to keep the allies off the soil of France. The Cisalpine, the Tiberine, and the Parthenopæan Republics were abolished.

The reverses suffered by the French armies caused the Directory to fall into great disfavor. They were charged with having through jealousy exiled Napoleon, the only man who could save the Republic. Confusion and division prevailed everywhere. The royalists had become so strong and bold that there was danger lest they should gain control of the government. On the other hand, the threats of the Jacobins began to create apprehensions of another Reign of Terror.

News of the desperate state of affairs at home reached Napoleon just after his victory in Egypt, following his return from Syria. He instantly formed a bold resolve. Confiding the command of the army in Egypt to Kleber, he set sail for France, disclosing his designs in the significant words, "The reign of the lawyers is over."

Napoleon was welcomed in France with the wildest enthusiasm. A great majority of the people felt instinctively that the emergency demanded a dictator. Siéyès, one of the leading members of the Directory, had already declared that "the nation must have a chief."

A coup d'état was planned, - one of those peculiar strategic movements which the French politicians know so well how to arrange. Siéyès, Ducos (another member of the Directory), Napoleon, and a large number of the members of the Council of the Ancients were concerned in the plot. The Councils were transferred to St. Cloud, five miles from the capital, on the ostensible ground that the Jacobins were planning an attack upon them; the real purpose, however, being to get them where they could be dissolved without a commotion being excited. Paris, meanwhile, was strongly garrisoned with troops devoted to Napoleon.

The Directors concerned in the plot now resigned; the others. were placed under arrest. The government was thus disorganized, being without a head. Napoleon, hastening to St. Cloud, appeared in the chamber of the Council of the Ancients. With much con

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fusion he explained to the members his purpose, and was favorably received. But when, attended by some soldiers, he appeared in the Council of the Five Hundred, he was met with cries of "Down with the Dictator!" "Down with the tyrant!" and was actually hustled out of the hall.

The moment for decisive action had come. Napoleon now ordered a body of grenadiers to clear the chamber. As the soldiers entered the building, the deputies fled from the hall, some in their haste escaping through the windows (Nov. 9, 1799).

The French Revolution had at last brought forth its Cromwell. Napoleon was master of France. The first French Republic was at an end, and what is distinctively called the French Revolution Now commences the history of the Consulate and the First Empire, the story of that surprising career, the sun of which rose so brightly at Austerlitz and set forever at Waterloo.

was over.

Secret of Napoleon's Power. - Napoleon Bonaparte, as has been seen, first represented the Revolution, then betrayed it; became, as we have intimated, its Cromwell, and upon its ruins erected a military despotism. If we ask, How was he able to do this? the answer is, By the prestige of success and genius. He had stood with the Republican armies of France on the summit of the Alps, and exclaimed, "Hannibal is surpassed!" He had led these same Republican soldiers to victory beneath the pyramids, with the stirring words, "Forty centuries look down upon you." Not only his enthusiastic Kleber, but all France had embraced him with the exclamation, "Sire, your greatness is like that of the universe!"

Having won such a place in the affections of the French people, having gained such an ascendency over their imagination, it was safe to utter, and easy to make good, the threat, "The reign of the lawyers is over."

CHAPTER VI.

THE CONSULATE AND THE FIRST EMPIRE: FRANCE SINCE THE SECOND RESTORATION.

I. THE CONSULATE AND THE EMPIRE (1799-1815).

The Veiled Military Despotism. After the overthrow of the Directorial government, a new constitution the fourth since the year 1789 was prepared, and having been submitted to the approval of the people, was heartily endorsed. This new instrument vested the executive power in three consuls, elected for a term of ten years, the first of whom really exercised all the authority of the Board, the remaining two members being simply his counselors. Napoleon, of course, became the First Consul.

The other functions of the government were carried on by a Council of State, a Tribunate, a Legislature, and a Senate. But the members of all these bodies were appointed either directly or indirectly by the consuls, so that the entire government was actually in their hands, or, rather, in the hands of the First Consul.

The object of the coup d'état of the eighteenth and nineteenth Brumaire was to substitute a strong centralized authority for the feeble Directorial government, and certainly that object had now been secured. France was still called a republic, but it was such a republic as Rome was under Julius Cæsar or Augustus. The republican names and forms merely veiled a government as absolute and personal as that of Louis XIV., in a word, a military despotism.

Wars of the First Consul. - Napoleon now took up his resi

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dence in the palace of the Tuileries, gathering about him so brilliant a throng of ladies and courtiers as to revive memories of the magnificent court of the Bourbons at Versailles. But he by no means gave himself up to social dissipations. With astonishing energy he set about the work of reorganizing the political, financial, and military affairs of the Republic. He well knew that France's greatest need was peace, in order that she might have opportunity to recuperate her wasted energies; and doubtless he was sincerely desirous of avoiding hostilities with the surrounding powers. But neither Austria nor England would acknowledge the government of the First Consul as legitimate. In their view he was simply an upstart, a fortunate usurper. The throne of France belonged, by virtue of divine right, to the House of Bourbon.

Napoleon mustered his soldiers. His plan was to deal Austria, his worst continental enemy, a double blow. A large army was collected on the Rhine, for an invasion of Germany. This was entrusted to Moreau. Another, intended to operate against the Austrians in Italy, was gathered at the foot of the Alps. Napoleon himself assumed command of this latter force.

In the spring of the year 1800 Napoleon made his memorable passage of the Alps, and astonished the Austrian generals by suddenly appearing, with an army of 40,000 men, on the plains of Italy. Upon the renowned field of Marengo the Austrian army, which outnumbered that of the French three to one, was completely overwhelmed, and Italy lay for a second time at the feet of Napoleon (June 14, 1800).

But at the moment Italy was regained, Egypt was lost. On the very day of the battle of Marengo, Kleber, whom Napoleon had left in charge of the army in Egypt, was assassinated by a Turkish fanatic, and shortly afterwards the entire French force was obliged to surrender to the English,

The French reverses in Egypt, however, were soon made up by fresh victories in Europe. A few months after the battle of Marengo, Moreau gained a decisive victory over the Austrians at Hohenlinden, which opened the way to Vienna. The Emperor

Francis II. was now constrained to sign a treaty of peace at Luneville, in which he allowed the Rhine to be made the eastern frontier of France (February, 1801). The Emperor also recognized the Cisalpine, Ligurian, Helvetian, and Batavian Republics. The following year England was also glad to sign a peace at Amiens (March, 1802).

His Works of Peace: the Code Napoleon. - Napoleon having wrung from both England and Austria an acknowledgment of his government, was now free to devote his amazing energies to the reform and improvement of the internal affairs of France. So at this time were begun by him those great works of various character which were continued through all the fifteen years of his supremacy.

Napoleon's remarkable genius seemed to unite the diverse abilities of the greatest of Rome's commanders and emperors. With the practical genius of a Julius Cæsar he constructed roads, erected bridges, dug canals, established arsenals, and improved the ports of the country. His great military road over the Alps by the Simplon Pass eclipses in bold engineering the most difficult of the Roman roads.

With the military ambition of a Trajan, he possessed a Hadrian's passion for building, and adorned Paris and the other chief cities of France with cathedrals, churches, fountains, and memorial monuments of every description. Many of these works of the First Consul are the pride of France at the present day.

Like a second Justinian, he caused the laws of France to be revised, condensed, and harmonized, producing the celebrated Code Napoleon, a work that is not unworthy of comparison with the Corpus Juris Civilis of the Eastern emperor. The influence of this Code upon the development of Liberalism in Western Europe is simply incalculable. It secured the work of the Revolution. It swept away the unequal, iniquitous, oppressive customs, regulations, decrees, and laws that were an inheritance from the feudal ages. It recognized the equality in the eye of the law of noble and peasant. "It is to-day the frame-work of law