Jacobins, among them Aréna, a Corsican, for the murder of Bonaparte
at the opera. Aréna and his supposed accomplice were arrested
(10th of October 1800); and that was virtually the beginning and
the end of the plot. Far more serious was the danger to be apprehended
from the royalists. Enraged by Bonaparte’s contemptuous
refusal to encourage the return of “Louis XVIII.” to his own, the
royalists began to compass the death of the man whom they had at
first looked on as a potential General Monk to their Charles II.
Their chief man of action was a sturdy Breton peasant, Georges
Cadoudal, whose zeal and courage served to bring to a head plans
long talked over by the confidants of the Comte d’Artois (the future
Charles X. of France) in London. The outcome of it was the despatch
of some five or six Chouan desperadoes to Paris, three of whom
exploded an infernal machine close to Bonaparte’s carriage in the
narrow streets near the Tuileries (3rd Nivôse [24th of December]
1800). Bonaparte and Josephine escaped uninjured, but several
bystanders were killed or wounded. Napoleon’s vengeance at once
took a strongly practical turn. Despite the evidence which Fouché
and others brought forward to incriminate the royalists, the First
Consul persisted in attributing the outrage to the Jacobins, had a
list of suspects drawn up, and caused the Council of State to declare
that a special precautionary measure was necessary. The measure
proved to be the deportation of the leading Jacobins; and a cloak
of legality was cast over this extraordinary proceeding by a special
decree of the senate (avowedly the guardian of the constitution)
that this act of the government was a “measure tending to preserve
the constitution” (5th of January 1801). The body charged with
the guarding of the constitution was thus brought by Bonaparte
to justify its violation; and a way was thus opened for the legalizing
of further irregularities. For the present the connivance of the
senate at his coup d’état of Nivôse led to the deportation of one
hundred and thirty Jacobins; some were interned in the islands of
the Bay of Biscay, while fifty were sent to the tropical colonies of
France, whence few of them ever returned. It is to be observed that,
before the punishment was inflicted, evidence was forthcoming which
brought home the outrage of Nivôse to the royalists; but this was
all one to Bonaparte; his aim was to destroy the Jacobin party,
and it never recovered from the blow. The party which had set up
the Committee of Public Safety was now struck down by the very
man who through the Directory inherited by direct lineal descent
the dictatorial powers instituted in the spring of 1793 for the salvation
of the republic. It remains to add that the suspects in the plot
of October 1800 were now guillotined (31st of January 1801), and
that two of the plotters closely connected with the affair of Nivôse
were also executed (21st of April). The institution of the special
tribunals (already referred to), which enabled Bonaparte to supersede
local government in thirty-two of the departments, was another
Outcome of the bomb conspiracy.
Far more lenient was Bonaparte’s conduct towards a knot of discontented officers who, in April–May 1802, framed a clumsy plot, known as the “Plot of the Placards,” for arousing the soldiery against him. He disgraced or imprisoned the ringleaders, ordered Bernadotte (perhaps the fountain head of the whole affair) to take the waters at Plombieres and drove from office Fouché, who had sought to screen the real offenders by impugning the royalists.
Bonaparte’s action in the years 1800–1802 showed that he feared the old republican party far more than the royalists. In April 1802 he procured the passing of a senatus consultum granting increased facilities for the return of the émigrés; with few exceptions they were allowed to return, provided that it was before the 23rd of September 1802, and, after swearing to obey the new constitution, they entered into possession of their lands which had not been alienated; but barriers were raised against the recovery of their confiscated lands. Very many accepted these terms, rallied to the First Consul with more or less sincerity; and their return to France to strengthen the conservative elements in French society. The promulgation of the Concordat (18th of April 1802) and the institution of what was in all but name a state religion tended strongly in the same direction, the authority of the priests being generally used in support of the man to whom Chateaubriand applied the epithet “restorer of the altars.” Nevertheless, despite Bonaparte’s marvellous skill in rallying moderate men of all parties to his side, there remained an unconvinced and desperate minority, whose clumsy procedure enabled the great engineer to hoist them with their own petard and to raise himself to the imperial dignity. But before referring to this last proof of the Machiavellian skill of the great Corsican in dealing with plots, it is needful to notice the events which brought him into collision with the British nation.
The treaty of Amiens had contained germs which ensured its dissolution at no distant date; but even more serious was the conduct of Bonaparte after the conclusion of peace. He carried matters with so high a hand in the affairs of Holland, Switzerland and Italy as seriously to diminish the outlets for British trade in Europe. His action in the matters just named, as also in the complex affair of the secularizations of clerical domains in Germany (February 1803), belongs properly to the history of those countries; but we may here note that, even before the signature of the peace of Amiens (27th of March 1802), he had effected changes in the constitution of the Batavian (Dutch) republic, which placed power in the hands of the French party and enabled him to keep French troops in the chief Dutch fortresses, despite the recently signed treaty of Lunéville which guaranteed the independence of that republic. His treatment of the Italians was equally high-handed. In September 1801 he bestowed on the Cisalpine republic a constitution modelled on that of France. Next, he summoned the chief men of the Francophile party in that republic to Lyons in the early days of 1802, in order to arrange with them the appointment of the chiefs of the executive. It soon appeared that the real aim of the meeting was to make Bonaparte president. He let it be known that he strongly disapproved of their proposal to elect Count Melzi, the Italian statesman most suitable for the post; and a hint given by Talleyrand showed the reason for his disapproval. The deputies thereupon elected Bonaparte. As for the neighbouring land, Piedmont, it was already French in all but name. On the 21st of April 1801 he issued a decree which constituted Piedmont as a military district dependent on France; for various reasons he postponed the final act of incorporation to the 21st of September 1802. The Genoese republic a little earlier underwent at his hand changes which made its doge all-powerful in local affairs, but a mere puppet in the hands of Bonaparte. In central Italy the influence of the First Consul was paramount; for in 1801 he transformed the grand duchy of Tuscany into the kingdom of Etruria for the duke of Parma; and, seeing that that promotion added lustre to the fortunes of the duchess of Parma (a Spanish infanta), Spain consented lamely enough to the cession of Louisiana to France. The effect of these extraordinary changes, then, was the carrying out of Napoleonic satrapies in the north and centre of Italy in a way utterly inconsistent with the treaty of Lunéville; and the weakness with which the courts of London and Vienna looked on at these singular events confirmed Bonaparte in the belief that he could do what he would with neighbouring states. The policy of the French revolutionists had been to surround France with free and allied republics. The policy of the First Consul was to transform them into tributaries which copied with chameleonic fidelity the political fashions he himself set at Paris.
Of all these interventions the most justifiable and beneficent, perhaps, was that which related to the Swiss cantons. Whether his agents did, or did not, pour oil on the flames of civil strife, which he thereupon quenched by his Act of Mediation, 19th of February 1803, is a complex question. The settlement which he thereby imposed was in many ways excellent; but it was dearly purchased by the complete ascendancy of Bonaparte in all important affairs, and by the claim for the services of a considerable contingent of Swiss troops which he thereafter rigorously enforced.
The re-occupation of Switzerland by French troops in October 1802 wrought English opinion to a state of indignation against the autocrat who was making conquests more quickly in time of peace than he had done by his sword; and the irritation increased when, on the 29th of January 1803, he publicly stated: “It is recognized by Europe that Italy and Holland, as Well as Switzerland, are at the disposal of France.” Another act of his at that time made still more strongly for war. On the 30th of January he caused the official French paper, the Moniteur, to publish in extenso a confidential report sent by Colonel Sebastiani describing his so-called commercial mission to the Levant. In it there occurred the threatening phrase: “Six thousand French would at present be enough to conquer Egypt.” An equally significant hint, that the Ionian Isles might easily be regained by France, further helped to open the eyes of the purblind Addington ministry to the resolve of Napoleon to make the Mediterranean a French lake. Ministers were also deeply concerned at the continued occupation of Holland by French troops, which made that country and, therefore, the Cape of Good Hope, absolutely dependent on France. They accordingly resolved not to give up Malta unless Lord Whitworth, the British ambassador at Paris, “received a satisfactory explanation”
