The new centralised French administration had been little modified through all the constitutional change since its creation in 1800 by Napoleon. It made the head of state the chief executive, while the prefects were the state’s representatives and administrators in each of the ninety geographical departments into which France was divided. They were appointed, and could be transferred or dismissed, by the Ministry of the Interior. The prefects dealt directly with each ministry and on the whole kept aloof from politics; they were hand-picked administrators who carried out the decrees of the state. Each prefect in his department had his own administration which could be appealed against only by putting the case to the Council of State in Paris. The prefects were not, of course, elected; they deliberately did not grow local roots but represented, in theory at least, an impersonal justice. They were powerful men who controlled enormous patronage in their department; they could make appointments to many paid posts from archivists to some grades of schoolteachers, tax collectors and post-office staff. They stood at the head of the social hierarchy, and were a guarantee of stability and conservatism. In this way France was at one and the same time both highly centralised but also decentralised; for the ordinary French citizens ‘government’ in practice meant what the prefect and his administration did, not what was happening in far-off Paris. France has had the good fortune to attract to this type of higher administrative service, over a long period of time, many capable men. The Republic stood for the defence of property and a well-ordered, static society. At the same time it was identified in the minds of its supporters as the bastion of the enlightenment and so, curiously, despite their frozen attitude towards the desirability of social change, republicans saw themselves as the people who believed in progress and the modern age.
Executive Landslide and Formation of Clandestine Relations Leading to French Enigma
