The land which had been taken from the nobility and the church had long been left entirely uncultivated because, since the fruits of the earth require time to blossom and mature, no one was willing to plough and sow without the certainty that the ground would remain in his possession long enough to reward him for his labour. But such certainty was impossible as long as the old owners of the land were in the country and had not renounced their right to it. Nothing but their extermination could make the cultivation of the new national property a reasonable proceeding. It was because the Reign of Terror exterminated them that it was demanded and endured. When it had fulfilled its double task of saving the Republic and ensuring the security of the new distribution of property, it was overthrown. What the owners of property demanded after its fall was, first and foremost, a government under which it was possible for them to utilise their newly acquired land.
There were in France still only the elements of a modern social organism, of new conditions of proprietorship, of a new code of laws--everything was incomplete. The Estates had disappeared; classes did not as yet exist. The new order of things had not yet become, as it were, a part of the family and the individual ethical consciousness. Security, durability, was what now had to be achieved.
This could not be done by restoring the monarchy; for at this period monarchy still meant the old order of things, the old laws, the old distribution of property. Bonaparte gave France the security she desired. And he did more than this; by his victories he spread the new French ideas and customs abroad throughout Europe.
The weak point in the international position of France at the beginning of the century lay in the antagonism between its new social order and the old social order prevailing in all the other countries. For the sake of its own security it was necessary that the French nation should metamorphose the social institutions of the nations it overcame. Bonaparte understood this, and introduced the new order of things wherever his influence permitted him to do so.
But, on the other hand, he considered it necessary to make concessions, real or apparent, in those matters in which he could not otherwise bring about uniformity between French conditions and those of the rest of Europe. To ensure the stability of the new order of things, he felt obliged to do what he himself called _mettre les institutions de la France en harmonie avec celles de l'Europe_. He imagined that the imperial crown upon his head would reconcile the powers to the French Revolution; he believed that the creation of a nobility would promote a more harmonious feeling between foreign nations and his own; and in the same manner he considered it good policy to give France back a state church bearing some resemblance to the churches of other countries.