France needed new machinery of all kinds, and this Bonaparte undertook to supply. There were many people who regarded him as a great general; but to their amazement he now proved himself a remarkable statesman.

NAPOLEON THE STATESMAN

He attacked the question of the national income like a veteran financier. The first matter was reorganizing taxation. He succeeded in distributing the burden more justly than had ever been known in France. The taxes were fixed so that each knew what he had to pay, and the inordinate graft that tax collectors and police had enjoyed was cut off. New financial institutions were devised; among them the Bank of France. The economy he instituted in the government, the army, his own household, everywhere that his power extended, was rigid and minute; as he personally examined all accounts, there was no escape. The waste and parasitism that pervaded the country began to give way for the first time since the Revolution.

EMPRESS JOSEPHINE

From a painting by Pierre Paul Prud’hon.

Industries of all kinds had sickened in the long period of war. Bonaparte undertook their revival by one of the most severe applications ever made of the doctrine of protection,—he even attempted to make his women folk wear no goods not made in France! His interest in agriculture was as keen as in manufacturing, and his personal suggestions and interference of the same nature. The prosperity of the country was stimulated greatly by the public works Bonaparte undertook. One can go nowhere in France today without finding them. It was he who set the country at road building. Some of the most magnificent highways in Europe were laid out by him, including those over four Alpine passes. He paid great attention to improving harbors. Those now at Cherbourg, Havre, and Nice, as well as at Flushing and Antwerp, Bonaparte planned and began. As for Paris, his ambition for the city was boundless. He was responsible for some of her finest features and monuments.

His greatest civil achievement was undoubtedly the codification of the laws, and it was the one of which he was proudest. That he contributed much to the Code Napoleon besides the driving power that insisted that it be promptly put through, there is no doubt. His great contribution was the inestimable one of commonsense. He had no patience with meaningless precedents, conventions, and technicalities. He wanted laws that everybody could understand and would recognize as necessary and just.

NAPOLEON AS FIRST CONSUL

Nothing more daring was undertaken in this period by Bonaparte than his reëstablishment of the Catholic Church and his recall of thousands of members of the old régime driven out of the country by the Revolution. It was an attempt to reconcile and restore the two most powerful enemies of the Revolution, the two that the first consul knew Europe would never cease to fight to restore to power. There was of course great opposition in radical and republican circles to both ventures.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

From the painting by Delaroche.

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