and the other Brumairians were things apart. Napoleon thus not only
avoided all the unpopularity currently felt towards the men of Brumaire
but was able to appear above faction and thus as national reconciler.
It was always the threat from the Right that most exercised the First
Consul, even before the 'infernal machine', and he decided to cut the
ground from under their feet by co-opting their traditional supporter, the
Catholic Church. This was yet another opportunity provided by
Marengo, which in political if not military terms has claims to be
considered one of Bonaparte's most decisive battles. When Napoleon
seized power in November 1799, French Catholicism was in a parlous
state. The Church had been under sustained attack for ten years, first
from the revolutionaries who equated it with the ancien regime and latterly
from the blundering reformers of the Directory. The episcopate was for
the most part in exile and systematically counter-revolutionary. The
expropriation of church property and the institution of civil marriage left
most of the priesthood irrevocably alienated, and even those priests who
collaborated with the post-1789 regime had tO heed the instructions of
their emigre bishops. Under the Directory was no civil society, no middle
range of institutions between the individual and the state; the Church
therefore had a legal existence only as a collection of in dividual priests,
which naturally weakened its position. Pius VI, a virtual prisoner of the
Directory in Rome, was dying. The Church seemed to have reached the
point of terminal crisis.
But Napoleon knew that Catholicism was still a potent force among the
peasantry, from whom he derived much of his support. He saw an
important potential source of authority in the 4o,ooo priests who would
support his regime if he came to an agreement with the Church. He also
saw the short-term advantages of getting rid of a counter-revolutionary
element which would also bind closely to him the emigre aristocracy and
the middle classes. He needed to ensure that the Vendee did not break
out again and to cut the ground from under Louis XVIII. Above all,
Napoleon seriously considered that society could not exist without
inequality of property. Only the Church could legitimate social inequal
ity, for secular attempts to justify it would trigger revolution.
There were two ways of going about the religious problem. Napoleon
could allow the separation of Church and State to work itself out
spontaneously, which would probably entail a de fa cto restoration of
Catholicism; or he could actively seek a formal agreement with the Pope.
On temperamental and political grounds, it was always likely that he
would opt for the latter solution. He liked to stamp his authority on every
aspect of nat ional life and, if the Church was to be restored, he personally
marcin
(Marcin)
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