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[Illustration: JOSEPHINE]
World's Best Histories: FRANCE
For more than ten years, amid unheard of shocks and sufferings, France hadbeen seeking for a free and regular government, that might assure to herthe new rights which had only been gained through tribulation. She hadoverthrown the Monarchy and attempted a Republic; she had accepted andrejected three constitutions, all the while struggling single-handed withEurope, leagued against her. She had undergone the violence of the Reignof Terror, the contradictory passions of the Assemblies, and theincoherent feebleness of the Directory. For the first time since the deathof King Louis XIV., her history finds once more a centre, and henceforthrevolves round a single man. For fifteen years, victorious or vanquished,at the summit of glory, or in the depths of abasement, France and Europe,overmastered by an indomitable will and unbridled passion for power, werecompelled to squander their blood and their treasure upon that page ofuniversal history which General Bonaparte claims for his own, and which hehas succeeded in covering with glory and crime.
On the day following the 18th Brumaire, in the uncertainty of parties, inface of a constitution audaciously violated, and a government mainlyprovisional, the nation was more excited than apprehensive or disquieted.It had caught a glimpse of that natural power and that free ascendancy ofgenius to which men willingly abandon themselves, with a confidence whichthe most bitter deceptions have never been able to extinguish. Ardent andsincere republicans, less and less numerous, felt themselves conqueredbeforehand, by a sure instinct that was not misled by the protest of theiradversaries. They bent before a new power, to which their old hatreds didnot attach, which they believed to be in some sort created by their ownhands, and of which they had not yet measured the audacity. The mass ofthe population, the true France, hailed with joy the hope of order and ofa regular and strong administration. They were not prejudiced in favor ofthe philosophic constitution so long propounded by Sieyès. In the eyes ofthe nation, the government was already concentrated in the hands ofGeneral Bonaparte; it was in him that all were trusting, for repose athome and glory and peace abroad.
In fact, he was governing already, disregarding the prolonged discussionsof the two legislative commissions, and the profound developments of theprojects of Sieyès, expounded by M. Boulay. Before the Constitution of theyear VIII, received the sanction of his dominant will,