1. How the Work of the Revolution was Confirmed by the
Consulate.
THE history of the Consulate is as rich as the preceding
period in psychological material. In the first place it shows us
that the work of a powerful individual is superior to that of a
collectivity. Bonaparte immediately replaced the bloody anarchy
in which the Republic had for ten years been writhing by a period
of order. That which none of the four Assemblies of the
Revolution had been able to realise, despite the most violent
oppression, a single man accomplished in a very short space of
time.
His authority immediately put an end to all the Parisian
insurrections and the attempts at monarchical resistance, and re-
established the moral unity of France, so profoundly divided by
intense hatreds. Bonaparte replaced an unorganised collective
despotism by a perfectly organised individual despotism.
Everyone gained thereby, for his tyranny was infinitely less
heavy than that which had been endured for ten long years. We
must suppose, moreover, that it was unwelcome to very few, as it
was very soon accepted with immense enthusiasm.
We know better to-day than to repeat with the old
historians that Bonaparte overthrew the Republic. On the
contrary, he retained of it all that could be retained, and never
would have been retained without him, by establishing all the
practicable work of the Revolution—the abolition of privileges,
equality before the law, &c.—in institutions and codes of law.
The Consular Government continued, moreover, to call itself the
Republic.
It is infinitely probable that without the Consulate a
monarchical restoration would have terminated the Directory, and
would have wiped out the greater part of the work of the
Revolution. Let us suppose Bonaparte erased from history. No
one, I think, will imagine that the Directory could have survived
the universal weariness of its rule. It would certainly have
been overturned by the royalist conspiracies which were breaking
out daily, and Louis XVIII. would probably have ascended the
throne. Certainly he was to mount it sixteen years later, but
during this interval Bonaparte gave such force to the principles
of the Revolution, by establishing them in laws and customs, that
the restored sovereign dared not touch them, nor restore the
property of the returned emigrés.
Matters would have been very different had Louis XVIII.
immediately followed the Directory. He would have brought with
him all the absolutism of the ancien régime, and
fresh revolutions would have been necessary to abolish it. We
know that a mere attempt to return to the past overthrew Charles
X.
It would be a little ingenuous to complain of the
tyranny of Bonaparte. Under the
ancien régime
Frenchmen had supported every species of tyranny, and the
Republic had created a despotism even heavier than that of the
monarchy. Despotism was then a normal condition, which aroused
no protest save when it was accompanied by disorder.
A constant law of the psychology of crowds shows them as
creating anarchy, and then seeking the master who will enable
them to emerge therefrom. Bonaparte was this master.
