late to shake his resolve. The meeting of the two potentates took place at Fontainebleau. After the first exchange of compliments and cordialities, they drove to the Palace in the same carriage. Napoleon's face beamed with satisfaction, and as he handed the Pope up the steps, each of his unusually lively glances seemed to say: "Do you see my prize? I have him." By a comical inadvertency, the great procession to Paris was led by a troop of mounted Mamelukes. The sight of the bronze-hued visages of these Mahometan horsemen transported the spectator in fancy to Mecca. They made the entrance seem more like that of a Mahometan than of a Christian high priest. The Pope's own face betrayed the embarrassment he felt on finding himself in such an entirely new world. It was easily seen that his foot, though it was kissed by multitudes, did not tread this soil with perfect confidence. His priestly retinue, resplendent in gorgeous episcopal vestments, and the military court which came to meet it, shining in burnished mail, presented a strange contrast. One might, says Archbishop de Pradt, have imagined one's self suddenly transported to Japan at the moment of a visit from its spiritual to its temporal emperor.
In order thoroughly to understand the First Consul's reasons for determinedly adhering to and carrying out a project which at the first glance seems unpatriotic and impolitic, we must consider the matter in the first place from the purely economic point of view.
The Revolution had plunged France into economic distress. Prosperity was at an end; the population was threatened by famine; in the middle of the nineties more than half of the country lay uncultivated. The lands of the émigrés and the church had been paid for by their purchasers in paper-money, but this paper-money was valueless. The economic salvation of the country could only be accomplished by turning to account the resources which had been made available by the new distribution of the state property.
The land which had been taken from the nobility and the church had long been left entirely uncultivated because, since the fruits of the earth require time to blossom and mature, no one was willing to plough and sow without the certainty that the ground would remain in his possession long enough to reward him for his labour. But such certainty was impossible as long as the old owners of the land were in the country and had not renounced their right to it. Nothing but their extermination could make the cultivation of the new national property a reasonable proceeding. It was because the Reign of Terror exterminated them that it was demanded and endured. When it had fulfilled its double task of saving the Republic and ensuring the security of the new distribution of property, it was overthrown. What the owners of property demanded after its fall was, first and foremost, a government under which it was possible for them to utilise their newly acquired land.
There were in France still only the elements of a modern social organism, of new conditions of proprietorship, of a new code of laws—everything was incomplete. The Estates had disappeared; classes did not as yet exist. The new order of things had not yet become, as it were, a part of the family and the individual ethical consciousness. Security, durability, was what now had to be achieved.
This could not be done by restoring the monarchy; for at this period monarchy still meant the old order of things, the old laws, the old distribution of property. Bonaparte gave France the security she desired. And he did more than this; by his victories he spread the new French ideas and customs abroad throughout Europe.
The weak point in the international position of France at the beginning of the century lay in the antagonism between its new social order and the old social order prevailing in all the other countries. For the sake of its own security it was necessary that the French nation should metamorphose the social institutions of the nations it overcame. Bonaparte understood this, and introduced the new order of things wherever his influence permitted him to do so.
But, on the other hand, he considered it necessary to make concessions, real or apparent, in those matters in which he could not otherwise bring about uniformity between French conditions and those of the rest of Europe. To ensure the stability of the new order of things, he felt obliged to do what he himself called mettre les institutions de la France en harmonie avec celles de l'Europe. He imagined that the imperial crown upon his head would reconcile the powers to the French Revolution; he believed that the creation of a nobility would promote a more harmonious feeling between foreign nations and his own; and in the same manner he considered it good policy to give France back a state church bearing some resemblance to the churches of other countries.
He began at the foundation, that is to say, with the church. The Concordat was concluded in 1802. In the same year was founded the order of the Legion of Honour, which satisfactorily answered its purpose as a mark of military distinction, but failed in what it was really intended to accomplish, the creation of an aristocracy. In 1804 the Empire was created. In 1807 the law of entail was reintroduced. In 1808 an entirely new aristocracy was created.
All this, however, did not produce real similarity between France and the rest of Europe. There was little resemblance between Napoleon, the elected emperor, and the kings and emperors of the old dynasties; and Napoleon's aristocracy was an aristocracy without privileges, his church a church without endowments. But, although his various attempts at restoration resulted in the estrangement of many of the best elements in French society, it cannot be denied that they evidenced political sagacity in both internal and international questions.
There was sound political economy in the idea of the Concordat.
It had not as yet been possible to efface the species of disgrace which attached to the ownership of the confiscated property of the church and the nobles. Consequently it did not yet possess the same market value as other property. An inherited estate and an estate belonging to the nation yielding the same revenue did not find purchasers at the same price; the latter had to be sold for forty per cent. less. The state could only alter this condition of matters in one way, namely, by inducing the former possessors of what was now state property to make a distinct renunciation of their right to it. In most cases this could not be accomplished. As regarded church property, however, it was possible; for the church had a head, whose decisions were binding on all his subjects.
By means of the Concordat with the Pope Bonaparte succeeded in giving the purchasers of church property that security which they had so long desired in vain. The Pope declared distinctly that neither he nor his successors would ever lay claim to the church lands which had been sold. So now there was no longer either risk or sin in owning them. In return the state promised the church a fixed income. The clergy of all ranks were to receive remuneration—a comparatively modest yearly payment in money and a dwelling-house. The churches which had not been sold were made over to them. As regarded the expenses entailed by the maintenance of public worship, the clergy were referred to their Commune or Department (which was entitled to levy a tax for this purpose) and to the charity of the faithful. Agreements of the same kind were come to in the matter of the church educational and charitable institutions. The state had deprived the Catholic church of at least 5000 millions of capital and 270 millions of revenue; in return it promised a yearly revenue of seventeen millions—thus doing a good stroke of business at the same time that it tranquillised both the owners of church property and the great body of orthodox Catholics.
The Concordat placed the three chief Christian confessions and the Jewish religion in the same position; they were all under state protection and their clergy were all dependent on the state for their incomes. Napoleon evidently overestimated the power which this gave him over the Catholic church, the only one of any importance in France. It soon opposed him, upon which he used violence, actually carrying off the Pope and keeping him prisoner. He himself set his Concordat at naught.
But its sound political and tactical basis enabled it to survive both this breach and its projector's fall.
The very important part which Bonaparte's personal ambition must have played in the evolution of the Concordat need only be suggested. With the authority of the church had been overthrown the authority of the monarchy. What was required was the restoration of the principle of authority. All the ceremonial
