The new constitution, of the year VIII, was promulgated on the 15th of December, 1799. The consuls were three in number, elected for ten years, and eligible for re-election, but to the first was given all the power, his two colleagues being merely advisers. These three consuls were Bonaparte, Cambacérès, and Lebrun. The laws were to be prepared under the direction of the consuls by a _Conseil d'État_, named by them and revocable by them; these laws were to be discussed by the _Tribunat_, composed of one hundred members, but voted or rejected only by the three hundred members of the _Corps législatif_. Between these two powers, executive and legislative, was placed a _Sénat conservateur_, consisting of eighty members named for life, who were to watch over the maintenance of the constitution and select from the national lists, selected by a process of successive elimination from the whole body of electors, the members of the Tribunat and the Corps législatif. [Illustration: THE ARMY UNDER THE FIRST CONSUL: RETURN OF A REGIMENT FROM MARENGO. From a water-color by F. Bac.] The whole administration of the State was reorganized and given that character of "centralization," apparently rendered necessary by the danger from abroad by which it was threatened, which is still maintained, notwithstanding the many evils to which it has given rise and the extent to which the public liberty is impaired. Under the able hand of the First Consul, the new government was quick to inspire such confidence that the Parisian bankers lent it readily the first funds of which it had need. The laws against the recalcitrant clergy were greatly modified, the churches opened, the list of the émigrés was declared closed, and the former nobles admitted to their rights as citizens, but not to the enjoyment of their property which had been confiscated for the benefit of the _biens nationaux_. The Parlement of Paris having been suppressed, a new judiciary organization was established in the capital, the _tribunal de première_ instance and the _cour d'appel_ were created; the _cour de cassation_ and the _cour d'assise_, the justices of the peace, were all reorganized. The army, strongly revolutionary in tendency, was so willing to be relieved of the incompetence of the Directory, and was so promptly provided with equipments, munitions, and confidence in the new order of things, that it willingly accepted the change in the State.