The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Vol. 2 (of 4)

John Stuart Mill · en
Within some months their plight began to awaken considerable sympathy,
and that sympathy gradually found expression in the theaters and
newspapers. The next development was a movement to secure restoration,
at least in part, of patrimony and station. Then a mild but
symptomatic storm burst on their heads. The sequestered estates,
ecclesiastical and secular, were now in new hands, and as order
followed anarchy their values to the republicans who had acquired them
were steadily increasing. Any attempt to dislodge the (p.~202)
possessors would have meant the overthrow of Bonaparte's still
insecure power. So he treated the suppliants with contemptuous
disdain. What he had done was done. They were home once more and might
remain, if subservient: otherwise their existence was their own
affair. In the perspective of St. Helena he thought he had erred; that
he might have assembled all the considerable estates still in state
ownership and have distributed them in bits to former proprietors.
Possibly and yet improbably he might have conciliated a large
constituency of the social and ecclesiastical hierarchy for use in the
empire. In this thought the history of France has measurably justified
his regrets. But in fact he put the old stock of the nobility in a
place far below the middle and upper burghers who rallied to his
support. It was a choice of enemies, and he chose radicals and
royalists. They accepted the challenge and met the fate of
conspirators.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE PACIFICATION OF EUROPE[19]

         [Footnote 19: Daudet: Les Bourbons et la Russie; the letters
         of Rostopchin in Woronzoff's Archives, Vol. VIII; articles by
         Tatistcheff in the Revue d'histoire diplomatique, 1889; by
         Buchholz in Preussische Jahrbücher, 1896; Rambaud: Histoire
         de Russie; Czartoryski: Mémoires; De Maistre (Joseph):
         Mémoires et correspondance; Téché: Les origines du Concordat;
         Sloane: The French Revolution and Religious Reform; Boulay de
         la Meurthe: Négotiation du Concordat; Theiner: Histoire des
         deux Concordats; Mahan: Life of Nelson; Schiemann: Die
         Ermordung Pauls; Langeron: Memoirs; likewise those of
         Norvins, Barante, and Moriolles; Brückner: Kaiser Pauls Ende
         (von R. R.); Bowman: Preliminary Stages of the Peace of
         Amiens; Fauchille: Du blocus maritime.]

     Russia, Italy, and Spain -- The Kingdom of Etruria -- The
     Consulate and Royalty -- The Church in France -- The Concordat --
     Affairs in England -- France and Russia -- The Battle of
     Copenhagen -- Preliminaries of Peace -- Terms of the Agreement --
     France and the United States.


[Sidenote: 1801]