closed, thanks to the ability of Fouché, the new minister of Police; but the hopes of Sieyès were dashed by the death of General Joubert, commander of the Army of Italy, at the disastrous battle of Novi (15th of August). The dearth of ability among the generals left in France (Kléber and Desaix were in Egypt) was now painfully apparent. Moreau was notoriously lethargic in civil affairs. Bernadotte, Jourdan and Augereau had compromised themselves by close association with the Jacobins. The soldiery had never forgiven Masséna his peculations after the capture of Rome. One name, and one alone, leaped to men’s thoughts, that of Bonaparte.
He arrived from Egypt at the psychological moment, and his journey from Fréjus to Paris resembled a triumphant procession. Nevertheless he acted with the utmost caution. A fortnight passed before he decided to support Sieyès in effecting a change in the constitution; and by then he had captivated all men except Bernadotte and a few intransigeant Jacobins. Talleyrand, Roederer, Cambacérès and Réal were among his special confidants, his brothers Joseph and Lucien also giving useful advice. Of the generals, Murat, Berthier, Lannes and Leclerc were those who prepared the way for the coup d’état. Fouché, pulling the wires through the police, was an invaluable helper. The conduct of Barras was known to depend on material considerations.
All being ready, the Ancients on the 18 Brumaire (9th of November) decreed the transference of the sessions of both Councils to St Cloud, on the plea of a Jacobin plot which threatened the peace of Paris. They also placed the troops in Paris and its neighbourhood under the command of Bonaparte. Thereupon Sieyès and Ducos resigned office. Barras, after a calculating delay, followed suit. Gohier and Moulin, on refusing to retire, were placed under a military guard; and General Moreau showed his political incapacity by discharging this duty, for the benefit of Bonaparte.
Nevertheless the proceedings of St Cloud on the day following bade fair to upset the best-laid schemes of Bonaparte and his coadjutors. The Five Hundred, meeting in the Orangerie of the palace, had by this time seen through the plot; and, on the entrance of the general with four grenadiers, several deputies rushed at him, shook him violently, while others vehemently demanded a decree of outlawry against the new Cromwell. He himself lost his nerve, stammered, nearly fainted, and was dragged out by the soldiers in a state of mental and physical collapse. The situation was saved solely by the skill of his brother Lucien, then president of the Council. He refused to put the vote of outlawry, uttered a few passionate words, cast off his official robes, declared the session at an end, and made his way out under protection of a squad of grenadiers. The coup d’état seemed to have failed. In reality matters now rested with the troops outside. Stung to action by some words of Sieyès, Bonaparte appealed to the troops of the line in terms which provoked a ready response. Imprecations uttered by Lucien against the brigands and traitors in the pay of England decided the grenadiers of the Council to march against the deputies whom it was their special duty to protect. Drums beat the charge, Murat led the way through the corridors of the palace to the Orangerie, and levelled bayonets ended the existence of the Council. Within the space of ten and a half years from the summoning of the States-General at Versailles (May 1789), parliamentary government fell beneath the sword.
Lucien now consolidated the work of the soldiery by procuring from the Ancients a decree which named Bonaparte, Sieyès and Ducos as provisional consuls, while a legislative commission was appointed to report on necessary changes in the constitution. Lucien also gathered together a small group of the younger deputies to throw the cloak of legality over the events of the day. The Rump proceeded to expel sixty-one Jacobins from the Council of Five Hundred, adjourned its sessions until the 19th of February 1800, and appointed a commission of twenty-five members with power to act in the meantime. Clearly the success of the coup d’état of Brumaire was due in the last resort to Lucien Bonaparte.
The Parisians received the news of the event with joy, believing that freedom was now at last to be established on a firm basis by the man whose name was the synonym for victory in the field and disinterestedness in civil affairs. People are full of mirth” (Wrote Madame Reinhard, wife of the minister for Foreign Affairs, four days later) “believing that they have regained liberty.” She added that all the parties except the Jacobins were full of confidence; and that the nobles now cherished hopes of a reaction, seeing that the reduction of the number of rulers from five to three pointed towards monarchy. Her comment on this delusion is instructive. Three consuls had been appointed, she remarked, precisely in order that power might not be vested in the hands of one man.
Only by degrees did the events of the 19th of Brumaire stand out in their real significance; for the new consuls, installed at the Luxemburg palace, and somewhat later at the Tuileries, took care that the new constitution, which they along with the two commissions were now secretly drawing up, should not be promulgated until Paris and France had settled down to the ordinary life of pleasure and toil. In the meantime they won credit by popular measures such as the abolition of forced loans and of the objectionable habit of seizing hostages from the districts of the west where the royalist ferment was still strongly working.
The feelings of surprise at the clemency and moderation with which the victors used their powers predisposed men everywhere to accept their constitution. Sieyès now sketched its outlines in vaguely republican forms; thereupon Bonaparte freely altered them and gave them strongly personal touches. The theorist laid before the joint commission his projet, the result of five years of cogitation, only to have it ridiculed by the great soldier. In one respect alone did it suit him. While restoring the principle of universal suffrage, which had been partially abrogated in 1795, Sieyès rendered this system of election practically a nullity. The voters were to choose one-tenth of their number (notabilities of the commune); one-tenth of these would form the notabilities of the department; while by a similar decimal sifting, the notabilities of the nation were selected. The final and all-important act of selection from among these men was, however, to be made by a personage, styled the proclamateur-électeur, who chose all the important functionaries, and, conjointly with the notabilities of the nation, chose the members for the Council of State (wielding the chief executive powers), the Tribunate and the Senate. The latter body would, however, have the power to “absorb” the head of the state if he showed signs of ambition. Against this power of absorption Bonaparte declaimed vehemently, asserting also that the proclamateur-électeur would be a mere cochon à l’engrais. In vain did Sieyès modify his scheme so as to provide for two consuls, one holding the chief executive powers for war, the other for peace. This division of powers was equally distasteful to Bonaparte: he formed a kind of cabal within the joint commission, and there intimidated the theorist, with the result already foreseen by the latter. Sieyès, conscious that his political mechanism would merely winnow the air, until the profoundly able and forceful man at his side adapted it to the work of government, relapsed into silence; and his resignation of the office of consul, together with that of Ducos, was announced as imminent. Bonaparte further brushed aside a frankly democratic constitution proposed by Daunou, and intimidated his opponents in the joint commission by a threat that he would himself draft a constitution and propose it to the people in a mass vote.
This was what really happened. They looked. on helplessly while he refashioned the scheme of Sieyès. Keeping the electoral machinery almost unchanged (save that the lists of notables were to be permanent) Bonaparte entirely altered the upper parts of the constitutional pyramid reared by the philosopher. Improving upon the procedure of the Convention in Vendémiaire 1795, Bonaparte procured the nomination of three consuls in an article of the new constitution; they were Bonaparte (First Consul), Cambacérès and Lebrun. The latter two, uniting with the two retiring consuls, Sieyès and Ducos, were to form the
