The insurgent Chouans next claimed attention:  and here the personal character of Napoleon gave him advantages of the first importance.  The leaders of those brave bands were disposed to consider such a soldier as a very different sort of ruler from the Pentarchy of the Luxembourg; and their admiration for his person prepared them to listen to his terms.  The first measures of the new government were obviously calculated to soothe their prejudices, and the general display of vigour in every branch of the administration to overawe them.  Chatillon, D’Antichamp, Suzannet, and other royalist chiefs, submitted in form.  Bernier, a leading clergyman in La Vendee, followed the same course, and was an acquisition of even more value.  Others held out; but were soon routed in detail, tried and executed.  The appearances of returning tranquillity were general and most welcome.

Some of the party vanquished on the 18th Brumaire, however, still lingered in Paris, and were busy in plotting new convulsions.  It was therefore the advice of all the ministers to condemn them to exile; and lists of proscription were drawn up and published.  But Buonaparte only meant to overawe these persons:  no one was apprehended:  they kept quiet for a season; and the edict of exile sank by degrees into oblivion.

Meanwhile it was necessary that the government itself should assume some permanent form, ere the time arrived for the re-assembly of the legislative bodies.  Their two committees met in one chamber with the consuls, and the outline of a new constitution was laid before them by Sieyes; who enjoyed the reputation of being the greatest of scientific politicians.  The Abbe, however, had soon perceived that Napoleon was to be the real creator of whatever should be adopted; and, in the progress of the ensuing consultations, submitted, step by step, to the laconic Dictator, who accepted or discarded propositions, exactly as they happened to coincide, or be at variance with, his own notions of his own personal interest.  He cared little in what manner the structure of the future representative assemblies might be arranged; but there must be no weakening of the executive power, which he was determined to vest virtually in himself alone, and by means of which, he doubted not, it would be easy to neutralise all other influences.

The metaphysical Abbe proposed a scheme by far too delicately complicated for the tear and wear of human business and human passions.  The absurdity, even of the parts which Napoleon consented to adopt, became apparent to all when the machine was set in motion.  The two most prominent and peculiar devices—­namely, that of placing at the head of the state a sort of mock sovereign, destitute of any effective power, and capable at any time of being degraded by the vote of a single legislative body, under the title of GRAND ELECTOR; and secondly, that of committing the real executive power to two separate consuls, one for war