Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 3. The Reaction in France. Georg Brandes

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 of the old monarchy returned of its own accord at the moment when religion again became a power in the state. The revivification of the idea of authority which the Revolution misunderstood and scorned has been described as Napoleon's greatest and most arduous achievement.[4] It has been said with truth that no one ever developed the instinct and the gift of ruling as naturally and as boldly as he. But from the moment when, no longer content with being a power in virtue of his genius and of the new social order, he attempted to restore autocratic monarchy, what he relied on was not that idea of authority which amalgamates with the idea of right, and is an expression of the reasonableness of things, but the idea of authority which influences by dazzling and which is accepted blindly. And from that moment the alliance with the church was a necessity. When, in 1808, Wieland asked the Emperor why he had not adapted the religion he had reintroduced somewhat more to the spirit of the times, Napoleon laughed and replied: "Yes, my dear Wieland! It is certainly not a religion intended for philosophers. The philosophers believe neither in me nor my religion; and for the people who do believe one cannot do miracles enough or allow them to retain too many." It would hardly be possible to assert more plainly that authority is a dazzling, deluding power. On other occasions Napoleon employed the word which became the intellectual catchword of the following period—he described religion as order. Johannes Müller writes to his brother in 1806: "The Emperor spoke of what lay at the foundation of all religions, and of their necessity, and said that men required to be kept in order."

      In this conception of religion as order we seem to trace some resemblance between Napoleon and the Jacobins, just as there is certainly a similarity between his attempts to rehabilitate the church and Robespierre's endeavours to reanimate religious feeling. As a politician Robespierre believed in the ordering, regulating power of religion, and as a politician at a period when the great majority of educated men were deists, he feared atheism as an idea altogether foreign to his age.

      Bonaparte perceived what an invaluable instrument in the hand of a ruler a traditional religion and form of public worship was, and, if for no other reason than this, was determined on an alliance with the clergy, whom he, when a victor in Italy, had flattered and favoured with a view to eventualities. He was well aware that in France as in other countries the ignorant majority were still attached to the traditional religion, and that the teachings of the eighteenth-century philosophers could not possibly as yet have penetrated to the lowest and widest layer of the population. At an earlier period he had openly avowed his aims. At a meeting of his Council of State in the year 1800 he exclaimed: "With my government functionaries, my armed police, and my priests I am in a position to do whatever I please." To him the priest was a police official like the others, simply with a different uniform. In the notes which he dictated to Montholon he plainly intimates that the