LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 233.-4 NOVEMBER, 1848. From the Westminster Review. Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire. Par M. A. THIERS. Paris: Paulin. Tomes V. VI. VII. THE history of a period so eventful as that of the Consulate and Empire of France, and by a writer so remarkable as M. Thiers, was sure to be welcomed with no ordinary degree of interest. The literary career of the author, the part he has acted in the councils of his country, the share he was ambitious of taking again; the transition state in which that country appeared to be placed during the trial between elective and hereditary monarchy; the acquisition policy of the imperial period, partly revived in the Spanish marriages and the Algerine colonization; have if possible increased the curiosity attaching to a work which, besides being an account of the past, may be looked upon as a manifesto of the future, and an indication of the policy which the author, certain circumstances permitting, would be prepared to vindicate and pursue. It is not our intention at present to bestow any examination on the earlier portions of the work relating to the consulate, but to invite the reader's attention to the three volumes containing the events of the empire from its inauguration in 1804 to the peace of Tilsit in 1807. These three years have the advantage of being clearly detached from the previous ones; they present the principal personage of the book in his new character of a monarch; they abound in momentous occurrences, profound combinations, sagacious institutions; and relate to a time during which the struggle with England was subordinate to the other and greater conflict with the continental powers; and therefore not so distasteful to the national vanity as to make us imagine M. Thiers an unwilling or incorrect narrator of those events in which the honor of this country is involved. Later-his impartiality might not command so entire a reliance. But we are not as yet arrived at the period when the war was begun in earnest between England and France; that is, when we landed an army in the peninsula, the vigorous direction of which, after years of hard fighting, step by step, ended in the dictation of peace, at the point of the bayonet, in the heart of the French territory. otherwise where England is concerned. Unfortunately for the historian, M. Thiers is a statesman, or as some will exclaim, only a politician. He has been a minister-he may be one again; for shallow and rash as were some of his schemes when in office, empty and idle as was his preference of a policy of isolation to the English alliance and coöperation so cordially tendered to him by this country in the first instance, there is yet no one else in all France whose addresses, whether from the tribune or the press, have produced a more powerful effect on opinion; and his influence must yet be considerable in the future councils of that country through the storms that await it both at home and abroad. A candidate for office mainly on anti-English views, he dares not face the unpopularity among his countrymen which a true account of English policy or of English achievements might sometimes occasion. Whilst, however, we caution the reader against taking up this work as a faithful chronicle of events-while we excuse M. Thiers for being, in his position, necessarily obliged to allow for the passions and prejudices of the French nation, and to combine the political advertisement with which he bespeaks their suffrages with the lofty flow of the long and magnificent drama with which he has ornamented the literature of his country; we cannot refuse our admiration both at the splendor of the painting, the clearness of the story, and the depth and shrewdness of thought with which it is interspersed. In these respects he is unsurpassed. Michelet is no doubt more terse, epigrammatic, and antithetical; and Lamartine more poetical and picturesque. M. Thiers exceeds the latter in force, the former in comprehensiveness, both in dramatic grandeur. It is with an agreeable surprise that we find views more enlarged, reflections more profound, on the character and motives of the individual human mind, the temptations of power, the tendencies of societies and nations, in the pages of the eager journalist and the ambitious deputy, than in the honest, philosophical, laborious lucubrations of our pains-taking Hallam, or Mackintosh, or Alison. From their aridities he is entirely free; such a quality would not only be intolerable in France, It will not, however, be for an accurate state- but, what is worse, fatal to views of future office. ment of fact that this work will be valuable in the With the vigor and satire of Gibbon, he has his eyes of an Englishman. In his accounts of the imposing current of language without the affectacontests between France and Austria, France and tion of his artificial sentences. It is odd that in Prussia, France and Russia, the successes obtained Gibbon, who was born and bred a country gentleby the first named country were so decided and man, we are constantly and disagreeably reminded brilliant that the historian can afford to be just to of the pedant and the rhetorician. In M. Thiers, the efforts and admire the exploits of the defeated who was certainly born far away from any genenemy, without impairing the interest of his narra-tility of position, we are struck with the grace tion for the ear of the French nation. It must be and ease of the general style, the terse eloquence of his comments, and often by elevation of the consequence of their attempts, that they should sentiments, the opposition of the contrasts, the have afforded to the ambitious chief whom they management of the lights and shades in the pic- were meant to destroy, the most convenient steptures which he delights in introducing. Every now ping-stones to that dignity-the object of his and then, amidst the intoxication of the full tide aspirations-which they had intended to secure of success, our attention is arrested by a significant for themselves! Nay, what is as strange, and observation embodying the melancholy presenti- more reproachful, is, that the cold-blooded tragedy ment that, notwithstanding the noonday splendor of the Duc d'Enghien—an attack made upon the of imperial pride and power, it will be his task to inviolability of all the royal families of Europe relate and comment upon its decline, and ultimate worthy only of the sanguinary temper and times catastrophe. He never seems to dismiss this of Richelieu-scarcely appeared to the occupiers subject completely from his anticipations, seldom of the thrones of the continent to disqualify the allows himself to dwell on the actual pictures perpetrator from taking his honored place among of military dominion and satiety of possession them. The general feeling at Berlin and Peterswithout intimating his recollection of the corre-burgh was one of abhorrence; and yet, after sponding reverses. He enjoys the spectacle, but displays of feeling which the respective sovereigns with the feelings of Damocles. From these had prompted and encouraged, not one of them made any difficulty about the recognition of the newly coined imperial title. Austria was calm enough; very different from Russia. "Aussi le premier consul n'avait qu'à se louer de l'indifférence pour la victime d'Ettenheim ! On était jeune, inexpérimenté à Petersbourg, on était surtout loin de la France. qualities, even if from these alone, his work will be valuable, dismissing for a moment all question as to its historical veracity. A mere fable, when interspersed with observations, always so shrewd, often profound, and sometimes just, would be an important addition to our political experience. Unhappily for the liberties of mankind, from the days in which the Girondins declared war in order to maintain themselves in office, when, in order that a few men (as it has since turned out) might have a little more freedom than they had been used to, and a much larger number infinitely less power than they had enjoyed-when Brissot wrote, "Il faut incendier les quatre coins de l'Europe; notre salut est là,"*—there has always been much more of destruction than of edification in the attempts made by nations to possess themselves of freedom, whose cause, in fact, has come into occasional disrepute from the violences of its professed apostles. It is in all cases an enormous evil, whatever may be the ultimate good, when a country has lost all its ties, laws, and standards of opinion, and exists under none but what it called into being yesterday, and may change tomorrow. These revolutionary deceptions, disappointing every one, paved the way for Bonaparte. When we pass to the empire, we enter at once on another sphere, in which the confused multiplicity of parties, views, and tendencies disappears, and power assumes a form, like its motto, of "union and force." On était sage, dissimulé à Vienne; surtout très proche du vainqueur de Within a few weeks, however, these potentates, with more or less of apparent cordiality, each unwilling to brave the resentment of the powerful chief of France, sanctioned his official assumption of that dignity so unanimously tendered to him by his own country. The sober portion of the French nation, the mass of those who possessed anything to lose, Admire (says M. Thiers) the depth of the lesson wearied with long years of anarchy, no less afraid conveyed. The man of their choice had been the butt of a criminal conspiracy-but then he had of intestine disturbance than of foreign invasion, himself just been guilty of a sanguinary act, and nay, many of those who were formerly adherents yet, at that very moment, people were not afraid to of the Bourbons, and anxious for their return-raise him on the buckler-so imperious was the in the utter hopelessness of such an event, and with the full conviction of the necessity of putting an end to the succession of plots and intrigues directed against the safety of France in the person of her ruler, became converts to the monarchical principle, and desirous that it should be reëstablished in favor of the very man whom the Bourbon emissaries had conspired to assassinate. Singular *Our safety requires us to set on fire the four corners of Europe. necessity; they raised him, not less glorious, it is So, in fact, it has been with other countries. As England put up with Monk, Spain with Narvaez, Mexico with Santa Anna-mere soldiers of nost moderate abilities, but who presented each in their day, an appearance of organized force more tolera ble than the continuance of democratic disorders | but not to the majority of the French nation; and (or the liability attaching to them) which they among a people so vain of display, so impressionseverally replaced. The Roman republic, argues the author, having existed for many centuries as a free commonwealth, did not become reconciled to hereditary monarchy for some generations. Not so in France, where all the traditional recollections, though rudely assaulted and in part defaced by the revolutionary storm, were intimately connected with regal institutions and dignity. In all countries torn by factions, threatened by foreign enemies, the necessity of being defended and governed will produce, sooner or later, the triumph of some powerful individual; a warrior like Cæsar at Rome; a rich man like the Medicis at Florence. If this country has always existed as a monarchy, and the madness only of faction has torn it from its normal condition to convert it into an ephemeral republic, it will then require some years of troubles to inspire a horror of anarchy; not quite so many years to find a soldier capable of bringing it to a close; and a wish of that soldier, or even a dagger from the hand of an assassin, will then be enough to make him king or emperor, to bring back the country to its old habits, and dissipate the dreams of those who had believed they could change human nature with their vain decrees, and still vainer oaths. Rome and Florence, long time republics, took more than half a century each to give themselves to the Cæsars and Medicis. England and France, republics of ten years' duration, ended in Cromwell and Napoleon. The French revolution, then, was condemned to do penance in the face of all Europe for the absurdities that had been attempted, and the crimes that had been committed in its name. Elle avait voulu une égalité barbare, chimérique, l'absence de toute hiérarchie sociale, la présence continuelle de la multitude dans le governement, l'abolition de tout culte * elle avait été folle et coupable, et elle devait venir able by outward show, it is probable that the mere insignia and phraseology of the monarchical office did materially aid in rivetting more firmly Bonaparte's power. "In every change some men are wanted to carry into effect the opinions which occupy the minds of all; that is, some instruments. There was one man singularly appropriate for the circumstance." It was Fouché. That ex-Jacobin was completely corrected of his republican errors. His excessive though new-born zeal for royalty leading him to urge a master, who assuredly needed little persuasion, and to labor as though it were necessary to hasten those who were already ascending fast enough. The monarchical reäction, which betrayed so general and imprudent an avidity was, thinks M. Thiers, All the more instructive and profound-all the more worthy of those great lessons which Providence bestows on mankind, when given by that heroic soldier, by those newly-converted republicans, all anxious to clothe themselves in purple on the ruins of a republic of ten years, to which they had taken a thousand oaths of fidelity. It perishedthis republic which had been declared imperishable, under the hand of a victorious general, as all repub lics end which do not go to sleep in the arms of an oligarchy. A tendency to go to sleep in peaceable times, or times of general prosperity, is common to all forms of government. Whether with the growing intelligence of the age, the forms of republicanism do not admit of a less terrible awakening than the violent convulsions by which the abuses of despotic and irresponsible authority are ultimately overthrown, is the problem which the French nation have again undertaken to solve. With such convictions as the above, we can understand the jealousy entertained by the French republicans of M. Thiers, who has now become a member of the National Assembly. They naturally do not wish the National Assembly to be put to sleep by him, nor to fall into the hands of an oligarchy of his creation.* We have said that the sentiments which invited Napoleon's elevation to the throne were all but unanimous throughout France-save to some of the more ultra republicans, and some discontented officers, chiefly of the army of the Rhine; and of that opposition the embers were dying away in the trials of the conspirators in the affair of George, and in which unhappily Moreau was involved. The sentence on the latter of two years' imprisonment was commuted into banishment. The historian lays it down, therefore, that a return to the monarchical constitution was inevitable, in obedience to the unchangeable dictates and convictions of human society. Nevertheless, he does not hesitate to intimate his regret that his hero acceded to this vulgar notion, still more that he was so impatient to seize it. Not that the right to confer it was wanting in the nation-but the object of its choice, who, as the first magistrate of the French republic, had scarcely his equal on the globe, when aggregated to the community of kings was at once to become their inferior in something, *Besides republicans, the election of M. Thiers is rewere it only in the single point of blood and hered-gretted by many of the most philosophically minded men in France as an unfavorable augury of future progress. itary descent. Was it not, too, opening a new The "Journal des Economistes" dreads in him an enemy career for his ambition-would he not be attempt- of public liberty in reference to education and local selfing fresh and more gigantic enterprises, and em-government-an advocate of monopolies-high tariffs, extravagant expenses, heavy taxes, and foreign war. bark in undertakings fatal to the fortune of France? moins que la révolution de Février ne l'ait totalement conSuch reflections may have occurred to the wise, verti." *"Se faire appeler, Sire-il aspire à descendre," was the witty criticism at the time, of Paul Louis Courier. "A M. Thiers was in office in 1835, when the laws of September were enacted against the press; a circumstance which will not be soon forgotten or forgiven.-ED. * in point of fact, was destined to fall before the test While he was thus ascending the steps of the throne Moreau was departing for exile. They were to come in sight of each other once more, at cannon-shot distance, under the walls of Dresden, both of them unfortunate-both of them guilty-the one in returning from abroad to bear arms against his country-the other for abusing his power so as to provoke an universal reaction against the greatness of France; the one dying by a French bullet, the other gaining a lost victory, but seeing already yawn-view, these unproductive as well as mischievous ing the abyss in which his prodigious destiny was results, did not fear to propose in the council of engulfed. However, those great events were then state the less popular but still far distant. Napoleon then seemed all powerful, and forever Yet even in the midst of the rejoicings that accompanied his elevation to the succession of the Bourbons, we are told that he was not without cares and troubles even in the bosom of the Bonaparte family, the several members of which, though born at such a distance from those dignities which their brother's abilities had conferred on himself, were discontented and intriguing. Doubtless he had experienced some vexations in these times, since, independently of its sterner visitations, Providence always mingles somewhat of bitterness, by anticipation, in the cup of our happiness, as if, by warning to the human soul, to prepare it for more remarkable calamities. Amid all these pomps and vanities he did not lose sight of finance and war. In the midst of his schemes of ambition he found time to originate an addition and improvement of the pecuniary resources of the nation. We more willingly draw attention to this circumstance, since even so late as February, 1848, we find so well-read a man as Mr. D'Israeli disparaging, without discrimination, his notions of political economy. Faulty in many respects, in others they were entitled to the highest praise. With all the gigantic enterprises he set on foot, and the exhausted state in which he found France, as a principle he never would borrow. Perhaps such a government would not have obtained extensive credit; but it is nevertheless an extraordinary contrast to the policy of Pitt and his successors, whose extravagance in that respect has so much burdened the present and future generations of England. Napoleon then, in opposition to this theoretical Simple and true theory of a contribution ably diversified, resting alike on every species of property and of industry, exacting from none of them an undue share of the public revenue, and producing therefore no artificial interference with prices. Drawing means from every channel along which not to lower too considerably the level in any one they flowed abundantly-and yet so moderately, as of them. This system, the fruit of time and experience, has but one drawback. The variety of objects liable to taxation increases the expense of collection; but then it presents so many advantages, and the contrary system is so violent, that the slight augmentation of expense it occasions cannot be considered a serious objection. This was maintained and carried in the council by Napoleon, with a wonderful sagacity, as if finance had been the chief study of his life. In a very able pamphlet lately published by Mr. Babbage, we perceive that a part of this reasoning is quoted with approbation; while others of our active political economists and statists appear ignorant or regardless of the advantages derived from the variety of the contributing sources, and thus illustrate the truth of Swift's sarcastic remark of the uselessness of one man's experience in warnthe advocates of Sir Robert Peel's tariff, in 1842, ing another. It was made a matter of boast by that some 400 or 500 articles had been admitted duty free; on what grounds of justice it would be difficult to say; but on those of expediency it was incorrectly urged, that we should be enabled to dispense with the services of that portion of the custom-house officers heretofore employed in examining the now exempted articles. It not being apparent to the ingenious framers of that tariff that examination would still be indispensable, in order tion did not fraudulently give cover for the introto ascertain that the commodities claiming exempduction of others liable to customs' duty. a He had long felt, notwithstanding the great additional means secured to the state by the equalization of taxation established at the revolution, that real property, less liable to the whole of the The long-intended descent upon this country public burdens, had been unfairly treated. While possessed by privileged bodies, the nobility and required, indeed, the utmost efforts in point of clergy, it had been privileged too-and had be- means to prepare it. Insufficiency of means of come the object of attack of the political economists transport in days when steam was unknown, when and the professors of love for the poor, who invent- naval armament could not be collected along the ed a land-tax as a substitute for all other imposts. the observation of our cruisers, perhaps to destrucshores of the channel without being exposed to But this theory, generous in its intention, false tion; the delay in the equipment of the men-ofA distinguished English general officer was in the war in the military ports of the west which were field on the memorable 27th of August, 1813, as military to protect the passage of the flotilla ;—all these commissioner with the allied armies. Moreau is said to have expressed to him, no long time before he received his death-wound, a presentiment of disaster. It was connected with the presence of Bonaparte at the head of the French army; in the neighborhood of his rival he involuntarily recognized the subjugation of his genius. circumstances had delayed the opportunity of an attempt until the end of August, 1804. Then "Thoughts on the Principles of Taxation, with reference to a Property Tax and its Exceptions." 1848. transfer the first display of his arms thither. The court of Vienna, ominously silent and insincere in its communications, naturally watched all his movements with intense anxiety-putting up devout prayers that the leader with his army on the shores of the ocean might meet with the fate of Pharaoh beneath its waves. the death of Latouche Trèville, the admiral of the of all the fortresses west of the Adige, and for Toulon fleet-a vain boaster, but an enterprising the movement of the divisions that had recently officer, and one on whose coöperation Napoleon paraded on the celebrated fields of Castiglione and had mainly counted-induced him to adjourn the Marengo, towards positions closer to the eastern attempt for another season. The winter witness- frontier of Lombardy. Thus much for defence. ed the ceremony of his coronation at Paris-the The heavy cavalry and spare infantry not destined spring of 1805 the corresponding formality at Mi- for England were directed towards the Rhine. lan; then followed a series of imperial progresses, He even then thought that circumstances might fêtes, reviews, and parades throughout his Italian dominions. But while bent in appearance only on Transalpine amusements, the mind of Napoleon was unceasingly maturing the means of accomplishing the projected, the darling enterprise of his heart. At first, Villeneuve, Missiessy, and Gantheaume were to have severally sailed with their respective squadrons for the West Indies, whither The rapidity of his bodily movements was even alarm for our colonies would draw the whole dis- surpassed by that of his mental combinations. posable naval force of England after them. The After a fortnight given to the remonstrances of united French fleet, then returning across the At- his councillors, and the instruction of his diplolantic, were to have appeared unexpectedly in the matic agents, to measures of precaution against Channel, to convoy the sailing of the expedition Europe, which he was leaving in arms behind from Boulogne. This first combination failed, him, he arrives, on the 3d of August (1805) at from the singular fact that Gantheaume, closely Boulogne, where 100,000 men had long been blockaded by Cornwallis in Brest, never found a awaiting the hour and the man. The latter was single day in the spring of 1805 on which he all they were then destined to see. Here he was could hope to evade the ceaseless watch of the devoured with impatience while vainly awaiting English squadron outside. March, April-those the arrival in the straits of the combined fleet, months usually so stormy, passed away without a which alone could confer a reasonable chance of single gale to mark the equinox. "Sire," writes success on the expedition. For many days no Gantheaume to him on the 1st of May, 1805, | news—at last an account of the indecisive action "the extraordinary weather which has prevailed of the French under Villeneuve with Calder, on since we have been under sailing orders is quite July 22d. The loss of only two line-of-battle dispiriting. * I had been proposing to get ships appeared to the French emperor almost a under weigh. All our ships were unmoored; a victory. He wrote to Villeneuve, (13th August,) west wind which had been blowing stiffly for some "Je suis fondé à penser que la victoire est restée hours had given me hopes that the enemy might à mes armes, puisque vous êtes rentré à la Cohave betaken himself to the open sea, when his rogne." He goes on to say he hopes this disin-shore squadron was descried from our anchor- patch will not find him there-that he will have age." About the same date there is another let- effected his junction with Lallemand, swept everyter from Gantheaume to Decrès. "Ainsi que j'ai thing before him, and entered the Channel," où mandé les temps ont été tels, qui'ils nous a été nous vous attendons avec anxiété.-Si vous ne impossible de nous dérober. L'Empereur l'avez pas encore fait faites le. Marchez hardije n'ose lui rien dire, n'ayant rien d'agréable à ment à l'ennemi. * Prévenez par un courier lui annoncer je me tais en attendant les extraordinaire, l'amiral Gantheaume du moment événements. Je me borne à désirer qu'il veuille de votre départ. * Enfin jamais, pour un nous rendre justice." Orders came up from the plus grand but, une escadre n'aura couru quelques wearer of the Lombard crown, on the banks of hazards. L'Angleterre n'a pas aux dunes plus the Po, that if Gantheaume had been unable to de 4 vaisseaux de ligne que nous harcelons tous sail before the 20th of May, he should then re- les jours avec nos prames et nos flotilles." main and await the appearance of Villeneuve be- a week he remained in an anxiety augmented by fore Brest. Frigates were despatched to the the suspicious accounts received respecting the West Indies, bidding the latter no longer look for policy of Prussia. To have added her to the list the Brest squadron out there; but to sail at once of his enemies would have been too much. Duroc for the latter port, release its commander from du- was therefore despatched to Berlin to bribe her by resse, and, overpowering the British blockading the offer of Hanover-a tender more dishonorable force of that port, enter the Channel, reinforced to the party that entertained it, than to him who by Gantheaume, in such numbers as to occupy, if made it. On the 22d of August, he received not overcome, such a remnant of the English fleet news from Villeneuve that he had sailed from as might have been left in it. On the night of Ferrol, and was steering for Brest and the Chanthe 8th of July, Napoleon disappeared from the nel. Fresh letters to Villeneuve, to encourage pageantry of Turin, emerging at Fontainebleau on him, and to Gautheaume, bidding him not to keep the 11th. Not entirely trusting the appearance the former waiting a moment-cajoling, flattering, of the Austrian horizon in Italy, he had left be- exhorting both in terms irresistible from such a hind him orders for the arming and provisioning quarter. "We are all embarked," he concludes For |