The Legislative Body was then to vote on the
laws without discussing them. And the Senate, acting as a kind of
supreme court, was to decide all constitutional questions. Thus a
written constitution was provided, and the principle of popular
election was recognized, but in last analysis all the power of the
state was centered in the First Consul, who was Napoleon Bonaparte.
The document was forthwith submitted for ratification to a popular
vote, called a _plebiscite_. So great was the disgust with the
Directory and so unbounded was the faith of all classes in the military
hero who offered it, that it was accepted by an overwhelming majority
and was henceforth known in French history as the Constitution of the
Year VIII.
[Sidenote: Foreign Danger Confronting France]
One reason why the French nation so readily acquiesced in an obvious
act of usurpation was the grave foreign danger that threatened the
country. As we have noted in another connection, the armies of the
Second Coalition in the course of 1799 had rapidly undone the
settlement of the treaty of Campo Formio, and, possessing themselves of
Italy and the Rhine valley, were now on the point of carrying the war
into France.
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