Determined that there should be no reaction, that the scattered forces of the opposition should have no common cause and centre of revolt, he stationed his soldiers at threatened points; and then used all the art of the finished politician to deceive and divide the enemy. To the royalists he held out the terror of a Jacobin revival; to the Jacobin, the dread of a Bourbon restoration. To the clergy he hinted a return of the good old days when no man could legally be born, innocently married, decently die, or be buried with hope of heaven, unless a priest had charge of the functions. But above all was his pledge of strong government, one which would quell faction, restore order, secure property, guarantee civil liberty, and make the Republic prosperous and happy. The belief that he would make good his word was the foundation of the almost universal approval with which his seizure of power was regarded. He was felt to be the one man who could drag the Republic out of the ditch, reinspire the armies, cleanse the public service, restore the ruined finances, establish law and order, and blend into a harmonious nationality the factions which were rending France. Besides, it was thought that a strong government would be the surest guarantee of peace with foreign nations, as it was believed that the weakness of the Directory was an encouragement to the foreign enemies of the country. One of Napoleon’s first acts was to proclaim amnesty for political offences. He went in person to set free the hostages imprisoned in the Temple. Certain priests and émigrés who had been cast into prison, he released. The law of hostages, which held relatives responsible for the conduct of relatives, he repealed. The victims of Fructidor (September, 1797) who had been banished, he recalled--Pichegru and Aubrey excepted. Mr. Lanfrey says that this exception from the pardon is proof of Napoleon’s “mean and cruel nature.” Let us see. Pichegru, a republican general, in command of a republican army, had taken gold from the Bourbons, and had agreed to betray his army and his country. Not only that, he had purposely allowed that army to be beaten by the enemy. As Desaix remarked, Pichegru was perhaps the only general known to history who had ever done a thing of the kind. Was Napoleon mean and cruel in letting such a man remain in exile? Had Washington captured and shot Benedict Arnold, would that have been proof that Washington’s nature was mean and cruel? In leaving Pichegru where he was, Napoleon acted as leniently as possible with a self-convicted traitor.