ABSTRACT
The history of the Consulate is as rich as the preceding period in psychological material. In the first place it shows us that the work of a powerful individual is superior to that of a collectivity. Bonaparte immediately replaced the bloody anarchy in which the Republic had for ten years been writhing by a period of order. That which none of the four Assemblies of the Revolution had been able to realise, despite the most violent oppression, a single man accomplished in a very short space of time. His authority immediately put an end to all the Parisian insurrections and the attempts at monarchical resistance, and re-established the moral unity of France, so profoundly divided by intense hatreds. One of the most remarkable feats of the Consulate, from the psychological point of view, was the restoration of religious peace. France was far more divided by religious disagreement than by political differences.
