Worlds Best Histories - France, vol 7

World's Best Histories - France,
vol 7

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Title: Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7
Author: M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

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[Illustration: JOSEPHINE]

World's Best Histories: FRANCE
BY M. GUIZOT AND MADAME GUIZOT DE WITT
IN EIGHT VOLUMES VOLUME SEVEN

HISTORY OF FRANCE
VOLUME SEVEN
TABLE OF CONTENTS--VOL. VII.
CHAPTER VII.
The Consulate (1799-1804)

CHAPTER VIII.
Glory and Success (1804-1805)
CHAPTER IX.
Glory and Conquest (1805-1808)
CHAPTER X.
The Home Government (1804-1808)
CHAPTER XI.
Glory and Illusions. Spain and Austria
CHAPTER XII.
The Divorce (1809-1810)
CHAPTER XIII.
Glory and Madness. The Russian Campaign (1811-1812)

THE HISTORY OF FRANCE
CHAPTER VII.
THE CONSULATE (1799-1804).
For more than ten years, amid unheard of shocks and sufferings, France
had been seeking for a free and regular government, that might assure
to her the new rights which had only been gained through tribulation.
She had overthrown the Monarchy and attempted a Republic; she had
accepted and rejected three constitutions, all the while struggling
single-handed with Europe, leagued against her. She had undergone the

violence of the Reign of Terror, the contradictory passions of the
Assemblies, and the incoherent feebleness of the Directory. For the first
time since the death of King Louis XIV., her history finds once more a
centre, and henceforth revolves round a single man. For fifteen years,
victorious or vanquished, at the summit of glory, or in the depths of
abasement, France and Europe, overmastered by an indomitable will
and unbridled passion for power, were compelled to squander their
blood and their treasure upon that page of universal history which
General Bonaparte claims for his own, and which he has succeeded in
covering with glory and crime.
On the day following the 18th Brumaire, in the uncertainty of parties,
in face of a constitution audaciously violated, and a government mainly
provisional, the nation was more excited than apprehensive or
disquieted. It had caught a glimpse of that natural power and that free
ascendancy of genius to which men willingly abandon themselves, with
a confidence which the most bitter deceptions have never been able to
extinguish. Ardent and sincere republicans, less and less numerous, felt
themselves conquered beforehand, by a sure instinct that was not
misled by the protest of their adversaries. They bent before a new
power, to which their old hatreds did not attach, which they believed to
be in some sort created by their own hands, and of which they had not
yet measured the audacity. The mass of the population, the true France,
hailed with joy the hope of order and of a regular and strong
administration. They were not prejudiced in favor of the philosophic
constitution so long propounded by Sieyès. In the eyes of the nation,
the government was already concentrated in the hands of General
Bonaparte; it was in him that all were trusting, for repose at home and
glory and peace abroad.
In fact, he was governing already, disregarding the prolonged
discussions of the two legislative commissions, and the profound
developments of the projects of Sieyès, expounded by M. Boulay.
Before the Constitution of the year VIII, received the sanction of his
dominant will, he had repealed the Law of Hostages, recalled the
proscribed priests from the Isle of Oléron, and from Sinnamari most of
those transported on 18th Fructidor. He had reformed the ministry, and

distributed according to his pleasure the chief commands in the army.
As Moreau had been of service to Bonaparte in his coup