Vast improvements were made in Paris, and the
streets cleaned and irrigated. In the midst of all these cares,
he was defending France against the assaults of the most powerful
nation on the globe; and he was preparing, as his last resort, a vast
army, to carry the war into the heart of England. Notwithstanding
the most atrocious libels with which England was filled against him,
his fame shone resplendent through them all, and he was popular
with the English people. Many of the most illustrious of the English
statesmen advocated his cause. His gigantic adversary, William Pitt.
vanquished by the genius of Napoleon, was compelled to retire from
the ministry--and the world was at peace.
The difficulties, perplexities, embarrassments which were encountered
in those enterprises, were infinite. Says Napoleon, with that
magnanimity which history should recognize and applaud, "We are
told that all the First Consul has to look to, was to do justice.
But to whom was he to do justice? To the proprietors whom the
revolution had violently despoiled of their properties, for this
only, that they had been faithful to their legitimate sovereign to
the principle of honor which they had inherited from their ancestors;
or to those new proprietors, who had purchased these domains,
adventuring their money on the faith of laws flowing from
an illegitimate authority? Was he to do justice to those royalist
soldiers, mutilated in the fields of Germany, La Vendee, and
Quiberon, arrayed under the white standard of the Bourbons, in the
firm belief that they were serving the cause of their king against
a usurping tyranny; or to the million of citizens, who, forming
around the frontiers a wall of brass, had so often saved their
country from the inveterate hostility of its enemies, and had borne
to so transcendent a height the glory of the French eagle? Was he
to do justice to that clergy, the model and the example of every
Christian virtue, stripped of its birthright, the reward of fifteen
hundred years of benevolence; or to the recent acquires, who had
converted the convents into workshops, the churches into warehouses,
and had turned to profane uses all that had been deemed most holy
for ages?"
"At this period," says Theirs, "Napoleon appeared so moderate,
after having been so victorious, he showed himself so profound a
legislator, after having proved himself so great a commander, he
evinced so much love for the arts of peace, after having excelled
in the arts of war, that well might he excite illusions in France
and in the world.
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