“To devote himself to the service of the Republic, to the maintenance of the integrity of its territory, the defence of its government, laws, and of the property which they have consecrated; to fight by all methods authorized by justice, reason, and law, against every attempt to re-establish the feudal regime or to reproduce the titles and qualities thereto belonging; and finally to strive to the uttermost to maintain liberty and equality.”

It is not surprising that the Tribunate, despite the recent purging of its most independent members, judged liberty and equality to be endangered by the method of defence now proposed.  The members bitterly criticised the scheme as a device of the counter-revolution; but, with the timid inconsequence which was already sapping their virility, they proceeded to pass by fifty-six votes to thirty-eight a measure of which they had so accurately gauged the results.  The new institution was, indeed, admirably suited to consolidate Bonaparte’s power.  Resting on the financial basis of the confiscated lands, it offered some guarantee against the restoration of the old monarchy and feudal nobility; while, by stimulating that love of distinction and brilliance which is inherent in every gifted people, it quietly began to graduate society and to group it around the Paladins of a new Gaulish chivalry.  The people had recently cast off the overlordship of the old Frankish nobles, but admiration of merit (the ultimate source of all titles of distinction) was only dormant even in the days of Robespierre; and its insane repression during the Terror now begat a corresponding enthusiasm for all commanding gifts.  Of this inevitable reaction Bonaparte now made skillful use.  When Berlier, one of the leading jurists of France, objected to the new order as leading France back to aristocracy, and contemptuously said that crosses and ribbons were the toys of monarchy, Bonaparte replied: 

“Well:  men are led by toys.  I would not say that in a rostrum, but in a council of wise men and statesmen one ought to speak one’s mind.  I don’t think that the French love liberty and equality:  the French are not at all changed by ten years of revolution:  they are what the Gauls were, fierce and fickle.  They have one feeling—­honour.  We must nourish that feeling:  they must have distinctions.  See how they bow down before the stars of strangers."[161]

After so frank an exposition of motives to his own Council of State, little more need be said.  We need not credit Bonaparte or the orators of the Tribunate with any superhuman sagacity when he and they foresaw that such an order would prepare the way for more resplendent titles.  The Legion of Honour, at least in its highest grades, was the chrysalis stage of the Imperial noblesse.  After all, the new Charlemagne might plead that his new creation satisfied an innate craving of the race, and that its durability was the best answer to hostile critics.  Even when, in 1814, his Senators were offering the crown of France to the heir of the Bourbons, they expressly stipulated that the Legion of Honour should not be abolished:  it has survived all the shocks of French history, even the vulgarizing associations of the Second Empire.