he
released priests from confinement; he rebuked the fanaticism of the
ultra-revolutionists, he reorganized the public bodies; he created
tribunals of appeal; he ceased to confiscate the property of emigrants,
and opened a way for their return; he restored the right of disposing
property by will; he instituted the Bank of France on sound financial
principles; he checked all disorders; he brought to a close the
desolating war of La Vendee; he retained what was of permanent value in
the legislation of the Revolution; he made the distribution of the
public burdens easy; he paid his army, and rewarded eminent men, whom he
enlisted in his service. So stable was the government, and so wise were
the laws, and so free were all channels of industry, that prosperity
returned to the distracted country. The middle classes were particularly
benefited,--the shopkeepers and mechanics,--and they acquiesced in a
strong rule, since it seemed beneficent. The capital was enriched and
adorned and improved. A treaty with the Pope was made, by which the
clergy were restored to their parishes. A new code of laws was made by
great jurists, on the principles of the Justinian Code. A magnificent
road was constructed over the Alps. Colonial possessions were recovered.
Navies were built, fortifications repaired, canals dug, and the
beet-root and tobacco cultivated.

But these internal improvements, by which France recovered prosperity,
paled before the services which Napoleon rendered as a defender of his
country's nationality. He had proposed a peace-policy to England in an
autograph letter to the King, which was treated as an insult, and
answered by the British government by a declaration of war, to last till
the Bourbons were restored,--perhaps what Napoleon wanted and expected;
and war was renewed with Austria and England. The consulate was now
marked by the brilliant Italian campaign,--the passage over the Alps;
the battle of Marengo, gained by only thirty thousand men; the recovery
of Italy, and renewed military _eclat_. The Peace of Amiens, October,
1801, placed Napoleon in the proudest position which any modern
sovereign ever enjoyed. He was now thirty-three years of age,--supreme
in France, and powerful throughout Europe. The French were proud of a
man who was glorious both in peace and war; and his consulate had been
sullied by only one crime,--the assassination of the heir of the house
of Conde; a blunder, as Talleyrand said, rather tha