undred members, but voted or rejected only by the three
hundred members of the _Corps legislatif_. Between these two powers,
executive and legislative, was placed a _Senat conservateur_, consisting
of eighty members named for life, who were to watch over the maintenance
of the constitution and select from the national lists, selected by a
process of successive elimination from the whole body of electors, the
members of the Tribunat and the Corps legislatif.

[Illustration: THE ARMY UNDER THE FIRST CONSUL: RETURN OF A REGIMENT
FROM MARENGO. From a water-color by F. Bac.]

The whole administration of the State was reorganized and given that
character of "centralization," apparently rendered necessary by the
danger from abroad by which it was threatened, which is still
maintained, notwithstanding the many evils to which it has given rise
and the extent to which the public liberty is impaired. Under the able
hand of the First Consul, the new government was quick to inspire such
confidence that the Parisian bankers lent it readily the first funds of
which it had need. The laws against the recalcitrant clergy were greatly
modified, the churches opened, the list of the emigres was declared
closed, and the former nobles admitted to their rights as citizens, but
not to the enjoyment of their property which had been confiscated for
the benefit of the _biens nationaux_. The Parlement of Paris having been
suppressed, a new judiciary organization was established in the capital,
the _tribunal de premiere_ instance and the _cour d'appel_ were created;
the _cour de cassation_ and the _cour d'assise_, the justices of the
peace, were all reorganized. The army, strongly revolutionary in
tendency, was so willing to be relieved of the incompetence of the
Directory, and was so promptly provided with equipments, munitions, and
confidence in the new order of things, that it willingly accepted the
change in the State.

Marengo and Hohenlinden brought about the Peace of Luneville, February,
1801, with the Continental powers; the fear of the camp of Boulogne
from which the First Consul proposed to descend upon England (if we may
believe the French historians), that of Amiens, March, 1802, with that
power. The wars of the Revolution were finished, it was thought, even by
Bonaparte himself. Then commenced that extraordinary display of the
genius of reorganization, unhampered by any undue scrupulousness, which
made his legislation almost as admira