Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/371

 NAPOLEON, FIRST CONSUL AND EMPEROR 359 ander 1., was full of liberal ideas, reversed the policy of Paul, and made friends with Britain. A British army was landed in Egypt, which defeated the French at Aboukir and com- m Peace, 1802. pelled them to capitulate at Alexandria. Hence a general peace, which proved after all to be only a brief truce, was signed at Amiens in March 1802. Although the French government still made pretence of being a Republic, Napoleon's absolutism was certainly no less com- plete than that of Louis xiv. He set about reconciling hostile elements to the new regime, which satisfied the people at large, since they were not to be deprived of the material benefits which they had gained by the Revolution. So much being Bonaparte's secured, they had lost all anxiety for the possession Administra- of political power, in the sense of participating in n * the government. There was a formal reconciliation with the clergy and the Church, though these were still treated as sub- ordinate to the state. The exiled Royalists were allowed to return to a country where a Bourbon restoration was now a manifest impossibility. The glories of the court were revived in all their old magnificence. Splendid buildings rose, costly public works were undertaken. Napoleon set on foot and carried through a great codification of the laws, establishing a uniform system in place of the infinite number of local laws and usages which had grown up in the days when there was practically no central government. The 'Code Napoleon' which was not completed till some years afterwards, was introduced in all the lands which the emperor brought under his sway, and modified the law of those countries permanently. The pretence of a Republic was itself brought to an end in 1804, when Napoleon was proclaimed no longer First Consul, but Emperor. Meanwhile, a diet, under French supervision, was working out the arrangements for the reorganisation of the German Empire in French and Russian interests, which meant in Foreign part the aggrandisement of Prussia as a counter- p <> lic y- poise to Austria. Secular princes whose territories were annexed to France, as well as others, were compensated by the secularisa- tion of the ecclesiastical domains — that is, by their absorption into the lay principalities. At the same time the various Re-