We observe the direction which events were taking. During the course of the Emperor's reign Neo-Catholicism lost ever more and more of that favour which it at first enjoyed, and not until the return of the Bourbons did it once more completely triumph. Immediately after the accession of Napoleon, Chateaubriand, Bonald, and De Maistre have full liberty to write, the _Journal des Débats_ is encouraged to undertake its crusade against the philosophy of the eighteenth century, the Pope visits Napoleon in Paris, all honour is shown to the clergy, Frayssinous preaches where and what he pleases. During the last years of the Empire the leaders of the Catholic party are compelled to be silent, the _Journal des Débats_ is suppressed, the Pope is a prisoner, the clergy are in deep disgrace, and Frayssinous may not preach at all.--Not until the monarchy was restored was there a rehabilitation of ecclesiasticism, a confirmation of what had been begun by the Concordat.
It has been said, and said with truth, that no real poetry was written under the rule of Napoleon; nevertheless an attempt, and by no means an insignificant attempt, was made at this time to give to the France of the nineteenth century what Voltaire in his _Henriade_ had attempted to give to the France of the eighteenth--neither more nor less than a great national epic.
It cannot be denied that the task was a tolerably hopeless one. At a time when all Europe was resounding with the names of the heroes of the new empire, and Napoleon was, as has been said, "binding the open wounds of France with the flags of her enemies," when the doings of the day were throwing all the doings of times past into the shade, where was an author to find a hero for an epic or deeds that would enthral the reading world?
The enterprise was undertaken by no less a man than Chateaubriand, the successful initiator of the literary movement of the period, the most admired author of his day. It was not only inclination but also a certain feeling of duty which induced Chateaubriand to undertake a great epic work. In his first work he had maintained that the legends of Christianity infinitely surpassed in beauty those of heathen mythology; that they appealed far more strongly to the poet; that the Christian, as father, husband, lover, bride, was more admirable and of more value to art than the mere natural being. He felt obliged to follow up his rule with an example, his theory with proof; and for this reason, and also to show what he was capable of, he determined to write a Christian epic.