69. FRENCH CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION

        Mode of Selection.  On January 24, 1789, the crown issued regulations for convoking the three Estates as “counsellors and friends.” They were assured that they would speak for the nation, control taxation, and meet at regular intervals for the future —for their last regular assembly had been in 1614.

Each Estate was directed to choose its representatives in the traditional manner, though as a palliative the Third Estate was allowed double representation.

Secular objectives are revealed in the cahiers or memorials    drawn up by various district constituencies for directing their delegates in voicing grievances. Their tenor was frequent y suggested by bourgeois lawyers, and the duke of Orléans is believed to have exercised a special influence throughout the Loire Valley. A consensus of these complaints reveals

Clerical aspirations exhibit the point of view of the rank and file of the secular clergy. Frequently mentioned proposals were:

What is remarkable is that these and all other desired “reforms” were sought from the crown; not one cahier proposed recourse to the Holy See to remedy abuses.

Organizational contest. The Estates General formally opened their sessions at Versailles on May 5 when they listened to a rambling speech from the throne, and long reports by Barenton and Necker that were poorly understood. But on May 6 the king directed the Estates to organize separately in order to cast their votes by houses, as of yore. Since this procedure would enable the two privileged Estates to outvote the commoners, the Third Estate invited the others to join them in forming a “National Assembly” where voting would be by head. This method, in view of the Third Estate’s double representation, could ensure the latter a slight majority. A deadlock ensued until June 17 when Abbé Sieyès led the Third Estate in arrogating to itself the role of “National Assembly.” Many clerics and a few nobles expressed sympathy with this plan, although the majority votes of the privileged Estates opposed it.

Victory of the Third Estate. On June 22 a long-delayed royal session was held. The court had twice evicted the commoners from their meeting places, and they had retorted by an oath not to disband until they had given the nation a constitution. The king now bluntly ordered them to conform to the traditional organizational procedure. After the king’s departure, however, the Third Estate, reputedly on Mirabeau’s motion, refused to disperse, asserting that it represented the nation and that only bayonets could dismiss them. The court wavered between coercion and appeasement: while the comte d’Artois recommended the use of troops, others doubted their loyalty. Meanwhile the duc D’Orléans and forty-seven of the nobles rallied to the Third Estate, with which the majority of the clergy were now in sympathy. On June 27 the king yielded to the demand that all three Estates meet together and vote by head. Irresolute, averse to bloodshed, fearful of responsibility, Louis XVI would henceforth capitulate in every decisive political—though not religious—contest. The “sovereign people” had embarked on their momentous revolution for the principles of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité—which last may be equated with nationalism. ^{[p. 434]}

Political parties. The National Assembly became a disorderly body permitting endless discussion. Its leaders were mostly lawyers or civil servants. Though there were no organized political parties in the Anglo-Saxon sense, members might be classified according to their views. As “birds of a feather flocked together,” this physical circumstance has given some ideological significance to the position of their seats. The Right showed itself politically inept, reactionary, without a positive program. The Moderate Right, indeed, was composed of theorists favoring constitutional monarchy on a British model, but it lacked popular and nationalist support. The Plain in the center of the assembly comprised some six hundred leaderless deputies with few decided views, and these easily modified by oratory or mob pressure. The Moderate Left was well led and provided the leadership for the first phase of the Revolution. The Radicals, seated in the “mountain” of the galleries, favored a republic, but had as yet little influence in the assembly itself while located at Versailles. Clubs, such as the Jacobins, outside the assembly, were quite as important as the deputies on the floor in preparing and pressing through measures.

Fall of the Bastile. The Parisian mob often showed its power. Reports, partly true, reached the populace that the court was planning a reaction. On July 11 the beloved Necker was dismissed , and it was rumored—falsely, as it proved—that Orléans was in exile. By July 12 the demagogue Des Moulins was stirring up discontent in Paris and for several days the mob was out of control. Private grudges were settled, shops pillaged, and then on July 14 the mob’s attention was directed to the Bastile, symbol of autocracy, although at the moment housing but seven non-political criminals. The commandant Launay yielded after some skirmishing and bloodshed, while rumor and propaganda magnified the incident into a heroic popular storming of a royal stronghold.

“The Great Fear.” The Bastile uprising prevented any possible royal coup. Louis XVI recalled Necker, donned a revolutionary cap, and absolved the rioters. The comte d’Artois in disgust led the aristocratic die-hards across the border—first of an increasing class of émigrés. Panic, probably in large measure artificially induced, spread into the provinces, where peasants began to take vengeance on hated landlords and destroy the written records of their feudal obligations. Impressed by these developments, prelates and nobles hastened during an emotional session on the evening of August 4 to renounce feudal privileges which by then the near anarchy had rendered largely academic. Included in this impulsive renunciation were the clerical tithes. By August ^{[p. 435]} 13 these pledges had been formally enacted into law, and the Assembly’s “Rights of Man” included the declaration: “The National Assembly destroys the feudal regime entirely.”

Storming of Versailles. Formulation of the constitution, however, was interrupted by new disturbances. When the court again manifested a supposed reactionary tendency—or intoxicated loyalists talked too freely —the Parisian demagogue Marat informed the citizens that counterrevolution was being plotted at Versailles. A mob, in large part feminine, marched on Versailles, October 5, followed at a distance by Lafayette and his newly formed bourgeois National Guard. The rioters invaded the Assembly with their demands for bread. While the president, Mounier, went to negotiate with the court, the bishop of Langres, presiding in his absence, was insulted and ridiculed. The rioters were finally appeased for the time being and settled down for the night. Lafayette persuaded the king to substitute his civic guard for the royal troops. Early the next morning, however, the mob anticipated Lafayette, surged through the civilian guard afraid or unwilling to fire on it, and sacked the palace, where it narrowly missed capturing the queen, whom it gave every indication of murdering. Lafayette belatedly restored order by persuading the king to promise to move to the Tuileries in Paris, and the balcony appearance of the still beloved monarch put the Parisians in good humor. They transported the royal- family in a carriage to Paris, and installed the “Baker’s family” in a near prison at the Tuileries Palace. The Assembly followed the monarch to Paris where it was installed in the Manege, much more accessible to mob pressure and threats from the galleries.

“Rights of Man and the Citizen.” Protracted debates had been going on regarding the “rights of man” which were elaborately defined according to prevailing deist and rationalist philosophy. The work, which proceeded in piecemeal fashion, may be here summarized. In place of the Old Regime of “arbitrary fiat,” was to be substituted what purported to be a government by law. Thus Article 1 declared that: “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights”—about duties the Liberals were much less emphatic. Abbe Sieyès took the lead in proclaiming freedom of speech, of the press, from arrest, of trial; moreover, “no one may be disturbed for his opinions, even in religion, provided that their manifestation does not trouble public order as established by law” (Article 10) . Private property was highly safeguarded, and the original Declaration of August, 1789, proclaimed it a “sacred and inviolable right.”

Political administration. But slogans more than practical statesmanship ruled the day, and fear of tyranny led to a clumsy administrative ^{[p. 436]} machinery on a theory of separation of powers. The king was named chief executive, but given slight control over elective officials in charge of executive bureaus, themselves denied seats in the legislature. A unicameral legislative assembly took the place of the estates, but a self-denying ordinance forbidding re-election promised another inexperienced body. Legal parlements were replaced by elected judges who soon became tools of the dominant faction. The local provinces were replaced by eighty-three départements deliberately suppressing traditional boundaries, customs, and dialects. These départements and their subdivisions were made autonomous under a host of elected officials. Though all males over twenty-five were made “passive citizens,” only “active citizens,” determined by a high property qualification, were allowed to vote. Electoral procedure was so indirect and complicated, elections and candidates so numerous, that soon all but purposeful Jacobins were discouraged in its exercise.

Secularization of property. Financial difficulties were an occasion for anticlerical legislation, for the Assembly dared not enforce the old taxes and feared to impose new ones. On October 10, 1789, the worldly Bishop Talleyrand of Autun proposed that all the ecclesiastical property be placed at the disposal of the “Nation.” After acrimonious debate, confiscation was voted on November 2 by the narrow margin of 368 to 346. Mirabeau then proposed the assignats, interest-bearing notes to be issued in large denominations and backed by the church property as collateral, and in the face of a passive and silent hierarchy sales began in December. The secular clergy were offered in recompense a salary of 1,200 francs from the state treasury; Mirabeau felt they would become “public officers” subject to governmental control. Though nationalization indeed cooled clerical ardor for the Revolution, the Assembly still believed that it had done nothing more than substitute its sovereignty over the ecclesiastical order for that of the crown. On February 13, 1790, the suppression of the religious orders was voted, the Assembly graciously offering the religious a dispensation of their vows, although leaving them but meager means of support. Nuns might remain in their convents and only six hundred of thirty-seven thousand took advantage of the “dispensation.” Male religious who wished to remain were ordered grouped in a few “concentration monasteries,” irrespective of rule or order. Even conscientious religious preferred not to remain on such terms; they sought work or asylum in the parishes or with their families.

Regimentation of clergy. During the debates on the religious settlement, secularists observed that: “The Church is in the state; the state is not in the Church.” Since separation of Church and state was still inconceivable to man Frenchmen, the Assembly on July 12 1790, voted the “Civil Constitution of the Clergy.”  This made some provisions under four titles:

1) Existing eighteen archbishoprics were to be reduced to ten, and 135 dioceses to 85, one for each département, while towns having less than 6,000 inhabitants were restricted to a single priest.

2) Parishes were to be equated with communes, and pastors were to be elected by the district assemblies. They were to receive canonical institution from the bishop, but might name their own assistants. Bishops in turn were to be elected by departmental electoral colleges, and instituted by the metropolitans. True confirmation by the Holy See was excluded; Rome was merely to be notified of an accomplished fact.

3) Prelatial revenues were curtailed in favor of the poorer curates. Bishops were now allowed 12,000 to 20,000 livres; minor prelates 3,400 to 4,000; pastors, 1,200 to 4,000; assistants, 700 to 1,200.

4) Clerical residence was required under pain of forfeiture of salary: bishops and pastors must obtain governmental leave for all absences.

Clerical schism. Pope Pius VI hesitated to condemn this measure immediately, though he requested the king not to sanction it. The papal request arrived a day late; Louis XVI had signed on July 22. Even then the pope delayed formal condemnation of the Civil Constitution until April 13, 1791, although he had previously sustained clerics who defied it. The French hierarchy had denied the Assembly’s competence to enact the Civil Constitution, but on November 27, 1790, the Assembly retorted by exacting an oath, effective January 4, 1791. Abbé Gregoire led 62 priests in the Assembly in taking the oath. Of 160 bishops, only Cardinal Brienne of Sens, Talleyrand of Autun, Jarentes of Orléans, and Savine of Viviers, among the ordinaries, took the oath, along with three auxiliaries. The majority of the non-juring bishops became émigrés in 1790, while Talleyrand on February 24, 1791, inaugurated a schismatic hierarchy by consecrating Marolles and Expilly. Though the consecrator deserted the ecclesiastical state shortly afterwards, he assured Father Emery of St. Sulpice he had had the proper intention. Thus the “constitutional” or juring hierarchy came into being. Exact figures on the attitude of the lower clergy are not available, but about forty-five per cent seem to have taken the oath at first, though some of these later retracted. Although the constitutional clergy were placed in control of the nationalized churches by the Assembly, many Frenchmen, especially the peasants, continued to support the “non-jurors,” and in some instances forcibly kept them in possession. When the king resisted penalties for the non-jurors, the Assembly on May 9, 1791, temporized by allowing the latter to say Mass in the churches with the jurors’ leave. As a consequence, many French parishes had two titulars. Thus the Civil Constitution effected the first real break in the ranks of the Third Estate, alienating the Revolution ^{[p. 438]} not merely from the throne, but from the altar as well. The king, having ratified the Constitution with misgivings, was filled with remorse and now secretly intrigued with foreign powers in opposition to the new regime.

Ideological conflict. Meanwhile, Europe had begun to take sides in regard to the French Revolution. Jacobin clubs and masonic lodges sought to create a favorable “fifth column,” while the émigrés spread tales of woe. Monarchs, at first disposed to rejoice at France’s discomfiture, began to fear for their crowns. Incorporation of Alsace-Lorraine embroiled the empire, and occupation of Avignon involved the papacy. Queen Marie Antoinette entered into communication with her brother, Emperor Leopold II, and the royal family attempted to flee to Metz on June 20, 1791, in order to co-operate with an army of liberation. Halted at Varennes, the king was ignominiously brought back to Paris. Henceforth he was discredited and quite powerless to halt a radical trend. Yet he gave formal sanction to the Constitution, September 14, 1791, and the Assembly dissolved. Supposedly the Revolution was over, but there would yet be some bloody amendments to the “Constitution of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.”

Domestic shift to the Left. The newly elected legislature was composed of more extreme revolutionists, for only five per cent of the people had voted and Jacobin electoral propaganda had been largely successful. The Girondins constituted the dominant party, drawn chiefly from the region of that name in the south of France. Their leaders were agnostic or atheistic lawyers, often pompous theorists who aped Roman classicism. The party was largely bourgeois in composition; if it had any definite program, it inclined to favor federation of local units. On the other hand, the Jacobins were predominantly Parisian and tended to be centralist in politics. Their chiefs proved more responsive to the mob. The doctrinaire theorist Robespierre was at first overshadowed by a brutal realist, Danton. The old Right had fled, and the former Moderate Right, having lost its great strategist, Mirabeau, remained an uninfluential minority. The Plain was as vacillating as before, prone to bend under pressure of the proletarian Parisian populace, controlled by Marat.

Foreign menace. The king’s unsuccessful flight had not merely destroyed his prestige: it had focused attention on the foreign intervention secretly invoked by the court and openly demanded by the émigrés. The Assembly strove to force the latter to return to France under penalty of judicial death sentence and confiscation of property. This measure did little more than stress the ideological nature of the conflict into which ^{[p. 439]} France was to draw most of Europe. The menace of foreign intervention on behalf of the king and against the Revolution now formed a background for the deliberations of the Assembly, and inclined it in self-defense to ever more extreme measures. In Germany, with Prussian support for a change, the Habsburgs mobilized the resources of the antique Holy Roman Empire. The Assembly adopted a defiant attitude toward alien threats, and on April 20, 1792, forced the king to declare war upon his would-be rescuers. This brought down on France the armies of the First Coalition (1792-97). At first a succession of French ministries mismanaged military operations, but the Assembly merely blamed the royalists and the clergy for disasters. Vastly superior allied forces slowly penetrated France against undisciplined militia. Allied propaganda, however, boomeranged for it made the Radicals more desperate.

Fall of the monarchy. When the Prussian commander Brunswick issued an inept threatening manifesto, the Assembly on July 11 proclaimed the country in danger, and presently evoked a Levée en masse, the first total mobilization of a nation for war. Popular suspicions of the king’s loyalty to France culminated in an attack on the Tuileries, August 9-10. The Swiss Guard was massacred and the royal family forced to take refuge with the Assembly. This, after suspending the king from his functions, consigned him to the old house of the Knights Templar under close surveillance. Radicals gained control of the Assembly which soon dissolved, calling for a new constitutional convention to provide republican institutions for France. The monarchy had terminated; its abolition the following September 21 merely confirmed this.

Anticlerical legislation was the natural consequence of the fact that the moderate Leftists now in power came to identify the non-jurors with the émigrés and the foreign foes of the Revolution. As early as November, 1791, the Assembly had threatened the non-jurors with deportation and had annulled the property rights of such of the faithful as had deserted the ministrations of juring clergy. The king, however, had vetoed this legislation and rural sentiment veered more strongly in favor of the non-jurors. But in May, 1792, war excitement enabled the Assembly to override the royal veto by again voting exile for non-jurors and seizing all church goods for the benefit of the jurors. An effigy of the pope was insulted by a Parisian mob, the church of Ste. Geneviève converted into the Pantheon, and the papal territory of Avignon formally annexed to France.

Persecution was not long in following. Abbé Raynau, archdeacon of Senez, is the first priest known to have been killed during the Revolution. He was slain on June 6, 1792, and at least twenty-two others are ^{[p. 440]} known to have been killed before the September massacres opened the violent phase of the Revolution. When Danton came into power as virtual director of the provisional government, August 10, 1792, the arrest of all non-jurors was ordered. The Assembly concluded its labors by usurping jurisdiction over marriage: civil marriage, clerical matrimony, and divorce were legalized. But the massacres of September soon made brutally clear that the constitutional phase of the French Revolution had ceased for a time, and that a violent period, justified as a war measure, was opening.

70. FRENCH VIOLENT REVOLUTION

September massacres. Imprisonment of the clergy continued throughout August. While the lame duck Legislative Assembly was making way for the Convention, real power lay with the Commune of Paris. The Right had fled, the Center went into hiding, and the Moderate Left was intimidated by the extremists. On August 30, Danton suggested a general search for concealed weapons in the city, and this gave occasion to murder. Danton, if not personally desirous of the massacre, abetted it by entrusting the search to the bloodthirsty Marat. At the latter’s suggestion the guards were removed from the prisons, and for some days the government’s eyes were closed: indeed, a committee of investigation reported that “it was too dark to see anything.” Jacobin orators then stirred up the populace to exercise their “sovereign justice” by killing all “counterrevolutionaries.” From September 2 to 6, mobs invaded prisons and dwellings to kill the “enemies of the Revolution” outright, or drag them before improvised tribunals which passed routine death sentences. All known non-jurors, save Monsignor Salamon, the secret papal nuncio, were killed. Exact statistics are impossible, but the number of victims is placed between eleven hundred and fifteen hundred, among whom there were about four hundred priests. The massacres precipitated widespread emigration on the part of the French clergy: some thirty thousand to forty thousand fled or were deported. Heroic non-jurors who remained had to go underground, while France was terrified into acceptance of a Jacobin dictatorship.

Republican inaugural. The elections for the Convention, the new legislature, were conducted under shadow of the September massacres. Only six hundred thousand voters dared turn out, and this resulted in another sharp shift to the Left in the political composition of the new body. Even the former Moderate Right had now vanished. The Girondists, formerly a comparatively Moderate Left, soon were branded by Jacobins as “Rightist Reactionaries,” while the Radicals under Danton, ^{[p. 441]} Marat, and Robespierre took over active leadership of the Convention. Encouraged by the unexpected and somewhat mysterious French victory at Valmy over the allied invaders, September 20, 1792, the Convention abolished the monarchy and designated September 22 as the beginning of the Year I of a new Revolutionary Calendar.

Regicide. With such measures the Girondists, republican constitutionalists, would have been well satisfied. But the Jacobins clamored for the execution of the king as a political necessity. For some time the Girondists demurred, but under popular pressure were rushed from half measure to half measure until at length they acquiesced in a death sentence for Louis XVI. After a sensational trial, the former king was condemned to death by 361 votes to 360 out of a possible 749. On January 21, 1793, the election of Duke Hugh Capet in 987 was undone: pedantically designated as “Citoyen Capet,” his descendant Louis was executed. Incompetent as a ruler, he yet knew how to die as a Christian gentleman. Royalist sentiment, apathetic before the abuses of the Ancien Régime, now revived and reached fanatical proportions among some of the émigrés, including many of the prelates. On the other hand, within France a regicide oligarchy had been created which was irrevocably committed to the Revolution and the war against foreign intervention. Having gambled all, the Revolution must perforce subscribe to Danton’s slogan: “L’audace, toujours l’audace.(“[be] daring – always more daring!”) In self-defense, the Convention inaugurated a “Reign of Terror.”

Civil conflict. In March, 1793, a royalist insurrection began in La Vendée in the west of France, and this gave the Jacobins the ample pretext for crushing all opposition by summary methods. From March 4, 1793, the executive was committed to a “Committee of Public Safety,” armed with dictatorial powers. Thirty-one Girondin deputies were arrested in June and the rest frightened into absenting themselves. Thus purged, the Convention became a Jacobin tool. It voted the committee plenary powers over conscription, war, life, and personal property. Arrests were made on mere suspicion; prisoners were seldom allowed much defense, and often were condemned in roups without even an opportunity to speak for themselves. The error then, was the plan of a select minority to force Frenchmen to become revolutionaries whether they willed or no  The queen was executed in October, 1793, one of over five thousand victims of the Terror which raged against Girondin bourgeoisie as well as aristocrats; the grand total throughout France may have reached twenty or thirty thousand. The guillotine became the “national razor,” and hysterical fashions â la guillotine were adopted. In the Midi the infamous Carrier found the guillotine too slow for he ^{[p. 442]} had two thousand victims drowned in the Loire.  Fouché, ex-Oratorian, conducted judicial massacres at Lyons. And in October, 1793, the Vendée uprising was crushed in a holocaust of slaughtered prisoners of war. Meanwhile, under the brilliant direction of Danton and Carnot, the French had forced the allies back across the Rhine. Belgium and the Rhineland were invaded, and Napoleon Bonaparte had recaptured Toulon from the British fleet. The Republic was more than saved.

Religious persecution began when the Convention on March 19, 1793, proscribed all priests. On April 23, the death penalty was decreed for non-jurors still exercising their functions, and deportation for others. Though married clerics were exempted from these penalties in November, the Terror eventually began to rage against all priests, and the constitutional clergy in large part apostatized or submitted to Rome. On November 6, 1793, the constitutional bishops, Gobel of Paris and Lindet of L’Eure, had abjured the Faith in presence of the Convention, and four days later Gobel attended the fete of the Goddess of Reason in Notre Dame. Such constitutional clergy as remained at their posts went through at least a formality of marriage. Iconoclasm, official or voluntary, had free reign; Catholic worship was proscribed.

Rationalist aberrations. In a delirium of rationalist frenzy, all traditions, but especially Christian ones, were rejected. Men substituted pagan terms for their Christian names; cities, streets, and squares were renamed; all titles yielded to “citoyen”; knee breeches were abandoned for long trousers—for it is an ill wind that does not blow some good. Universal secular education was decreed, though few schools were actually organized. A utilitarian culture of heart and body was proclaimed. The press came into its own as an instrument of propaganda. The new calendar designedly played havoc with cherished Christian feasts, while naturalist cults were flaunted. The Republican ritual had its “Decalogue,” its hymns, its choral readings from Rousseau, its pilgrimages to shrines of liberty; there were civic baptisms and patriotic holy water fonts. The enthronization of a showgirl as “Goddess of Reason” in Notre Dame cathedral is notorious, but it might be noted that this was but part of a general policy. We have the detached view of an English Protestant observer: “When the festival of Reason is to be celebrated by a département, a delegate arrives some days in advance, accompanied by a goddess, if the town itself cannot supply a suitable one. She is attired in a Roman tunic of white satin, usually taken from a theatrical wardrobe, and wears a red cap trimmed with oak leaves. Her left arm rests on a plough, in her right hand she holds a lance. Her foot is on a globe and around her are the mutilated symbols of feudalism. In this pose the goddess with all her paraphernalia is borne along by the mayor, the judges and other officials, who whether enraptured or enraged, have ^{[p. 443]} to present an appearance of respect.... Installed on an altar ... she addresses the people who in return pay her homage. . . . Wherever possible a priest is procured to abjure his Faith in public and to declare that Christianity is nothing but a fraud. The festival ends with a bonfire in which prayer-books, saints’ images, confessionals, and other pieces of church furniture are burnt. Most of those present stand looking on in silence, struck dumb with horror and amazement; others, either drunk or paid, . . . dance around....” ¹⁵

15 Ludwig Pastor, History of the Popes (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1953), XL, 208.

Struggle of factions. Although the Terror had repressed revolt at home and thrust back foreign armies, its Jacobin sponsors began to turn on one another early in 1794. In January, the faction of “Enragés,” indignant critics of everything, were the first to be liquidated; their leader, the ex-priest Jacques Roux, committed suicide. Next Danton and Robespierre united against Hébert’s “Communists,” atheistic proletarians of leveling tendencies. These sans-culottes had terrorized terrorists and seemed to kill for the joy of it. In March, Hébert and his followers, denounced of undermining the Revolution by extremism, were arrested and guillotined. Next Robespiere turned on Danton and the “Indulgents,” who argued that since the Terror was but a means to victory in war, it ought to cease with victory. During April, the blood-weary Danton was overcome without offering much resistance.

“Reign of Virtue.” Robespierre and his “Purists” were now the sole survivors. Robespierre argued that the Terror must continue until Republican principles had been everywhere established. This precise, incorruptible, pedantic lawyer was a Deist and doctrinaire. Having substituted worship of the “Supreme Being” for that of the “Goddess of Reason,” on June 8 he presided as high priest at a new festival, that of the “Supreme Being.” But though Atheism was thus officially repudiated, persecution of practicing Catholics did not cease. Sister Marguerite Rutan died at Dax, Blessed Magdalene and other Daughters of Charity were executed in June, and thirty-two nuns were put to death at Orange during July, 1794. Everywhere it was made clear that the “Supreme Being” had but one prophet: Robespierre. It was no longer enough to be a Jacobin; one had to be positively for Robespierre. It was ordered that trials of those accused—often on mere suspicion or indictment by a Purist leader—were to be conducted without allowing the accused to speak. During the six weeks of the “Reign of Virtue,” thirteen hundred heads fell in Paris alone. ^{[p. 444]}

Thermidor. Robespierre eventually overreached himself, since sheer dread for their own lives induced collaborators to turn against him to escape his sensitive suspicions. Fouché, disgraced for his rule at Lyons, feared chastisement. When he started a whispering campaign against Robespierre in the Jacobin club, Robespierre retaliated by indicting his unnamed enemies in the Convention. But in announcing a new purge of his foes, he made a tactical error, for now all members felt insecure. Fouché anticipated the purge on 9 Thermidor—July 28—by denouncing Robespierre in the Convention and later seizing him and his chief lieutenants. Robespierre and his associates then followed their many victims to the over-worked guillotine.

Moderate revival. Fouché and his fellow conspirators were themselves terrorists: they had intended to continue the iron rule—against someone else. But at once they were hailed on all sides as liberators who had put an end to the Terror. So genuine and spontaneous was this popular sentiment, that the Thermidorians found it expedient to acquiesce in the role assigned to them. Accordingly they permitted the surviving Girondists to return to the rump Convention, while the Plain, hitherto “motionless amid evil deliberations,” re-emerged to second the bourgeois, plutocratic trend of that reconstituted body. A new constitution (August, 1795) called for a bicameral legislature, and a five-man executive, the Directory. Jacobins objected to this proposal, but 13 Vendémiaire (October 5) saw Barras and Bonaparte defend Thermidor by a “whiff of grapeshot.” It was the first time that a leftist uprising had failed. Having perpetuated two thirds of its members in the new legislature, the Convention adjourned on October 26, 1795.

Lull in persecution. Thermidor did not at once halt the persecution of the Church. Indeed, the Convention by suppressing the budget for public worship, September 18, 1794, implied that religion was a thing of the past. But once more popular opinion failed to agree with the men in power, and without awaiting governmental authorization Catholics resumed public worship on all sides. Thereupon the Convention tried to wash its hands of the religious issue by decreeing, February 21, 1795, separation of Church and state. Freedom of worship was simultaneously proclaimed for the entire nation. Many non-jurors now came out of hiding or returned from abroad to resume their public functions. Constitutional Bishop Gregoire tried to rally the jurors as well, but many of these had renounced their priesthood. Disputes for possession of the churches were resumed between jurors and non-jurors so that on May 30, 1795, the Convention proposed to authorize the function of any priest ^{[p. 445]} who would take a new oath of “loyalty to the Republic and its laws.” Royalists and émigrés denounced this as a betrayal of sacred duties of allegiance, but Father Emery of St. Sulpice, who had almost miraculously survived the Terror, declared that merely political issues were involved. He accordingly led many non-jurors in taking the new pledge. His attitude was eventually upheld in substance by Pope Pius VI, for on June 8, 1796, the papal bull, Pastoralis Sollicitudo, directed French Catholics to obey the Republic in all just legislation. Unfortunately the French Republic would not prove equally tolerant and progressive, and the new Directory, far from reaching an accord, would, after a period of “unfriendly neutrality,” launch a new persecution. Nevertheless the Thermidorian regime, in contrast to the Terror, afforded the Catholic clergy and the faithful a much needed period for recuperation and reorganization. French society would never return as a unit to the simple faith of the Ancien Régime, but never again would the French Church forget the martyrs of the Revolution and their legacy of initiative and heroism.

The early Directory maintained its rule in the interests of bourgeois businessmen by forcibly suppressing intermittent Jacobin uprisings. The one director of first-rate ability, Carnot, was to be forced out in 1797. Though one member of the five-man executive was to retire each year, it was always arras, unprincipled soldier of fortune, who remained. Important chiefly by reason of duration, Barras was typical of the Directory’s self-seeking, avaricious, incompetent leadership. But Barras had a valuable protégé in Napoleon Bonaparte who had quelled the rising of Vendémiaire, and now proceeded to win victories in Italy. At home pleasure became the order of the day. After the strain of the Terror, society experienced a great relaxation of moral standards. Family life was wrecked by easy divorce. Elementary modesty was flouted on the streets. Political corruption and nepotism were rife. Since the wealthy refused to shoulder their share of the tax burden, finances were again in a sorry state until somewhat relieved by the booty amassed by General Bonaparte’s Italian victories. Police Commissioner Picquenard complained: “Nobody can form any idea of the public depravity. . . Royalists smile on this depravity; they feel how much the spirit of dissolution that is entering every class is doing to degrade the republican spirit. . .  Catholics are filled with sorrow for the fate of religion.” ¹⁶ But though Pope Pius VI had directed Catholics to submit to the Republic ^{[p. 446]}, and had himself refused to join the First Coalition against France, he was badly treated by the diplomats and generals of the Directory. Public opinion veered back to the monarchists, and a great number of moderates were elected early in 1797 to the two legislative houses, the Council of Ancients and Council of Five Hundred. These moderates proposed to abolish the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and concede official recognition to the non-jurors.

16 Louis Madelin, French Revolution (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1928), p. 555.

Jacobin reaction. This trend toward conservatism, if not to monarchism, alarmed the clique of Thermidorians who had been thus far exploiting the Directory. They and the army, largely Jacobin, combined to purge the government of reactionary elements. The result was the coup d’état of 18 Fructidor (September 4), 1797. With the support of General Augerau, Barras replaced conservative directors with Jacobins, and purged the legislatures of 154 alleged royalists. Fructidor, then, represents a reaction to Jacobin views.

Renewed persecution was to be expected. A new anti-religious campaign got under way. Although it professed to restrict itself to measures short of the death penalty, it must be remembered that the maximum legal sentence, deportation to French Guiana, was more often than not lethal. During 1797 a new oath required the clergy to profess “hatred for royalty and anarchy.” The French hierarchy were divided on the morality of this profession, and Father Emery remained neutral. A period of perplexed consciences ensued until the Holy See indicated its disapproval. From France, to which Belgium had been annexed by the victorious republican arms, some ten thousand priests were deported during this “Second Terror.” Providentially the British navy in many instances prevented execution of the sentence; of the deported clergy 258 actually reached French Guiana, where 118 died.¹⁷ A new monarchist uprising broke out in the Vendée.

17.E. Hales, The Church in the Modern Era (New York: Hanover House, 1958), p. 49.

 “Theophilanthropy” meanwhile was being sponsored by Director Revelliere. In this revival of Deist secularism, efforts were made to enforce the Revolutionary calendar with its ten-day week. The Theo-philanthropists possessed themselves of some of the leading Catholic churches. Their dogma was confined to the existence of God and the immortality of the human soul; their moral stressed solidarity and tolerance; their liturgy was composed of hymns and lectures on the “Father of Nature,” together with readings from Socrates, Zoroaster, Seneca, the Koran, and even the Bible. But long before the Directory’s fall this artificial religion had been defeated by indifference and ridicule. ^{[p. 447]}

Papal-French relations. Pope Pius VI, advised during the early stages of the French Revolution by his envoy, Monsignor Salamon, had consistently sustained the non-jurors, to whose bishops he granted ample special faculties. His threats and censures of the jurors were regarded by the French Republic as political acts—French rulers even objected to the pope’s announcement of prayers for France as having political overtones. Not merely did the Republic annex Avignon, but its armies invaded the Papal States in 1796, even though the pope was not at war with France. In February, 1797, the victorious General Bonaparte dictated the Peace of Tolentino, which obliged Pius VI to cede Avignon and the Romagna, and to yield an indemnity of 46,000,000 scudi and precious art objects.

The Roman Republic. Bonaparte’s brother Joseph as the French ambassador to Rome was instructed to foment a republican party in the Papal States. On December 28, 1797, a few hundred rebels were found to shout for: “Liberty; long live the Republic; down with the pope.” Backed up from February, 1798, by French troops under General Berthier, three hundred organized “patriots” met in the Forum to declare the pope deposed from temporal rule in favor of seven consuls. When the Roman populace failed to respond enthusiastically to this engineered regime, Berthier feared that the pope’s continued presence in Rome might inspire a reaction in his favor. Hence he was ordered to go to Siena. When the octogenarian pontiff begged to be allowed to die at Rome, Berthier retorted brutally: “You can die anywhere.” Without preparation, the pope was hustled into a mail coach and driven to Siena where he remained for three months under moderate confinement. During his absence the “Roman Republic” was to collapse when the Russian general Suvorov’s counter attacks drove back the French armies in Italy (1799).

Death of Pius VI. Meanwhile Pope Pius VI, transferred to the Carthusian monastery at Florence in May, 1798, could still correspond with the outside world. Cardinals Altieri and Antici, who had deserted him during the Roman Republic, were deposed, September, 1798. On March 28, 1799, the pope, now ailing and partially paralyzed, began his “stations of the Cross”: he was dragged to Bologna, through Modena, Reggio, Parma, Turin, carried on a stretcher over the Alps to Briançon and Grenoble, and finally lodged in the abandoned city hall of Valence, France, on July 14, 1799. When French peasants greeted him enthusiastically, the pope was ordered on to yet another prison. This was more than he could stand: on August 28, 1799, he died at Valence, begging forgiveness for his enemies, peace for Europe, restoration of the Faith to France, the return of the papacy to Rome. But as the French themselves used to say, “qui mange du pape meurt”(He who eats the pope dies); four days previously, Napoleon Bonaparte had left Egypt to overthrow the Directory.

71. FRENCH NAPOLEONIC REVOLUTION

“Heir of the Revolution:(Napoleon Bonaparte) self-styled “son of the Revolution,” was a Corsican individualist, hitherto unsuccessful in local politics, which he had sandwiched with his military career. A student of Reynall, Rousseau, and the philosophes, he had become a Freemason and an ardent Jacobin. After distinguishing himself at Toulon, he was rapidly promoted in the army. Arrested during the Thermidorian Reaction, he had been freed in time by his patron, Barras,to defend the Convention afainst an attack of the mob. His services to Barras made possible his command of an army at an early age. Between 1795 and 1797 Bonaparte won military fame in Italy while evading too close identification with the domestic political factions. His Egyptian campaign seems to have been designed by the Directory in order to shelve a popular rival, but it served to win Bonaparte more glory—always enhanced by the latter’s own propaganda. Son of both the Ancien Régime and the Revolution, Bonaparte reappeared in France at a critical time. He dreamed alike of being philosopher king and revolutionary zealot, some benevolent despot who would ensure equality and fraternity, if at the price of liberty. His ambitions grew to embrace an empire, French instead of German, secular instead of “Holy.”  Whether this would also include the Catholic Church depended upon circumstances: for,

“my policy is to govern as the greatest number wish to be governed. ... It was this policy which made a Catholic of me when I had finished the War of Vendée, a Mussulman when I had established myself in Egypt, and an Ultramontane when I had gained the good will of Italy. If I governed a Jewish people, I would re-establish the Temple.”

Brumaire. On his return to France, October 8, 1799, Bonaparte, while professing a desire to retire to civilian life, began an unavowed campaign for public office.  He declared himself against militarism and religious persecution; he was for light taxes, economy in government t, free enterprise, security of private property;  short, let there be moderation in all things and unity of all factions under a strong’ and stable ^-government. Abbé Sieyès, leader of the Plain and constitution-maker of the Republic, was captivated^-by this program and decided that a new constitution might usher in a government forceful enough to protect the plutocracy and the masses.  Calot the financier—like Thyssen for Hitler—promised ^{[p. 449]} to back Sieyès and Bonaparte. Barras was partly bribed and partly intimidated into refraining from resistance. With the assistance of Talleyrand, and the connivance of his brother Lucien Bonaparte, president of a branch of the legislature, Napoleon prepared a coup d’état for 18 Brumaire (November 9), 1799. At the head of his troops Napoleon harangued the legislators on the weakness of the Directory and the need of stronger government. Though he played his part badly—almost fainting in the melee—Napoleon was saved by his brother Lucien. Holding a dagger to Napoleon’s breast, Lucien in approved Jacobin style assured the legislators that he would be the first to kill his brother were he to prove a traitor to the Revolution. Enough deputies were induced to  name Bonaparte, Sieyès and Ducos provision—ar consüls to prepare new  constitution; dissenters fled or were thrown—gently—out of the window. Calot, observing the proceedings, instructed his brokers: “Buy.” A dictatorship by Napoleon Bonaparte was about to begin its brilliant fifteen years.

(2) POLITICAL SETTLEMENT

A new constitution, adopted on Christmas, 1799, and promulgated on New Year’s Day, 1800—thus did Napoleon subtly begin to lead France back to the Christian calendar—transformed the Republic into a veiled dictatorship. Sieyès had intended that the executive should consist of a commission of three consuls, but Bonaparte practically amended this to designation of himself as first consul with authority to promulgate laws, appoint most of the councillors, ministers, diplomats, judges, and generals, under the sole restraint of a merely consultative vote of the other consuls. The triumvirate ultimately named were: Bonaparte, the novus homo, Lebrun, moderate royalist, and Cambacérès, regicide. Though the Republic nominally continued until 1804, from the first Bonaparte was supreme since the legislative power was so divided that it was unable to check him effectively. For a council of state, named by the First Consul, had sole right to propose laws. These were debated by a tribunate which, however, had no authority to vote on them. Voting was done in a legislative court which was denied any right to discuss the proposals. Finally a senate made some appointments to minor posts. After Bonaparte had been proclaimed consul for life in 1802, even some of these forms of democracy disappeared.

Administration. Bonaparte, once an amnesty had put an end to the Second Vendean Insurrection, tried to minimize factions. He restored civil rights to relatives of émigré aristocrats whom he sought to attach to the new regime, and émigrés were included in his council of state along with regicides. Liberal pensions conciliated generals prone to revolt. ^{[p. 450]} Choosing a ministry from all factions, Bonaparte pushed forward administrative centralization. Elected local prefects, sub-prefects, and mayors were replaced by direct appointees from Paris.

The Code Napoleon, Bonaparte’s revision of Roman Law was to prove his most enduring contribution. This compromise between the classical and the common law imposed a uniform, secularistic code, eventually imitated by most of Latin Europe. Though liberty was curbed, all citizens became equal before the law. Freedom of choice of occupation opened a career to non-nobles, though Bonaparte never understood the full implications of the Industrial Revolution Article 1781 accepted employers’ unsupported testimony regarding the proper amount of wages to be paid workingmen. Freedom of conscience was allowed and liberty of cult proclaimed. All children were to share equally in inheritance. Civil marriage was made available to all, and divorce allowed on certain conditions. A regimented national school system was planned. It was to be capped by a national university on secularist and rationalist principles, but this latter institution did not immediately influence the lower schools. Schools, even catechetical, were used for civilian training in a nationalistic, even chauvinistic, loyalty to the new regime. Newspapers, clubs, and theaters were carefully controlled. Bourgeois desires were satisfied by safeguarding of private property, and criminal procedure was made more humane. For good or ill, one could say with one of Bonaparte’s aides: “In three years he has ruled more than the kings for a century.”

Military vindication. Since 1798 France had been at war with a second coalition of Great Britain, Russia, Austria, Sicily, Portugal, and Turkey. Before Napoleon’s return from Egypt, Italy had been lost and France invaded. Allied advance stalled, however, with Russia’s withdrawal in October, 1799, and in June, 1800, Bonaparte’s great victory at Marengo broke the back of the allied coalition. By Februar , 1801, Austria and the continental foes consented to the Peace of Lunéville which recognized French annexation or domination of the Netherlands, the west bank of the Rhine, Switzerland, and all of Italy north of an already truncated Papal State. Though Great Britain, save for a brief truce (1802-3) , continued the war at sea until Bonaparte’s Waterloo in 1815, until 1805 she could find none to support her on land. Bonaparte had restored French leadership on the Continent, and could devote himself to sharing the real and imaginary blessings of the French Revolution with the satellite republics of Batavia (Holland) , Helvetia (Switzerland), Cisalpine (Lombardy) , etc. ^{[p. 451]}

Difficult conclave. The task of choosing a successor to Pope Pius VI who had died in France in August, 1799, was delayed and greatly complicated by the Italian wars and attempts of governments to dominate the papacy for political motives. Even before the late pontiff’s death, Napoleon had written his brother Joseph, then ambassador at Rome, that if possible he was to prevent choice of a successor. The Roman Republic obviated normal electoral procedure, and it was not until November, 1799, that thirty-four cardinals could assemble at the Abbey of St. George on one of the Venetian islands, under Austrian protection. The conclave was protracted by the usual counterintrigues of France and Austria, now accentuated by grave ideological differences. It seemed that Cardinal Bellisome would be selected, subject to the approval of Emperor Francis II, but Monsignor Consalvi, secretary of the conclave, persuaded the cardinals to reconsider while they were awaiting the imperial response. On March 14, 1800, without awaiting imperial sanction, the cardinals elected Gregorio Chiaramonti, bishop of Imola, who had made several public pronouncements to the effect that Democracy could be easily harmonized with the Church’s mission. On March 21 he was crowned as Pope Pius VII.  Bonaparte had made no attempt to hinder the collapse of the artificially created Roman Republic, and Emperor Francis so far relented from his initial displeasure as to provide an Austrian ship to bring the new pope to Rome on July 3. Pope Pius was enthusiastically received by the Roman people. In August he named Consalvi cardinal secretary of state, and the latter served in that capacity throughout the long pontificate (1800-23), except for the period 1806 to 1814 when Bonaparte’s pressure induced the pope to substitute Cardinal Pacca, at least for formal relations.

Negotiations commenced unofficially in July, 1800, when Bonaparte sounded out the aged and diplomatically inexperienced Cardinal Martiniana of Vercelli about some understanding between the Church and the new French government. These talks were officially pursued at Paris the following November by Monsignor Spina for the Holy See and Abbé Bernier for the Consulate. Though Spina, who arrived in lay attire, secured tentative accord on many points, the negotiations reached a deadlock on the point of hierarchical reorganization in May, 1801. Thereupon Cardinal Consalvi himself came to discuss matters with foreign minister Talleyrand, with some help from Father Emery. Consalvi had to resist Bonaparte’s efforts to stampede, confuse, or fatigue ^{[p. 452]} him, and brought the tortuous negotiations to an agreement on July 15, 1801. This was ratified by the pope on August 15 and by the First Consul on September 8. The Concordat was promulgated on Easter Sunday, April 10, 1802, when the bells of Notre Dame rang for the first time in a decade.

Provisions. The articles of the Concordat provided the following:

1) Catholicity was declared the privileged cult of the majority of Frenchmen, but not the state religion and other religions continued to be tolerated.

2-3) A compromise was to be reached about the sees of the Old Regime and the “Constitutional” ones of the Republic: pope and consul would use their authority to secure the resignations of uncooperative prelates.

4-5) Future episcopal selection would be regulated according to the Concordat of 1516: the First Consul would nominate and the pope confirm.

6-7) Bishops and other ecclesiastics would be obliged to take an oath of fidelity to the state.

8) Public prayers would be offered for the Republic and its Consuls.

9-10) New parochial boundaries were to be arranged and episcopal appointment of pastors subjected to governmental review.

11) The government would no longer endow chapters and seminaries.

12-13) Ecclesiastical property still under governmental control would be returned; that already in private possession would be condoned.

14-15) The government engaged to pay clerical salaries, leaving the faithful free to endow their churches.

16-17) The First Consul would enjoy the personal privileges of the former kings, though in the event of a non-Catholic holder of the office a new arrangement would be reached.

Restrictions. To the Concordat the First Consul in time published unilateral appendices termed

Organic Articles.” These were the most vexatious:

1) The exequatur was claimed: no papal document might be received in France without governmental authorization. Papal nuncios might not enter French territory without similar leave.

3) Conciliar decrees needed governmental sanction for promulgation.

4) National councils might not be held without the same approval.

5) The government might hear appeals in cases of alleged violation of the “Customs of the Gallican Church.”

12) Bishops shall be addressed merely as “Monsieur.”

20) They may not leave their dioceses without governmental permission.

25) No one may be ordained unless he possesses property of 300 francs value.

Despite papal repudiation, Bonaparte repeatedly tried to apply these and other restrictions to the Concordat. He strove to regulate the seminary curriculum, demanded adoption of a single catechism and liturgy for the whole of France, forbade institution of new feasts, pretended to regulate preaching and matrimonial rites, and meddled in clerical administration and finances. In time, however, ^{[p. 453]} this obnoxious secular interference alienated erstwhile Gallicans from the state to closer co-operation with the Holy See.

The new hierarchy. At Bonaparte’s insistence, the eighty odd departmental sees were reduced to sixty, of which ten were to be metropolitan. Great difficulty was experienced in finding a new hierarchy, but the new organization was virtually complete by July 29, when Bonaparte’s uncle, Cardinal Fesch, was named to the primatial see of Lyons. Of the new bishops, sixteen were progressives from the Old Regime, twelve were penitent “constitutionals,” and thirty-two were priests newly consecrated. Few of the bishops of the Old Regime were enthusiastic about the Concordat, and several, headed by Coucy of La Rochelle, refused to resign. These came to constitute an enduring but relatively unimportant schismatic “Petite Église” which was not extinguished until 1894. On the other hand, Grégoire persisted until his death in 1831 as representative of a group of constitutional intransigents who refused to submit to the Holy See. On the whole, the new hierarchy was composed of realistic and hardworking men who tried to do their best in a bad situation. The new arrangement removed all temporal advantages from the lot of prelates, but also took away temptation for worldly ambition. Eventually the French hierarchy became more devoted to the Holy See; Gallicanism had received its death blow—though it was a long time in dying.

The new clergy. Not only were the bishops thus greatly reduced in numbers, but the French clergy could at first muster but a third to a half of its pre-revolutionary numbers. Seminaries had almost ceased to function. They were now hastily reconstituted, but not only were professors few and material resources discouraging, but vocations had fallen off. Yet ordinations arose from 344 in 1807 to 1,504 in 1816. These assembly line tactics turned out a poorly educated clergy which may have been less fitted to win back the French intelligentsia. Still, had all of them had the compensating virtue of one of those ordinands, the Curé of Ars, this might not have mattered. Government salaries were inadequate, and parsimony and donations of the faithful were needed to fill out the deficit. The clergy were far from being independent of secular control, and had to administer the sacraments at the cost of great personal sacrifice for slight material reward. By 1809 there were still but thirty-one thousand priests and many parishes were without pastors, although Brittany and a few other Catholic regions were better provided than the average.

Papal-governmental relations. From 1801 to 1808 Pope Pius VII was ^[p.454] represented in France by his legate, Cardinal Caprara, persona grata to Bonaparte by reason of his impressionable and pliant temperament. The Consul was represented in religious matters by M. Portalis, minister of public worship. Though a Gallican, Portalis was comparatively considerate of papal interests. Abbé Bernier, a non-juror who had rallied to the Consulate, remained liaison officer. Although promising from time to time to withdraw the “Organic Articles,” e.g., on the eve of imperial coronation in 1804, Bonaparte continued to threaten the Holy See and the French clergy with this new Pragmatic Sanction. Later Cardinal Caprara allowed celebration of the feast of a “St. Napoleon” (unknown to the Roman Martyrology) on August 15, and approved of the imperial catechism which exacted of children a lengthy response of twenty-five lines on their duties to “Napoleon, our emperor.”

In Italy, Napoleon Bonaparte was willing to conclude a concordat which recognized the Church as the state religion, and conceded the clergy greater freedom than in France. The draft of this pact, the “Organic Law,” was favorably received by the pope during 1802, but on June 23, Vice-President Melzi of the Italian Republic—of which Bonaparte himself was president—instituted a meddling ministry of public worship. New negotiations became necessary until a satisfactory accord was reached on September 16, 1803. But when promulgating this on January 24, 1804, Bonaparte’s deputy appended a certain “Supplementary Decree,” largely in the spirit of the French “Organic Articles”; e.g., bishops might not ordain or leave their diocese without governmental permission and civil marriage had to precede sacramental. Pius VII protested and through Cardinal Fesch’s intervention Italian anti-clericals were somewhat restrained. But governmental violations of the pact became chronic, and under the empire culminated in a papal-imperial rift.

In Germany, which came increasingly under Bonaparte’s domination between 1801 and 1805, the French Consul also hoped to effect an agreement with the Church. After negotiations between Monsignor Severoli and Herr Franck, a draft was presented to the pope for confirmation in November, 1804. The proposal was, however, rejected by the pope because of the schismatic tendencies of Dalberg, Febronianminded bishop and Bonaparte’s candidate for primate of a new German state Church. Dalberg’s objective seems to have been a national patriarchate, and his attitude prevented ecclesiastical peace in Germany throughout the Napoleonic Era. Dalberg, as will be seen, was rebuffed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and after his death in 1817 the Holy ^{[p. 455]} See was able to conclude limited agreements with individual German states.

72. NAPOLEONIC IMPERIALISM

The coronation. On May 18, 1804, subservient legislative bodies proclaimed Napoleon Bonaparte “Emperor of the French.” Bonaparte next sought papal confirmation of his new title, and Cardinal Consalvi persuaded Pope Pius to assist at the coronation in Paris in the hope that a revitalized Christendom might be created in the image of Charlemagne. But even before the ceremony, Bonaparte insisted that the traditional ritual be pared of theocratic vestiges: the medieval “accipe coronam” ought to become “coronet te Deus” in order to stress divine right monarchy. As it actually turned out, Bonaparte crowned himself with the pontiff little more than a passive spectator. For even such assistance Pope Pius had exacted promises of faithful observance of the Concordat and of complete restoration of the Papal States. Bonaparte did not keep his pledges, and upon his return to Rome Pius VII found that members of the curia ill concealed their conviction that he had lent the French ruler great prestige without obtaining any compensating advantages.

Imperial success. Internally, the new form of government made little real change in Bonaparte’s dictatorship, though a new peerage was created and subordinate officials were given high-sounding titles. But outside of France, the imperial title, together with his assumption of the title of “King of Italy” in 1805, challenged what remained of the old European order. Austria, still in possession of ceremonial primacy as head of the Holy Roman Empire, was induced by Britain’s William Pitt to join yet a Third Coalition against the upstart monarch. But on the first anniversary of his coronation, December 2, 1805, Bonaparte won the brilliant victory of Austerlitz. The Treaty of Pressburg forced Francis II of Austria to cede Venice to France and allow her a free hand in reorganizing Germany. On July 12, 1806, Bonaparte formed the western half of Germany into the “Confederation of the Rhine” with himself as protector. This meant the destruction of the thousand-year Holy Roman Empire, and Francis II formally abdicated the ancient title on August 6—having already assumed a new title of “Emperor of Austria.” Such sweeping changes had alarmed Prussia. She entered the war only to be speedily crushed at Jena, October, 1806. Bonaparte pushed through Prussia to bring Russia to terms by the battles of Eylau and Friedland. The Treaty of Tilsit, July, 1807, concluded the German ^{[p. 456]} phase of the war, and charmed Alexander I of Russia into an alliance which cost him no territory. Prussia, however, was halved by cessions to the Confederation of the Rhine and erection of a dependent “Grand Duchy of Warsaw” out of Prussian and Austrian Poland. British Hanover became the nucleus of a “Kingdom of Westphalia” for brother Jerome Bonaparte, though Great Britain, saved from threat of invasion by the naval victory of Trafalgar, October, 1805, fought on at sea. But on land, which alone seemed to matter, Bonaparte had apparently made good his claim to empire: he was undisputed master of Western Europe and Alexander of Russia his dazzled junior partner. Bonaparte therefore had no difficulty in deposing the Neapolitan Bourbons in 1806 and placing brother Joseph on that throne. Then late in 1808 he interned the Spanish Bourbons and promoted Joseph to Madrid, brother-in-law Joachim Murat replacing Joseph at Naples. Brother Louis Bonaparte had already been named “King of Holland”—only Lucien had the independence and republican principle to refuse a crown. Principalities were carved out for other relatives and servitors; by 1811 the French State had expanded to 128 départements under its direct rule, with most of western Europe tributary or cowed. The “Man of Destiny” could proclaim: “The Civil Code [Napoleon] is the code of the age!”

Neo-Caesaro-papism. Though Pope Pius VII had lent tacit approbation to this “revolutionary imperialism,” he soon found out that it was merely old Caesaro-papism writ large. Bonaparte’s imperial policy was well expressed in his boast to the pope: “I am the successor of Charlemagne; you are the sovereign, but I am its emperor.” Not only did Pius VII not receive back the lost Romagna, but he found it definitively incorporated in a new “Kingdom of Italy” of which Bonaparte was king and his stepson Eugène Beauharnais viceroy—later he would bestow on his son, “Napoleon II,” the title of “King of Rome.” The Napoleonic Code, with its sanction of civil marriage and divorce, was introduced into Italy. Papal protests proved unavailing, and by October, 1806, imperial interference with Italian ecclesiastical jurisdiction had reached such proportions that Pius VII had begun to retaliate by refusing canonical institution to governmental nominees to sees. A further difficulty lay in Jerome Bonaparte’s divorce. Bonaparte had been grooming his brother for the kingship of Westphalia, and insisted that his marriage to Elizabeth Patterson witnessed by Bishop Carroll of Baltimore was invalid by reason of “lack of imperial consent.” The pope, however, retorted that “secular authority has no power to establish impediments to marriage as a sacrament.” But the Bonapartes ignored the papal admonition, and Jerome, after a civil divorce, married Catherine of Würtemburg. In ^{[p. 457]} 1805, moreover, Napoleon Bonaparte had defied papal territory by occupying the port of Ancona, and had ridiculed theocratic claims to bestow investiture upon the king-designate of Naples, Joseph Bonaparte.

Economic warfare presently brought about new disagreements between the papacy and the Bonapartist system. On November 21, 1806, by decree Bonaparte had inaugurated his “Continental System,” a paper blockade of Great Britain designed to prevent European and other neutral states from trading with this one inaccessible foe of France. Great Britain retaliated with “Orders in Council,” blockading the continental ports. Neutrals were torn between the two camps. The United States, despite ample grievance against both powers, finally declared war on Britain alone. Tiny Denmark tried to preserve her neutrality; whereupon the British seized the Danish fleet and the French occupied Danish territory. After that, while private blockade running flourished and some trade was officially winked at, no continental state would risk open defiance of the Continental System. This made all the more courageous the pope’s refusal to abide by it. Bonaparte insisted that all Englishmen be expelled from Rome, for not only were they heretics, but “my enemies ought to be yours.” Pius VII, after consulting the cardinals in consistory, replied in effect that the spiritual mission of the papacy required papal impartiality toward all amid the temporal rivalries of nations. Despite Bonaparte’s threats, the pope refused to conform to the anti-British embargo. Thereafter Bonaparte refused to entertain direct diplomatic relations with the Holy See. Recalling the pacific Cardinal Fesch, his ambassador extraordinary, he replaced him with the regicide Alquier. Thus papal-imperial relations became strained to the breaking point. But Bonaparte’s political and economic imperialism at last began to backfire: Russia became alienated and Alexander I entered secret negotiations with Bonaparte’s foes, including the traitor Talley-rand. In Spain, moreover, popular resistance was the first instance of a counter-nationalism aroused by the French Revolution. Spanish guerillas enabled the British forces to find a foothold on the Continent and to dig a festering sore which within six years would poison the entire imperial system.

Seizure of Rome. Open rupture between pope and dictator came on February 2, 1808, when French troops occupied Rome unopposed. The pope put up a placard of protest, recalled Cardinal Caprara, and thus severed diplomatic relations. In April the occupying forces penetrated into the papal residence at the Quirinal and French officers interfered with the pontifical household. Cardinal Consalvi deemed it prudent to ^{[p. 458]} resign as secretary of state to placate Bonaparte, although he remained in secret a trusted papal advisor. From 1808 to 1814 the conservative Cardinal Pacca discharged the office of secretary until Cardinal Consalvi could be reinstated. On May 17, 1809, a grandiloquent decree “from imperial field headquarters, Vienna,” proclaimed that the papal city of Rome had been annexed to France. During July, the pope was arrested and roughly bustled by night and day trips to Savona, where he remained under guard until June, 1812.

Papal detention at Savona. Pius VII had replied by excommunicating all responsible for this detention of Christ’s Vicar, July, 1809. But though secretly distributed by Father Emery and others, this decree was never openly promulgated in France. Bonaparte, however, was under no illusions about his censure; he exclaimed: “I received news that the pope has excommunicated me; he is a madman who should be shut up.” Bonaparte took malicious pleasure in communicating the news to timeserving Gallican prelates who continued to attend imperial fetes on the ground that Bonaparte had not been explicitly named in the censure, or that Gallican privilege prevented an anathema from taking effect on a French ruler. Meanwhile the pope was held strictly incommunicado in the episcopal residence: he was refused visitors and his mail was censored. Yet he bore his sufferings with Christian patience. Once again the “poor monk Chiaramonti,” he washed and mended the few garments that he had been allowed.

Napoleon’s divorce. Napoleon Bonaparte believed that an upstart monarch must have a direct heir, and that his aging childless wife, Joséphine Beauharnais, could not give him one. Though at first but civilly wedded to Bonaparte, she had revealed her scruples to the pope on the eve of the imperial coronation in 1804. The pope had insisted upon having the marriage canonically rectified, and Cardinal Fesch had received papal delegation to marry the couple privately. Yet Gallican clerics, headed by Cardinal Maury, since 1808 archbishop of Paris without the favor of the Apostolic See, complacently annulled the marriage on the supposed ground that Cardinal Fesch was not Napoleon’s pastor as required by Trent, and for presumed lack of consent. After a senatusconsultum of December, 1809, had declared the marriage dissolved, Bonaparte in April, 1810, contracted a union with Maria Louisa of Austria before Cardinal Maury. Maury and those fourteen cardinals who assisted at the ceremony retained Bonaparte’s favor and continued to wear their cardinalatial insignia. Cardinal Consalvi and twelve other members of the Sacred College who had declined an invitation to the wedding were forbidden to wear their insignia and henceforth were dubbed the “black cardinals.” Under the circumstances, however, the new style was very becoming. ^{[p. 459]}

Conciliar maneuvers. Though Bonaparte seems to have been personally indifferent to papal censures, he still valued papal prestige as a political asset and strove to avoid alienating many of his subjects by a formal schism. In this regard his most serious problem lay in the fact that since 1808 the pope had been refusing canonical institution to imperial nominations to French dioceses. When Pius VII in 1811 reproached Cardinal Maury for his intrusion into the see of Paris, the question of legitimacy became critical. From 1809 Bonaparte had consulted an “ecclesiastical committee” to devise a solution for the situation. Cardinals Fesch and Maury had made an evasive report opining that, although Bonaparte was not under excommunication, he ought to obtain papal sanction for episcopal installation. In 1811 he was advised to call a national council. Father Emery, who had refused to sign the previous report, upheld papal authority to Bonaparte’s face, and so impressed the well-meaning Cardinal Fesch that he subsequently led the clergy in protestations of loyalty to the Apostolic See, though combined with the temporizing recommendation that the pope be consulted about canonical institution. Three prelates visited Pius VII and by threats of schism in the forthcoming council, extorted from him conditional assurance that within six months canonical institution would be forthcoming. But not only was this concession conditioned by the pope’s liberation and an opportunity to consult with his advisors, but the pontiff revoked it within twenty-four hours. The national council which met at Notre Dame, June, 1811, comprised ninety Frenchmen, forty-two Italians, and a few Germans. It refused to be intimidated, rejected an unsigned assurance brought from Savona by the three prelatial intermediaries, and demanded the pope’s liberation. Bonaparte dissolved the council and imprisoned some of its leaders. Next Maury assembled eighty compliant prelates who demanded that the metropolitans supply the missing canonical confirmation. A new deputation went to Savona to exact papal consent to this plan. On November 22, 1811, the pope, without recognizing the assembly as a legitimate council, was yet disposed to allow the metropolitans to grant canonical institution “in the name of the pope.” This, however, proved unacceptable to Bonaparte.

“Concordat of Fontainebleau.” During June, 1812, the ailing pontiff was transported to Fontainebleau in France to be subjected to new imperial pressures. After his return from Russia, where the repulse of the Grand Army had made his position critical, Bonaparte engaged in a six-day conference with Pius VII during January, 1813. The kindly pontiff seems to have been impressed by Napoleon’s undeniable charm. The “red cardinals” induced the pope to make certain tentative concessions ^{[p. 460]}: authorization for the metropolitans to concede canonical institution if the pope failed to do so within six months; and acceptance of financial compensation in exchange for the confiscated Papal States. Yet such points were clearly tentative, for the memorandum was designated as a “basis for definitive settlement,” and was conditioned by the ^“approval of all the cardinals.” But when Pius consulted the “black cardinals,” both Consalvi and Pacca convinced him that the concessions were incompatible with papal primacy. Humbly remorseful, the pope on March 24 retracted his concessions in a letter to Bonaparte. But the latter, suppressing the papal revocation, published the memorandum on March 25 as the definitive Concordat of Fontainebleau. When, however, Bonaparte followed it in practice, Pope Pius on May 9, 1813, declared all archiepiscopal ratifications of episcopal nominations null. Thereafter he remained adamant.

Napoleonic collapse. At the height of his power, Napoleon Bonaparte had jeered at papal rebukes: “What does the pope mean by denouncing me to Christendom? Does he think that the arms shall fall from the hands of my soldiers?” The Russian campaign of 1812 provided an almost literally affirmative answer. During the summer Bonaparte’s army had invaded Russia to punish her for non-adherence to the Continental System. Though Moscow was captured, no decisive victory could be won. During the wintry retreat to Germany the greater part of this force of half a million disappeared—they were dead, captured, or deserted—leaving their weapons lying in the snow. This first serious reverse encouraged all the subject peoples, and the nationalism evoked by the French Revolution now turned against it. Spaniards, aided by an English expeditionary force, had long harassed French forces; now they drove them out of the Peninsula and invaded southern France. Germans, belatedly catching the nationalistic fever, joined the Russians on the eastern front. Bonaparte desperately raised a new army, but at the “Battle of the Nations,” Leipsic, October, 1813, he was decisively defeated and forced to retreat to France. Thereafter his admittedly brilliant maneuvers could merely delay surrender. At last on April 6, 1814, he returned to Fontainebleau, but to abdicate his imperial crown.

Papal liberation. Pope Pius, however, was no longer there. In December, 1813, Bonaparte had given orders for his return to Savona, and there on March 17, 1814, the captive pontiff received the French government’s assurance that he was free. Rome, however, was still occupied by the imperial lieutenant, Joachim Murat of Naples, who now betrayed his master by a secret treaty with Austria which proposed to purchase his alliance by the gift of papal territory. This secret diplomacy unexpectedly ^{[p. 461]} came to light and was soundly denounced by the British envoy Bentinck, and hastily disavowed by Austria. Though large portions of the pontifical dominions remained under Austrian or Neapolitan control, Pius VII was able to return to Rome on May 24, 1814.

“The Hundred Days” may be briefly treated here out of chronological order to conclude Bonaparte’s career. Relegated to Elba after his abdication, he felt encouraged by Allied bickerings at the peace conferences to make a new bid for power. He landed at Cannes on March 1, 1815, and was able to rally his old officers and occupy Paris. Both Bonaparte and the Allies now sought the moral support of the pope, but he continued severely impartial, and the French clergy showed little enthusiasm for the returned dictator. Murat’s alliance with Bonaparte forced the pope to retire temporarily to Genoa, but Murat’s speedy capture and execution removed this menace, and Pius was back in Rome on June 7, 1815. Further problems from Bonaparte, moreover, were cut short by the latter’s defeat at Waterloo, Belgium, by Wellington and Blücher on June 18. Four days later Bonaparte abdicated a second time. Failing to escape to the United States, he surrendered to the British who transported him to St. Helena for the remainder of his life. Pope Pius granted asylum for Napoleon’s mother and relatives in the Papal State, intervened on behalf of the deposed ruler, and had the satisfaction of learning that Napoleon Bonaparte died apparently reconciled with the Church, May 5, 1821.

69. French Constitutional Revolution (1789-92)

70. French Violent Revolution (1792-99)

71. French Napoleonic Revolution (1799-1804)

72. Napoleonic Imperialism (1804-15)

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