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CHAPTER 3 The Young Reformer

VALENCE, on the River Rhône, in Napoleon’s day was a pleasant town of 5,000 inhabitants, notable for several fine abbeys and priories and for the strong citadel built by François I and modernized by Vauban. Officers lived in billets, and Napoleon found himself a first-floor room on the front of the Café Cercle. It was a rather noisy room, where he could hear the click of billiard balls in the adjoining saloon, but he liked the landlady, Mademoiselle Bou, an old maid of fifty who mended his linen, and he stayed on with her during all his time in Valence. As Second Lieutenant his pay was ninety-three livres a month; his room cost him eight livres eight sols.

For his first nine weeks Napoleon, as a new officer, served in the ranks and got first-hand experience of the ordinary soldier’s duties, including mounting guard. The rank and file were ill paid and slept two in a bed – until recently it had been three – but at least they were never flogged, whereas soldiers in the English and Prussian armies often were: indeed a sentence of 800 lashes was not unknown.

In January 1786 Napoleon took up his full duties as a second lieutenant. In the morning he went to the polygon to manœuvre guns and practise firing, in the afternoon to lectures on ballistics, trajectories and fire power. The guns were of bronze and of three sizes: 4-, 8-, and 12-pounders. The 12-pounder, which was drawn by six horses, had an effective range of 1,200 yards. All fired metal balls of three types: solid, red-hot shot, and short-range case-shot. The guns were new – they had been designed nine years earlier – and were the best in Europe. Napoleon soon became deeply interested in everything to do with them. One day, with his friend Alexandre des Mazis, who had also joined the La Fére regiment, he walked to Le Creusot to see the royal cannon foundry; here an Englishman, John Wilkinson, and a Lorrainer, Ignace de Wendel, had installed the most modern plant on English lines, using not wood but coke, with steam-engines and a horse-drawn railway.

Off duty Napoleon enjoyed himself. He made friends with Monsignor Tardivon, abbot of Saint-Ruf in Valence, to whom Bishop de Marbeuf had given him an introduction, and with the local gentry, some of whom had pretty daughters. He liked walking and climbed to the top of nearby Mont Roche Colombe. In winter he went skating. He took dancing lessons and went to dances. He paid a visit to a Corsican friend, Pontornini, who lived in nearby Tournon. Pontornini drew his portrait, the earliest that survives, and inscribed it: ‘Mio Caro Amico Buonaparte’.

Both in Valence and in Auxonne, where he was posted in June 1788, Napoleon got on well with his fellow officers, and now that he was earning his own living seems to have been more relaxed. However, there were occasional discords. In Auxonne, in the room above his, an officer named Belly de Bussy insisted on playing the horn, and he played out of tune. Napoleon one day met Belly on the staircase. ‘My dear fellow, haven’t you had enough of playing that damned instrument?’ ‘Not in the least.’ ‘Well, other people have.’ Belly challenged Napoleon to a duel, and Napoleon accepted; then their friends stepped in and arranged the matter harmoniously.

To help out his mother, Napoleon offered to take his brother Louis to share his billet in Auxonne. Louis, then aged eleven, was Napoleon’s favourite in the family, just as Napoleon was Louis’s favourite. Napoleon acted as schoolmaster to the younger boy, gave him catechism lessons for his first Communion, and also cooked meals for them both, for money had become very scarce in the Buonaparte family. When he needed linen from home, Napoleon paid his mother the cost of sending it, and sometimes he had to keep his letters short, in order to save postage.

As a second lieutenant Napoleon spent much of his time reading and studying: indeed he put himself through almost the equivalent of a university course. In Valence he bought or borrowed books from Pierre Marc Aurel’s bookshop opposite the Café Cercle. Evidently Aurel could not supply all his needs, for on 29 July 1786 he wrote to a Geneva bookseller for the Memoirs of Rousseau’s protectress, Madame de Warens, adding, ‘I should be obliged if you would mention what books you have about the island of Corsica, which you could get for me promptly.’

Napoleon read so much partly because he hoped at this time to become a writer. A review of what he read and wrote will give an excellent indication of how he came to make his fateful choice when the French Revolution began.

To start with Napoleon’s lighter reading. One book he savoured was Alcibiade, a French adaptation of a German historical novel. Another was ‘La Chaumière Indienne, by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. It describes the healthy-mindedness of simple people living close to Nature; it is full of generous, humane and spontaneous feelings. Napoleon liked this sort of novel, as indeed did many of his contemporaries; they found in it an antidote to the cold calculating perversity of sophisticated society, as revealed by Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Even when reading for diversion, Napoleon aimed at self-improvement. He copied into a notebook unfamiliar words or names, such as Dance of Daedalus, Pyrrhic dance; Odeum – theatre – Prytaneum; Timandra, a famous courtesan who remained constantly faithful to Alcibiades in his misfortunes; Rajahs, Pariah, coconut milk, Bonzes, Lama.

Napoleon also liked The Art of Judging Character from Men’s Faces by the Swiss Protestant pastor and mystic, Jean Gaspard Lavater. In a popular style and with the help of excellent illustrations Lavater analysed the noses, eyes, ears and stance of various human types and of historical figures, with the purpose of tracing the effects on the body of spiritual qualities and defects. Napoleon thought so well of the book that he planned to write a similar study himself.

From other, more serious books – thirty in all – Napoleon took notes, at the rate of about one page of notes a day, 120,000 words altogether. He took notes chiefly on passages containing numbers, proper names, anecdotes and words in italics. For example, from Marigny’s History of the Arabs: ‘Soliman is said to have eaten 100 pounds of meat a day …’ ‘Hischam owned 10,000 shirts, 2,000 belts, 4,000 horses and 700 estates, two of which produced 10,000 drachmas …’ He was excited by large numbers and on the rare occasions when he made a slip it was usually to make the figure larger, as when he said the Spanish Armada comprised 150 ships, where his author had 130.

From Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle Napoleon took notes on the formation of the planets, and of the earth, of rivers, seas, lakes, winds, volcanoes, earthquakes, and, especially, of man. ‘Some men,’ he noted, ‘are born with only one testicle, others have three; they are stronger and more vigorous. It is astonishing how much this part of the body contributes to [his] strength and courage. What a difference between a bull and an ox, a ram and a sheep, a cock and a capon!’ Then he copied a long passage on the various methods of castration – by amputation, compression, and decoction of herbs, ending with the statement that in 1657 Tavernier claimed to have seen 22,000 eunuchs in the kingdom of Golconda. Like many young men, Napoleon seems for a time to have had a subconscious fear of castration.

Second Lieutenant Buonaparte never read lives of generals, histories of war or books of tactics. Most of his reading stemmed from a glaringly obvious fact: something was wrong with France. There was injustice, there was unnecessary poverty, there was corruption in high places. On 27 November 1786 Napoleon wrote in his notebook: ‘We are members of a powerful monarchy, but today we feel only the vices of its constitution.’ Napoleon, like everyone else, saw that reform was needed. But what sort of reform? In order to articulate his own feelings and to seek an answer, Napoleon began to read history and political theory.

He started with Plato’s Republic, about which his main conclusion was that ‘Every man who rules issues orders not in his own interest but in the interest of his subjects.’ From Rollin’s Ancient History he took notes on Egypt – he was shocked by the tyranny of the Pharaohs – Assyria, Lydia, Persia and Greece. Athens, he notes, was originally ruled by a king, but we cannot conclude from this that monarchy is the most natural and primordial form of government. Of Lycurgus he notes: ‘Dykes were required against the king’s power or else despotism would have reigned. The people’s energy had to be maintained and moderated so that they should be neither slaves nor anarchists.’ Of Marigny’s History of the Arabs he read three out of four volumes, and ignored the pages on religion. ‘Mahomet did not know how to read or write, which I find improbable. He had seventeen wives.’ China he glanced at in Voltaire’s Essai sur les Maurs, and quoted Confucius on the obligation of a ruler continually to renew himself in order to renew the people by his example.

In these and other notes two main attitudes stand out. Napoleon had a keen sympathy with the oppressed and a distaste for tyranny in any form, whether it was the Almighty inflicting eternal damnation on souls or Cardinal de Fleury boasting of having issued 40,000 lettres de cachet. But there are no sweeping condemnations. Although unsympathetic to the absolutism of Louis XIV’s court, he quotes approvingly the remark of Louis XIV’s grandson when declining a new piece of furniture for his house: ‘The people can get the necessities of life only when princes forbid themselves what is superfluous.’

The book which seems to have influenced Napoleon most and on which he took most notes was a French translation of John Barrow’s A New and Impartial History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Signing of Preliminaries of Peace, 1762. The French translation stopped in 1689, that is, safely before the long series of French defeats.

Napoleon’s notes on Barrow are devoid of any such chauvinism, save perhaps the very first: ‘The British Isles were probably the first peopled by Gallic colonists.’ The invasion of Caesar he skipped, probably because he already knew it well, but he copied out a long story of Offa’s repentance, and his institution of Peter’s pence. He gave much space to Alfred and to Magna Carta, noting that the Charter had been condemned by the Pope. All constitutional struggles Napoleon followed in detail, such as the arraignment of Edward II and Wat Tyler’s rebellion. At the end of Richard II’s reign Napoleon added a personal comment: ‘The principal advantage of the English Constitution consists in the fact that the national spirit is always in full vitality. For a long spell of years, the King can doubtless arrogate to himself more authority than he ought to have, may even use his great power to commit injustice, but the cries of the nation soon change to thunder, and sooner or later the King yields.’

Napoleon treated the Reformation in detail. Summing up the reign of James I, he noted with approval: ‘Parliament henceforward regained its ascendancy.’ Of Charles I Napoleon took a poor view. He made notes on Pym, the first Parliamentary demagogue, but saved his enthusiasm for Simon de Montfort and later the Protector Somerset, who had died in sterner ages to make possible the successes of Pym and Cromwell. Of Simon de Montfort he wrote: ‘There perishes one of the greatest Englishmen, and with him the hope his nation had of seeing the royal authority diminished.’

The French translation of Barrow’s history ended in 1689 with the triumph of constitutional monarchy. Barrow’s message was clear: only a constitution defending the people’s rights could check arbitrary government. In the light of this message Napoleon took a new look at the history of France. The original government of the Franks, he decided, was a democracy tempered by the power of the King and his knights. A new king was made by being lifted on a shield and acclaimed by his troops. Then bishops arrived and preached despotism. Pepin, before receiving the crown, asked permission from the Pope. Gradually the aura of kingship took hold of men’s minds, and kings usurped an authority never originally granted them. They no longer ruled in the interests of the people who had originally given them power. In October 1788 Napoleon was planning to write an essay on royal authority: he would analyse the unlawful functions exercised by kings in Europe’s dozen kingdoms. Doubtless he was thinking of Louis XVI’s power, with a stroke of the pen, to send any Frenchman to the Bastille. What was wrong with France, Napoleon decided, was that the power of the King and the King’s men had grown excessive; the reform Napoleon wanted – and the point is important in view of his future career-was a constitution which, by setting out the people’s rights, would ensure that the King acted in the interests of France as a whole.

To an impartial observer of Europe around the year 1785 the salient fact would have been the success of unconstitutional monarchies, the so-called enlightened despotisms. In Portugal, Spain and Sweden kings of this type were reforming and modernizing, while in Prussia Frederick II and in Russia Catherine II were ruling arbitrarily yet earning the epithet ‘Great’. It is interesting that Napoleon averted his gaze from these personal successes and fixed it on the odd country out – England, with her monarchy limited by law. He did so partly because he was an admirer of Rousseau, whose social contract theory derives from Locke, but even more because of his family background of respect for the law and his personal sympathy with the oppressed.

Napoleon, then, wanted reform in France. He wanted a constitutional monarchy which ruled in the interests of the people. This decision was strengthened by a new turn of events in Corsica. There the French had done an about-face. In September 1786 Marbeuf died, and the island was henceforth administered by the Ministry of Finance. A set of bureaucrats moved in, and since France was heading for bankruptcy, had orders to cut expenditure. They refused to pay subsidies due on past improvement schemes to Letizia, who found herself in financial difficulties, especially since the presence of French bureaucrats and troops had sent up the cost of living: corn doubled in price between 1771 and 1784.

Napoleon’s first reaction was to seek justice. He went to Paris in 1787 to see the man at the top, the Controller General. He specified the sum owing, but added with feeling that no sum ‘could ever compensate for the kind of debasement a man experiences when he is made aware at every moment of his subjection.’

The Ministry did not pay Letizia her money. Nor did the French hand back the Odone property, because one of the officials, a Monsieur Soviris, was an interested party. Again Napoleon took action. He wrote to the Registrar of the Corsican States-General, Laurent Giubega, who happened to be his godfather, protesting in strong language about unenergetic tribunals and offices, where the decision lies with one man, ‘a stranger not only to our language and habits but also to our legal system … envious of the luxury he has seen on the Continent and which his salary does not allow him to attain.’

Napoleon’s letter had no effect. These two cases of injustice, touching his widowed mother, changed Napoleon’s whole attitude to the French in Corsica. Formerly he had accepted their presence as beneficial; now he saw that it was oppressive. Their rule in Corsica was a particular example of the injustice inherent in the French system. That rule, he decided, must be ended and Corsica again be free.

But how? At first Napoleon did not know. ‘The present position of my country,’ meaning Corsica, he noted gloomily, ‘and the powerlessness of changing it is a new reason for fleeing this land where duty obliges me to praise men whom virtue obliges me to hate.’ It took Napoleon two years to find a way. The way was a book. He would write a History of Corsica, along the lines of Boswell’s, in order to touch the French people, to rouse their feelings of humanity. Once they knew the facts, they would demand freedom for the Corsicans.

Napoleon’s History focuses attention on Corsica’s fighters for freedom against the Genoese, men such as Guglielmo and Sampiero. Napoleon intended to make Paoli his central figure, but when he asked for documents Paoli replied that history should not be written by young men. So Napoleon never finished his book. But he did write several very compelling chapters and made the point that Corsicans would have escaped subjection if only they had built a navy.

Napoleon believed that Corsica must be freed by ‘a strong just man’; equally he believed that a brave man must speak up for the French people and instigate reforms. He did not identify them – he was still thinking generally – but he asked himself, What would happen to such men? What was the fate of the reforming hero? To answer his question he wrote a short story. It is based on an incident in Barrow, and therefore set in England, but Napoleon clearly intended it to apply to the present situation in France and Corsica.

The scene is London, the year 1683. Three men plot to limit the power of the frivolous Charles II: Essex, austere, with a strong sense of justice; Russell, kind and warm, adored by the people; Sidney, a genius who realizes that the basis of all constitutions is the social contract. The conspirators are caught, Russell and Sidney executed. But the people ask pardon for Essex and the judges merely imprison him.

‘Night. Imagine a woman troubled by sinister dreams, warned by frightening sounds in the middle of the night, distraught in the darkness of a vast bedroom. She goes to the door and feels for the key. A shudder runs through her body as she touches the blade of a knife. The blood dripping from it is powerless to frighten her. “Whoever you are,” she cries, “stop. I am only the wretched wife of the Earl of Essex.”’ Instead of swooning, as most women would have done, she again feels for the key, finds it and opens the door. Far off in the next room she thinks she sees something walking but is ashamed of her weakness, shuts the door and goes back to bed.

It is eleven in the morning and the Countess, troubled, pale and oppressed, is trying to fight off a worrying dream. ‘Jean Bettsy, Jean Bettsy, dear Jean.’ She lifts her eyes – for the voice has wakened her – and she sees – Oh God! – she sees a ghost approach her bed, draw back the four curtains and take her by the hand. ‘Jean, you have forgotten me, you are sleeping. But feel.’ He draws her hand to his neck. Oh dread! The Countess’s fingers sink into extensive wounds, her fingers are covered in blood; she utters a cry and hides her face; but when she looks again she sees nothing. Terrified and trembling, broken-hearted by these frightful forewarnings, the Countess takes a carriage and drives to the Tower. In the middle of Pall Mall she hears someone in the street say ‘The Earl of Essex is dead!’ At last she arrives and the prison door is opened. Oh horrible sight! Three great razor blows have ended the Earl’s life. His hand is on his heart. Eyes raised to heaven, he seems to implore eternal vengeance.

King Charles II and the Duke of York are the murderers. ‘Perhaps you think that Jean falls down in a swoon and dishonours with cowardly tears the memory of the most estimable of men? In fact she has the body washed, taken home, and shown to the people … But in her deadly grief, the Countess drapes her rooms in black. She blocks up the windows and spends her days grieving over her husband’s terrible fate.’ Not until three years later – Napoleon gets his dates wrong – when the King has died and the Duke of York has been dethroned does the Countess leave her house. She is ‘satisfied with the vengeance exacted by heaven and again takes her place in society.’

Such is Napoleon’s short story. Most of his other writings are so calm and reasonable, it is surprising to come on this gruesome piece. But it is a facet of his character, as blood-tragedy is of Greek civilization. If the ghost comes from Corsica, and the gore from horror novels then in vogue, the basic theme is Napoleon’s own. A nobleman decides to act on behalf of an oppressed people against the King. And what is the result? He loses his life. This, Napoleon sensed, was the invariable dénouement. In his Corsican book he wrote: ‘Paoli, Colombano, Sampiero, Pompiliani, Gafforio, illustrious avengers of humanity … What were the rewards of your virtues? Daggers, yes, daggers.’

But daggers are not quite the end. Six years later Charles II and his brother are gone and a law-abiding king sits on the throne. Though Essex did not live to see it, the constitutional monarchy for which he died ultimately triumphed. There is, Napoleon believed, a higher vengeance at work. Over human affairs broods a divine regulative justice.

We have seen the reforms Napoleon wished accomplished in France and in Corsica, and the tragic fate he envisaged for the reformers. But all these notes and writings, revealing though they are, lack the unique personal touch. What did Second Lieutenant Buonaparte want to do with his own life? What were his aspirations? The answer lies in a forty-page essay which he submitted for a prize of 1,200 livres offered by the Academy of Lyon in answer to the question ‘What are the most important truths and feelings to instil into men for their happiness?’

Napoleon begins his essay with the epigraph: ‘Morality will exist when governments are free,’ an echo, not a quotation as Napoleon claimed, of Raynal’s dictum, ‘Good morals depend upon good government.’ Man, says Napoleon, is born to be happy: Nature, an enlightened mother, has endowed him with all the organs necessary to this end. So happiness is the enjoyment of life in the way most suitable to man’s constitution. And every man is born with a right to that part of the fruits of the earth necessary for subsistence. Paoli’s chief merit lies in having ensured this.

Napoleon turns next to feeling. Man experiences the most exquisitely pleasant feelings when he is alone at night, meditating on the origin of Nature. Sentiments such as this would be his most precious gift had he not also received love of country, love of wife and ‘divine friendship’. ‘A wife and children! A father and mother, brothers and sisters, a friend! Yet some people find fault with Nature and ask why they were ever born!’

Feeling makes us love what is beautiful and just, but it also makes us rebel against tyranny and evil. It is the second aspect we must try to develop and protect from perversion. The good legislator must therefore guide feeling by reason. At the same time he must allow complete and absolute freedom of thought, and freedom to speak and write except where this would damage the social order. Tenderness, for instance, must not degenerate into flabbiness, and we must never stage Voltaire’s Alzire, in which the dying hero instead of execrating his assassin pities and pardons him. It is reason that distinguishes genuine feeling from violent passion, reason that keeps society going, reason that develops a natural feeling and makes it great. To love one’s country is an elementary feeling, but to love it above everything else is ‘the love of beauty in all its energy, the pleasure of helping to make a whole nation happy’.

But there is a perverted kind of patriotism, engendered by ambition. Napoleon saves his most cutting language in order to denounce ambition, ‘with its pale complexion, wild eyes, hurried footsteps, jerky gestures and sardonic laugh’. Elsewhere, in his notebooks, he returns to the same theme: Brutus he calls an ambitious madman, and as for the fanatical Arab prophet Hakim who preached civil war and, having been blinded by an illness, hid his sightless eyes with a mask of silver, explaining that he wore it in order to prevent men being dazzled by the light radiating from his face, Napoleon scornfully comments: ‘To what lengths can a man be driven by his passion for fame!’

Napoleon concludes his essay by contrasting with the ambitious egoist the genuine patriot, the man who lives in order to help others. Through courage and manly strength the patriot attains happiness. To live happily and to work for others’ happiness is the only religion worthy of God. What pleasure to die surrounded by one’s children and able to say: ‘I have ensured the happiness of a hundred families: I have had a hard life, but the State will benefit from it; through my worries my fellow citizens live calmly, through my perplexities they are happy, through my sorrows they are gay.’

Such is the essay written by Second Lieutenant Buonaparte in his cramped billet in Auxonne between parades and sentry duty. He was doubtless disappointed when it did not win the prize: in fact none of the essays was deemed prizeworthy. But the essay had been well worth writing, for it is in some respects a life’s programme. The patriot is clearly Napoleon himself. His aim in life is to work for others’ happiness. The heroism and chivalry he had prized as a cadet are now eclipsed by patriotism of a more workaday kind. He has lost his admiration for the Cornelian hero standing on his rights; instead he sees himself as a member of a community, working for ‘a hundred families’. And he is not now a soldier, but a civilian.

Napoleon does not include Christianity as a factor in happiness, and in this respect is typical of his age. As he wrote in his notebook, Christianity ‘declares that its kingdom is not of this world; how then can it stimulate affection for one’s native land, how can it inspire any feelings but scepticism, indifference and coldness for human affairs and government?’

Napoleon’s trust in feeling was also typical of his age, beginning to weary of cynicism and masks. Where Napoleon is original is in recognizing that a dangerous confusion may arise between true feeling – virtue – and passion masquerading as sentiment. He is original in making reason, not the intensity of the feeling, the judge of the feeling’s worth. If pressed to list the criteria whereby reason acts, Napoleon would doubtless have named patriotism and values like truthfulness and generosity (but not forgiveness) learned from his parents, in other words some at least of the values of Christianity excluded from his essay.

While Second Lieutenant Buonaparte in a small garrison town studied, planned reforms and envisaged the life he would like to lead, the larger world of France was moving towards a crisis. Perhaps the root trouble was that no one any longer possessed the power to act. The well-meaning, still popular Louis XVI tried to make much-needed tax reforms, but the lawyers who composed the Parlements consistently refused to register them. As one young Counsellor in the Paris Parlement explained to a visitor: ‘You must know, sir, that in France the job of a consellour is to oppose everything the King wants to do, even the good things.’ At every level France consisted of groups ossified in opposition, and the strong French critical spirit ridiculed any proposed reform. Lack of confidence crept over the nation, hitting trade hard in 1788. Then came an exceptionally severe winter in 1788–9. The Seine and other rivers froze; trade was impeded; cattle and sheep died. After many years of stability the price of bread, meat and goods rose sharply, and this at a time when many workshops were laying off men. Across France swept the fear of hunger.

At the end of March 1789 in the small town of Seurre a barge was being loaded with wheat. The wheat had been bought by a Verdun businessman and was to be shipped to that town. The people of Seurre, convinced that their food was being bought up, rioted and prevented the barge sailing. The 64th was then stationed in Auxonne, twenty miles from Seurre, and its colonel, Baron Du Teil, sent a detachment of one hundred soldiers, with Napoleon among the officers, to restore order.

In Seurre Napoleon came to know at first hand the mood of the French people, frightened and angry, as they clamoured not only for food but for social justice. What Napoleon thought and felt in 1789 is much less well documented than what he was reading and writing, but we do know that he believed every Frenchman had a right to subsistence, and sympathized with them over the high price of bread. On the other hand, he hated riots and mob action. When men of the 64th broke into headquarters and seized regimental funds; when Baron Du Teil’s country house was set on fire, Napoleon certainly disapproved. Lawyer’s son that he was, he wanted this popular movement to express itself constitutionally within the States-General.

This in time happened. In February 1789 a certain Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, an ex-priest from Fréjus, published a pamphlet which swept the country. ‘What is the Third Estate?’ Sieyès asked. ‘Everything. What has it been in the political order up to now? Nothing. What does it ask? To become something.’ The common people had found a pen, and presently found a voice, that of Mirabeau. Mirabeau was a nobleman with southern blood in his veins, and, like Napoleon, steeped in English history. Rejected by his fellow noblemen, he had been elected by the Third Estate of Aix, and it was in their name that Mirabeau spoke, ‘the defender,’ he said, ‘of a monarchy limited by law and the apostle of liberty guaranteed by a monarchy’.

On 14 July 1789 a group of Parisians stormed the Bastille, but to Napoleon, far from Paris, this would have been an event comparable to the riots in Seurre. What interested him were the decrees of the Constituent Assembly, as the States-General now called itself. The Assembly abolished certain of the privileges of nobles and clergy, gave the vote to more than four and a half million men who possessed at least a little land or property, and in 1791 presented France with her first Constitution, thought up by Mirabeau, prefaced by a ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen’, of which the two key articles are the first and fourth: ‘Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be based only upon public utility …;’ ‘Liberty consists in the power to do anything that does not injure others.’