Gallican Church was distasteful to Napoleon, for he wished the State, the executive, to be the head, centre, and controlling power of everything. Voluntary movements of all sorts were his aversion.

To the Pope this independent Gallican Church was a menace, an impertinence, a revolt. Catholicism, be it never so pure in creed, must yield obedience and lucre to Rome, else it savors of heresy, schism, and dire sinfulness.

Again, to the Pope and to the princes of the Church this equality among the denominations in France was a matter that was almost intolerable. Where creeds stand on the same footing, they will compete for converts; where there is room for competition, there is license for investigation, debate, reason, and common sense. And we have the word of Leo XIII., echoing that of so many of his predecessors, that religion has no enemy so subtle, so much to be dreaded, so much needing to be ruthlessly crushed, as reason, investigation.

The Pope of Napoleon’s day held this view, as a matter of course; and in order to bring about a renewal of the union between the Catholic Church and the government of France he was ready to concede almost anything Napoleon might demand. Once the union had been accomplished, no matter on what terms, the papacy would feel safe. Evolution and time would work marvels; the essential thing was to bring about the union. Napoleon was mortal, he would die some day, and weaker men would succeed him—a stronger would never appear. Let the Pope bend a little to that imperious will, let concessions be made while the Church was getting fulcrum for its lever. Once adjusted, the lever would do the rest. So it appeared from the point of view of the Pope: time has proven him right.

On the part of Napoleon there were reasons of policy which lured him into the toils of Rome. Immense results, immediate and personal, would follow his compact with the Pope; for these he grasped, leaving the future to take care of itself. For Napoleon was personally undergoing a great transformation. Gradually his mind had filled with dreams of empire. The cannon of Marengo had hardly ceased to echo before he began to speak of “My beautiful France.” Between himself and those about him he steadily increased the distance. His tone was that of Master. Tuscany having been taken from Austria, he made a kingdom out of it, put a feeble Bourbon upon its throne, dubbed the puppet King of Etruria, and brought him to Paris where the people of France could behold a king playing courtier to a French consul. At the Tuileries the ceremony and royalty encroached constantly upon republican forms, and the lip service of flatterers began to displace military frankness and democratic independence.

Looking forward to supreme power, Napoleon was too astute a politician to neglect the priest. As Alexander had bent his head in seeming reverence at altars, and listened with apparent faith to Grecian oracles; as CÆsar had posed as Roman chief priest, and leagued himself to paganism; so Napoleon, who had been a Mussulman at Cairo, would now become a Catholic in Paris. It was a matter of policy, nothing more.

“Ah, General,” said Lafayette to him, “what you want is that the little vial should be broken over your head.”

It all led up to that.

Monarchy was to be restore, and its natural supports—the aristocrat and the priest—were needed to give it strength. By coming to terms with the Pope, Napoleon would win, and the Bourbons lose, the disciplined hosts of the Catholic Church.

Therefore the Concordat was negotiated, and the French Church, which even under the Bourbons had enjoyed a certain amount of independence, was put under the feet of the Italian priest, under the tyranny of Rome.

By this compact the Pope held to himself the right to approve the clerical nominees of the State, while the tax-payers were annually to furnish $10,000,000 to pay clerical salaries. By this compact was brought back into France the subtle, resistless power of a corporation which, identifying itself with God, demands supreme control.

Napoleon himself soon felt the strength of this released giant, and the France of to-day is in a death grapple with it.

The time may come when the Concordat will be considered Napoleon’s greatest blunder, his unpardonable political sin. It was not faith, it was not even philanthropy which governed his conduct. It was cold calculation. It was merely a move in the game of ambition. At the very moment that he claimed the gratitude of Christians for the restoration of religion, he sought to soothe the non-believers by telling them that under his system religion would disappear from France within fifty years.

It is not true that a majority of the French clamored for a return of the old forms of worship. On the contrary, the vast majority were indifferent, if not hostile. In the army it caused a dangerous conspiracy among the officers, against Napoleon’s life.

When the Concordat came to be celebrated by a pompous pagan ceremonial in the cathedral of Notre Dame, it required all of his authority to compel a respectful attendance, as it had required the utmost exercise of his power to secure the sanction of the state authorities to the Concordat itself. More than one saddened Frenchman thought what General Delmas is reported to have said, when Napoleon asked his opinion of the ceremonial at Notre Dame; “It is a fine harlequinade, needing only the presence of the million men who died to do away with all that.”

Yes, a million Frenchmen had died to do away with that,—the worst feature of the Old Order,—and now it had all come back again. Once more the children of France were to have their brains put under the spell of superstition. They were to be taught the loveliness of swallowing every marvel the priest might utter, and the damnation of thinking for oneself upon any subject ecclesiastical. They were to be crammed from the cradle, on one narrow creed, and incessantly told that hell yawned for the luckless wight who doubted or demurred.

With a line of writing, with a spurt of the pen, Napoleon reËnslaved the nation. So well had the image breakers of the Convention done their work that it appeared to be only a question of time when France, “having by her own exertions freed herself, would, by the force of her example, free the world.” As MÉneval states, “Catholicism seemed at its last gasp.” Rapidly Europe was being weaned from a worn-out creed, a threadbare paganism. Idols had been broken, miracles laughed out of countenance, the bones of alleged saints allowed to rest, and the mummeries of heathen ceremonial mocked till even the performers were ashamed.

A few bigots or fanatics, chained by an education which had left them no room for unfettered thought, longed for the return of the old forms; but the mass of the French people had no more wish for their reËstablishment than for the restoration of the Bourbons. France was religiously free: every citizen could believe or not believe, worship or not worship, just as he pleased.

Of all rulers, Napoleon had the best opportunity to give mental independence an open field and a fair fight. No ruler less strong than he could have achieved the task of lifting the Church from the dust, and frowning down the ridicule which had covered with discredit idol, shrine, creed, and ceremonial rite.

He did it—he alone! And verily he reaped his reward. The forlorn prisoner of St. Helena, sitting in misery beside the cheerless hearth in the night of endless despair, cursed himself bitterly for his huge mistake.

Some who defend the Concordat say that it enabled Napoleon to make alliances which otherwise he could not have made. The facts do not support the assertion. He was at peace with Continental Europe already, and Great Britain was certainly not influenced to peace by France’s agreement with the Pope. No alliances which Napoleon ever made after the Concordat were stronger than those he had made before; and as the restorer of Catholicism in France, he was not nearer the sincere friendships of monarchs and aristocracies abroad than he had been previous to that time.

In the murk of modern politics the truth is hard to find, but even a timid man might venture to say that the question of religion is the last of all questions to influence international relations. Comparing the prolonged security which Turkey has enjoyed with the fate which recently befell Catholic Spain and Protestant South African republics, the casual observer might hazard the statement that it is at least as safe to be Mahometan as Christian, so far as winning international friendship is concerned. “Don’t strike! I am of the same faith as you—both of us hope for salvation in the blood of the same Savior!” is a plea which is so worthless among Christians that the weaker brother never even wastes breath to make it.