smashing every piece of furniture that comes in his way.” A little before the Empire, Talleyrand, a great mystifier, tells Berthier that the First Consul wanted to assume the title of king. Berthier, in eager haste, crosses the drawing-room full of company, accosts the master of the house and, with a beaming smile, “congratulates him.”[7] At the word king, Bonaparte’s eyes flash. Grasping Berthier by the throat, he pushes him back against the wall, exclaiming, “You fool! who told you to come here and stir up my bile in this way? Another time don’t come on such errands.” – Such is the first impulse, the instinctive action, to pounce on people and seize them by the throat; we divine under each sentence, and on every page he writes, out-bursts and assaults of this description, the physiognomy and intonation of a man who rushes forward and knocks people down. Accordingly, when dictating in his cabinet, “he strides up and down the room,” and, ” if excited,” which is often the case, ” his language consists of violent imprecations, and even of oaths, which are suppressed in what is written.”[8] But these are not always suppressed, for those who have seen the original minutes of his correspondence on ecclesiastical affairs find dozens of them, the b…, the p… and the swearwords of the coarsest kind.[9]
Never was there such impatient touchiness. “When dressing himself,[10] he throws on the floor or into the fire any part of his attire which does not suit him. . . . On gala-days and on grand ceremonial occasions his valets are obliged to agree together when they shall seize the right moment to put some thing on him. . . He tears off or breaks whatever causes him the slightest discomfort, while the poor valet who has been the means of it meets with a violent and positive proof of his anger. No thought was ever more carried away by its own speed. “His handwriting, when he tries to write, “is a mass of disconnected and undecipherable signs;[11] the words lack one-half of their letters.” On reading it over himself, he cannot tell what it means. At last, he becomes almost incapable of producing a handwritten letter, while his signature is a mere scrawl. He accordingly dictates, but so fast that his secretaries can scarcely keep pace with him: on their first attempt the perspiration flows freely and they succeed in noting down only the half of what he says. Bourrienne, de Meneval, and Maret invent a stenography of their own, for he never repeats any of his phrases; so much the worse for the pen if it lags behind, and so much the better if a volley of exclamations or of oaths gives it a chance to catch up. – Never did speech flow and overflow in such torrents, often without either discretion or prudence, even when the outburst is neither useful nor creditable the reason is that both spirit and intellect are charged to excess subject to this inward pressure the improvisator and polemic, under full headway,[12] take the place of the man of business and the statesman.
“With him,” says a good observer,[13] “talking is a prime necessity, and, assuredly, among the prerogatives of high rank, he ranks first that of speaking without interruption.”
Even at the Council of State he allows himself to run on, forgetting the business on hand; he starts off right and left with some digression or demonstration, some invective or other, for two or three hours at a stretch,[14] insisting over and over again, bent on convincing or prevailing, and ending in demanding of the others if he is not right, “and, in this case, never failing to find that all have yielded to the force of his arguments.” On reflection, he knows the value of an assent thus obtained, and, pointing to his chair, he observes:
“It must be admitted that it is easy to be brilliant when one is in that seat!”
Nevertheless he has enjoyed his intellectual exercise and given way to his passion, which controls him far more than he controls it.
“My nerves are very irritable,” he said of himself, “and when in this state were my pulse not always regular I should risk going crazy.”[15]
The tension of accumulated impressions is often too great, and it ends in a physical break-down. Strangely enough in so great a warrior and with such a statesman, “it is not infrequent, when excited, to see him shed tears.” He who has looked upon thousands of dying men, and who has had thousands of men slaughtered, “sobs,” after Wagram and after Bautzen,[16] at the couch of a dying comrade. “I saw him,” says his valet, “weep while eating his breakfast, after coming from Marshal Lannes’s bedside; big tears rolled down his cheeks and fell on his plate.” It is not alone the physical sensation, the sight of a bleeding, mangled body, which thus moves him acutely and deeply; for a word, a simple idea, stings and penetrates almost as far. Before the emotion of Dandolo, who pleads for Venice his country, which is sold to Austria, he is agitated and his eyes moisten.[17] Speaking of the capitulation of Baylen, at a full meeting of the Council of State,[18] his voice trembles, and “he gives way to his grief, his eyes even filling with tears.” In 1806, setting out for the army and on taking leave of Josephine, he has a nervous attack which is so severe as to bring on vomiting.[19] “We had to make him sit down,” says an eye- witness, “and swallow some orange water; he shed tears, and this lasted a quarter of an hour.” The same nervous and stomachic crisis came on in 1808, on deciding on the divorce; he tosses about a whole night, and laments like a woman; he melts, and embraces Josephine; he is weaker than she is: “My poor Josephine, I can never leave you!” Folding her in his arms, he declares that she shall not quit him; he abandons himself wholly to the sensation of the moment; she must undress at once, sleep alongside of him, and he weeps over her ; “literally,” she says, ” he soaked the bed with his tears.” – Evidently, in such an organism, however powerful the superimposed regulator, there is a risk of the equilibrium being destroyed. He is aware of this, for he knows himself well; he is afraid of his own nervous sensibility, the same as of an easily frightened horse; at critical moments, at Berezina, he refuses to receive the bad news which might excite this, and, on the informer’s insisting on it, he asks him again,[20] “Why, sir, do you want to disturb me?” – Nevertheless, in spite of his precautions, he is twice taken unawares, at times when the peril was alarming and of a new kind; he, so clear headed and so cool under fire, the boldest of military heroes and the most audacious of political adventurers, quails twice in a parliamentary storm and again in a popular crisis. On the 18th of Brumaire, in the Corps Législatif, “he turned pale, trembled, and seemed to lose his head at the shouts of outlawry . . . . they had to drag him out . . . . they even thought for a moment that he was going to faint.”[21] After the abdication at Fontainebleau, on encountering the rage and imprecations which greeted him in Provence, he seemed for some days to be morally shattered; the animal instincts assert their supremacy; he is afraid and makes no attempt at concealment.[22] After borrowing the uniform of an Austrian colonel, the helmet of a Prussian quartermaster, and the cloak of the Russian quartermaster, he still considers that he is not sufficiently disguised. In the inn at Calade, “he starts and changes color at the slightest noise”; the commissaries, who repeatedly enter his room, “find him always in tears.” “He wearies them with his anxieties and irresolution”; he says that the French government would like to have him assassinated on the road, refuses to eat for fear of poison, and thinks that he might escape by jumping out of the window. And yet he gives vent to his feelings and lets his tongue run on about himself without stopping, concerning his past, his character, unreservedly, indelicately, trivially; like a cynic and one who is half-crazy; his ideas run loose and crowd each other like the anarchical gatherings of a tumultuous mob; he does not recover his mastery of them until he reaches Fréjus, the end of his journey, where he feels himself safe and protected from any highway assault; then only do they return within ordinary limits and fall back in regular line under the control of the sovereign intellect which, after sinking for a time, revives and resumes its ascendancy. – There is nothing in him so extraordinary as this almost perpetual domination of the lucid, calculating reason; his willpower is still more formidable than his intelligence; before it can obtain the mastery of others it must be master at home. To measure its power, it does not suffice to note its fascinations; to enumerate the millions of souls it captivates, to estimate the vastness of the obstacles it overcomes: we must again, and especially, represent to ourselves the energy and depth of the passions it keeps in check and urges on like a team of prancing, rearing horses – it is the driver who, bracing his arms, constantly restrains the almost ungovernable steeds, who controls their excitement, who regulates their bounds, who takes advantage even of their viciousness to guide his noisy vehicle over precipices as it rushes on with thundering speed. If the pure ideas of the reasoning brain thus maintain their daily supremacy it is due to the vital flow which nourishes them; their roots are deep in his heart and temperament, and those roots which give them their vigorous sap constitute a primordial instinct more powerful than intellect, more powerful even than his will, the instinct which leads him to center everything on himself, in other words egoism.[23]
II. Will and Egoism.
Bonaparte’s dominant passion. – His lucid, calculating mind. – Source and power of the Will. – Early evidences of an active, absorbing egoism. – His education derived from the lessons of things. – In Corsica. – In France during the Revolution. – In Italy. – In Egypt. – His idea of Society and of Right. – Maturing after the 18th of Brumaire. – His idea of Man. – It conforms to his character
It is egoism, not a passive, but an active and intrusive egoism, proportional to the energy and extension of his faculties developed by his education and circumstances, exaggerated by his success and his omnipotence to such a degree that a monstrous colossal I has been erected in society. It expands unceasingly the circle of a tenacious and rapacious grasp, which regards all resistance as offensive, which all independence annoys, and which, on the boundless domain it assigns to itself, is intolerant of anybody that does not become either an appendix or a tool. – The germ of this absorbing personality is already apparent in the youth and even in the infant.
“Character: dominating, imperious, and stubborn,”
says the record at Brienne.[24] And the notes of the Military Academy add;[25]
“Extremely inclined to egoism,” – “proud, ambitious, aspiring in all directions, fond of solitude,”
undoubtedly because he is not master in a group of equals and is ill at ease when he cannot rule.
“I lived apart from my comrades,” he says at a later date.[26] – “I had selected a little corner in the playgrounds, where I used to go and sit down and indulge my fancies. When my comrades were disposed to drive me out of this corner I defended it with all my might . My instinct already told me that my will should prevail against other wills, and that whatever pleased me ought to belong to me.”
Referring to his early years under the paternal roof at Corsica, he depicts himself as a little mischievous savage, rebelling against every sort of restraint, and without any conscience.[27] ” I respected nothing and feared nobody; I beat one and scratched another; I made everybody afraid of me. I beat my brother Joseph; I bit him and complained of him almost before he knew what he was about.” A clever trick, and one which he was not slow to repeat. His talent for improvising useful falsehoods is innate; later on, at maturity, he is proud of this ; he makes it the index and measure of “political superiority,” and “delights in calling to mind one of his uncles who, in his infancy, prognosticated to him that he would govern the world because he was fond of lying.”[28]
Remark this observation of the uncles – it sums up the experiences of a man of his time and of his country; it is what social life in Corsica inculcated; morals and manners there adapted themselves to each other through an unfailing connection. The moral law, indeed, is such because similar customs prevail in all countries and at all times where the police is powerless, where justice cannot be obtained, where public interests are in the hands of whoever can lay hold of them, where private warfare is pitiless and not repressed, where every man goes armed, where every sort of weapon is fair, and where dissimulation, fraud, and trickery, as well as gun or poniard, are allowed, which was the case in Corsica in the eighteenth century, as in Italy in the fifteenth century. – Hence the early impressions of Bonaparte similar to those of the Borgias and of Macchiavelli; hence, in his case, that first stratum of half-thought which, later on, serves as the basis of complete thought; hence, the whole foundation of his future mental edifice and of the conceptions he subsequently entertains of human society. Afterwards, on leaving the French schools and every time he returns to them and spends any time in them, the same impressions, often renewed, intensify in his mind the same final conclusion. In this country, report the French commissioners,[29] “the people have no idea of principle in the abstract,” nor of social interest or justice. “Justice does not exist; one hundred and thirty assassinations have occurred in ten years. . . . The institution of juries has deprived the country of all the means for punishing crime; never do the strongest proofs, the clearest evidence, lead a jury composed of men of the same party, or of the same family as the accused, to convict him; and, if the accused is of the opposite party, the juries likewise acquit him, so as not to incur the risk of revenge, slow perhaps but always sure.” – “Public spirit is unknown.” There is no social body, except any number of small parties hostile to each other. . . . One is not a Corsican without belonging to some family, and consequently attached to some party; he who would serve none, would be detested by all. . . . All the leaders have the same end in view, that of getting money no matter by what means, and their first care is to surround themselves with creatures entirely devoted to them and to whom they give all the offices. . . . The elections are held under arms, and all with violence. . . . The victorious party uses its authority to avenge itself on their opponents, and multiplies vexations and outrages. . . . The leaders form aristocratic leagues with each other. . . . and mutually tolerate abuses. They impose no assessment or collection (of taxes) to curry favor with electors through party spirit and relationships. . . . Customs-duties serve simply to compensate friends and relatives. . . . Salaries never reach those for whom they are intended. The rural districts are uninhabitable for lack of security. The peasants carry guns even when at the plow. One cannot take a step without an escort; a detachment of five or six men is often sent to carry a letter from one post-office to another.”
Interpret this general statement by the thousands of facts of which it is the summary; imagine these little daily occurrences narrated with all their material accompaniments, and with sympathetic or angry comments by interested neighbors, and we have the moral lessons taught to young Bonaparte.[30] At table, the child has listened to the conversation of his elders, and at a word uttered, for instance, by his uncle, or at a physiognomic expression, a sign of approbation, a shrug of the shoulders, he has divined that the ordinary march of society is not that of peace but of war; he sees by what ruses one maintains one’s-self, by what acts of violence one makes ones way, by what sort of help one mounts upward. Left to himself the rest of the day, to the nurse Ilaria, or to Saveria the housekeeper, or to the common people amongst whom he strays at will, he listens to the conversation of sailors or of shepherds assembled on the public square, and their simple exclamations, their frank admiration of well- planned ambuscades and lucky surprises, impress more profoundly on him, often repeated with so much energy, the lessons which he has already learned at home. These are the lessons taught by things. At this tender age they sink deep, especially when the disposition is favorable, and in this case the heart sanctions them beforehand, because education finds its confederate in instinct. Accordingly, at the outbreak of the Revolution, on revisiting Corsica, he takes life at once as he finds it there, a combat with any sort of weapon, and, on this small arena, he acts unscrupulously, going farther than anybody.[31] If he respects justice and law, it is only in words, and even here ironically; in his eyes, law is a term of the code, justice a book term, while might makes right.
A second blow of the coining-press gives another impression of the same stamp on this character already so decided, while French anarchy forces maxims into the mind of the young man, already traced in the child’s mind by Corsican anarchy; the lessons of things provided by a society going to pieces are the same as those of a society which is not yet formed. – His sharp eyes, at a very early period, see through the flourish of theory and the parade of phrases; they detect the real foundation of the Revolution, namely, the sovereignty of unbridled passions and the conquest of the majority by the minority; conquering or conquered, a choice must be made between these two extreme conditions; there is no middle course. After the 9th of Thermidor, the last veils are torn away, and the instincts of license and domination, the ambitions of individuals, fully display themselves. There is no concern for public interests or for the rights of the people; it is clear that the rulers form a band, that France is their prey, and that they intend to hold on to it for and against everybody, by every possible means, including bayonets. Under this civil régime, a clean sweep of the broom at the center makes it necessary to be on the side of numbers. – In the armies, especially in the army of Italy, republican faith and patriotic abnegation, since the territory became free, have given way to natural appetites and military passions.[32] Barefoot, in rags, with four ounces of bread a day, paid in assignats which are not accepted in the markets, both officers and men desire above all things to be relieved of their misery; “the poor fellows, after three years of longing on the summits of the Alps, reach the promised land, and want to enjoy it.”[33] Another spur consists in the pride which is stimulated by the imagination and by success; add to this the necessity for finding an outlet for their energy, the steam and high pressure of youth ; nearly all are very young men, who regard life, in Gallic or French fashion, as a party of pleasure and as a duel. But to feel brave and to prove that one is so, to face bullets for amusement and defiantly, to abandon a successful adventure for a battle and a battle for a ball, to enjoy ones-self and take risks to excess, without dissimulating, and with no other object than the sensation of the moment,[34] to revel in excitement through emulation and danger, is no longer self-devotion, but giving one’s-self up to one’s fancies ; and, for all who are not harebrained, to give one’s- self up to one’s fancies means to make one’s way, obtain promotion, pillage so as to become rich, like Massena, and conquer so as to become powerful, like Bonaparte. – All this is understood between the general and his army from the very first,[35] and, after one year’s experience, the understanding is perfect. One moral is derived from their common acts, vague in the army, precise in the general; what the army only half sees, he sees clearly; if he urges his comrades on, it is because they follow their own inclination. He simply has a start on them, and is quicker to make up his mind that the world is a grand banquet, free to the first-comer, but at which, to be well served, one must have long arms, be the first to get helped, and let the rest take what is left.
So natural does this seem to him, he says so openly and to men who are not his intimates; to Miot, a diplomat, and to Melzi a foreigner:
“Do you suppose, says he to them,[36] after the preliminaries of Leoben, “that to make great men out of Directory lawyers, the Carnots’ and the Barras, I triumph in Italy? Do you suppose also that it is for the establishment of a republic? What an idea! A republic of thirty million men! With our customs, our vices, how is that possible? It is a delusion which the French are infatuated with and which will vanish along with so many others. What they want is glory, the gratification of vanity – they know nothing about liberty. Look at the army! Our successes just obtained, our triumphs have already brought out the true character of the French soldier. I am all for him. Let the Directory deprive me of the command and it will see if it is master. The nation needs a chief, one who is famous though his exploits, and not theories of government, phrases and speeches by ideologists, which Frenchmen do not comprehend. . . . As to your country, Monsieur de Melzi, it has still fewer elements of republicanism than France, and much less ceremony is essential with it than with any other. . . In other respects, I have no idea of coming to terms so promptly with Austria. It is not for my interest to make peace. You see what I am, what I can do in Italy. If peace is brought about, if I am no longer at the head of this army which has become attached to me, I must give up this power, this high position I have reached, and go and pay court to lawyers in the Luxembourg. I should not like to quit Italy for France except to play a part there similar to that which I play here, and the time for that has not yet come – the pear is not ripe.”
To wait until the pear is ripe, but not to allow anybody else to gather it, is the true motive of his political fealty and of his Jacobin proclamations: “A party in favor of the Bourbons is raising its head; I have no desire to help it along. One of these days I shall weaken the republican party, but I shall do it for my own advantage and not for that of the old dynasty. Meanwhile, it is necessary to march with the Republicans,” along with the worst, and’ the scoundrels about to purge the Five Hundred, the Ancients, and the Directory itself, and then re-establish in France the Reign of Terror. – In effect, he contributes to the 18th of Fructidor, and, the blow struck, he explains very clearly why he took part in it:
“Do not believe[37] I did it in conformity with the ideas entertained by those with whom I acted. I did – not want a return of the Bourbons, and especially if brought back by Moreau’s army and by Pichegru. . . Finally, I will not take the part of Monk, I will not play it, and I will not have others play it. . . . As for myself, my dear Miot, I declare to you that I can no longer obey; I have tasted command and I cannot give it up. My mind is made up. If I cannot be master I will leave France.”
There is no middle course for him between the two alter natives. On returning to Paris he thinks of “overthrowing the Directory,[38] dissolving the councils and of making himself dictator”; but, having satisfied himself that there was but little chance of succeeding, “he postpones his design” and falls back on the second course. “This is the only motive of his expedition into Egypt.”[39] – That, in the actual condition of France and of Europe, the expedition is opposed to public interests, that France deprives itself of its best army and offers its best fleet to almost certain destruction, is of little consequence provided, in this vast and gratuitous adventure, Bonaparte finds the employment he wants, a large field of action and famous victories which, like the blasts of a trumpet, will swell beyond the seas and renew his prestige: in his eyes, the fleet, the army, France, and humanity exist only for him and are created only for his service. – If, in confirmation of this persuasion, another lesson in things is still necessary, it will be furnished by Egypt. Here, absolute sovereign, free of any restraint, contending with an inferior order of humanity, he acts the sultan and accustoms himself to playing the part.[40] His last scruples towards the human species disappear; “I became disgusted with Rousseau”; he is to say, later on, “After seeing the Orient: the savage man is a dog,”[41] and, in the civilized man, the savage is just beneath the skin; if the intellect has become somewhat polished, there is no change in his instincts. A master is as necessary to one as to the other – a magician who subjugates his imagination, disciplines him, keeps him from biting without occasion, ties him up, cares for him, and takes him out hunting. He is born to obey, does not deserve any better lot, and has no other right.
Become consul and afterward emperor, he applies the theory on a grand scale, and, in his hands, experience daily furnishes fresh verifications of the theory. At his first nod the French prostrate themselves obediently, and there remain, as in a natural position; the lower class, the peasants and the soldiers, with animal fidelity, and the upper class, the dignitaries and the functionaries, with Byzantine servility.- The republicans, on their side, make no resistance; on the contrary, among these he has found his best governing instruments – senators, deputies, state councilors, judges, and administrators of every grade.[42] He has at once detected behind their sermonizing on liberty and equality, their despotic instincts, their craving for command, for leadership, even as subordinates; and, in addition to this, with most of them, the appetite for money or for sensual pleasures. The difference between the delegate of the Committee of Public Safety and the minister, prefect, or subprefect under the Empire is small; it is the same person in two costumes: at first in the carmagnole, and later in the embroidered coat. If a rude, poor puritan, like Cambon or Baudot, refuses to don the official uniform, if two or three Jacobin generals, like Lecourbe and Delmas, grumble at the coronation parade, Napoleon, who knows their mental grasp, regards them as ignoramuses, limited to and rigid inside a fixed idea. – As to the cultivated and intelligent liberals of 1789, he consigns them with a word to the place where they belong; they are “ideologists”; in other words, their pretended knowledge is mere drawing-room prejudice and the imagination of the study. “Lafayette is a political ninny,” the eternal “dupe of men and of things.”[43] With Lafayette and some others, one embarrassing detail remains namely:
* impartiality and generosity,
* constant care for the common good, * respect for others,
* the authority of conscience,
* loyalty,
* and good faith.
In short, noble and pure motives.
Napoleon does not accept the denial thus given to his theory; when he talks with people, he questions their moral nobleness. “General Dumas,”[44] said he, abruptly, to Mathieu Dumas, “you were one of the imbeciles who believed in liberty?” “Yes, sire, and I was and am still one of that class.” “And you, like the rest, took part in the Revolution through ambition?” “No, sire, I should have calculated badly, for I am now precisely where I stood in 1790.”
“You were not sufficiently aware of the motives which prompted you; you cannot be different from other people; it is all personal interest. Now, take Massena. He has glory and honors enough; but he is not content. He wants to be a prince, like Murat and like Bernadotte. He would risk being shot to-morrow to be a prince. That is the incentive of Frenchmen.” –
His system is based on this. The most competent witnesses, and those who were most familiar with him certify to his fixed idea on this point.
“His opinions on men,” writes M. de Metternich,[45] “centered on one idea, which, unfortunately for him, had acquired in his mind the force of an axiom; he was persuaded that no man who was induced to appear on the public stage, or who was merely engaged in the active pursuits of life, governed himself, or was governed, otherwise than by his interest.”
According to him, Man is held through his egoistic passions, fear, cupidity, sensuality, self-esteem, and emulation; these are the mainsprings when he is not under excitement, when he reasons. Moreover, it is not difficult to turn the brain of man; for he is imaginative, credulous, and subject to being carried away; stimulate his pride or vanity, provide him with an extreme and false opinion of himself and of his fellow-men, and you can start him off head downward wherever you please.[46] – None of these motives is entitled to much respect, and beings thus fashioned form the natural material for an absolute government, the mass of clay awaiting the potter’s hand to shape it. If parts of this mass are obdurate, the potter has only to crush and pound them and mix them thoroughly.
Such is the final conception on which Napoleon has anchored himself, and into which he sinks deeper and deeper, no matter how directly and violently he may be contradicted by palpable facts. Nothing will dislodge him; neither the stubborn energy of the English, nor the inflexible gentleness of the Pope, nor the declared insurrection of the Spaniards, nor the mute insurrection of the Germans, nor the resistance of Catholic consciences, nor the gradual disaffection of the French; the reason is, that his conception is imposed on him by his character;[47] he sees man as he needs to see him.
III. Napoleon’s Dominant Passion: Power.
His mastery of the will of others. – Degree of submission required by him. – His mode of appreciating others and of profiting by them. – Tone of command and of conversation.
We at last confront his dominant passion, the inward abyss into which instinct, education, reflection, and theory have plunged him, and which is to engulf the proud edifice of his fortune – I mean, his ambition. It is the prime motor of his soul and the permanent substance of his will, so profound that he no longer distinguishes between it and himself, and of which he is sometimes unconscious.
“I,” said he to Roederer,[48] “I have no ambition,” and then, recollecting himself, he adds, with his ordinary lucidity, “or, if I have any, it is so natural to me, so innate, so intimately associated with my existence, that it is like the blood which flows in my veins and the atmosphere I breathe.” –
Still more profoundly, he likens it to that unconscious, savage, and irresistible emotion which vibrates the soul from one end to the other, to this universal thrill moving all living beings, animal or moral, to those keen and terrible tremors which we call the passion of love.
“I have but one passion,[49] one mistress, and that is France. I sleep with her. She has never been false to me. She lavishes her blood and treasures on me. If I need 500,000 men, she gives them to me.”
Let no one come between him and her. Let Joseph, in relation to the coronation, abstain from claiming his place, even secondary and prospective, in the new empire; let him not put forth his fraternal rights.[50] “It is to wound me in the most tender spot.” This he does, and, “Nothing can efface that from my souvenirs. It is as if he had told an impassioned lover that he had slept with his mistress, or merely that he hoped to succeed with her. My mistress is power. I have worked too hard to obtain her, to let her be ravished from me, or even suffer anybody to covet her.” This ambition, as avid as it is jealous, which becomes exasperated at the very idea of a rival, feels hampered by the mere idea of setting a limit to it; however vast the acquired power, he would like to have it still more vast; on quitting the most copious banquet, he still remains insatiate. On the day after the coronation he said to Decrés:[51]
“I come too late, there is no longer anything great to accomplish. I admit that my career is brilliant and that I have made my way successfully. But what a difference alongside of antiquity! Take Alexander! After having conquered Asia, and proclaimed himself to the people as the son of Jupiter, with the exception of Olympias, who knew what all this meant, and Aristotle, and a few Athenian pedants, the entire Orient believed him. Very well, should I now declare that I was the son of God Almighty, and proclaim that I am going to worship him under this title, every market woman would hoot at me as I walked along the streets. People nowadays know too much. Nothing is left to do.”
And yet, even on this secluded, elevated domain, and which twenty centuries of civilization keeps inaccessible, he still encroaches, and to the utmost, in a roundabout way, by laying his hand on the Church, and next on the Pope; here, as elsewhere, he takes all he can get. Nothing in his eyes, is more natural; he has a right to it, because he is the only capable one.
“My Italian people[52] must know me well enough not to forget that there is more in my little finger than in all their brains put together.”
Alongside of him, they are children, “minors,” the French also, and likewise the rest of mankind. A diplomat, who often saw him and studied him under all as aspects, sums up his character in one conclusive phrase:
“He considered himself an isolated being in this world, made to govern and direct all minds as he pleased.”[53]
Hence, whoever has anything to do with him, must abandon his independence and become his tool of government.
“That terrible man,” often exclaimed Decrés[54] “has subjugated us all! He holds all our imaginations in his hands, now of steel and now of velvet, but whether one or the other during the day nobody knows, and there is no way to escape from them whatever they seize on they never let go!”
Independence of any kind, even eventual and merely possible, puts him in a bad mood; intellectual or moral superiority is of this order, and he gradually gets rid of it;[55] toward the end he no longer tolerates alongside of him any but subject or captive spirits. His principal servants are machines or fanatics, a devout worshipper, like Maret, a gendarme, like Savary,[56] ready to do his bidding. From the outset, he has reduced his ministers to the condition of clerks; for he is administrator as well as ruler, and in each department he watches details as closely as the entire mass. Accordingly, he requires simply for head of departments active pen pushers, mute executors, docile and special hands, no need for honest and independent advisers.
“I should not know what to do with them,” he said, “if they were not to a certain extent mediocre in mind and character.”
As to his generals, he admits himself that “he likes to award fame only to those who cannot stand it.” In any event, “he must be sole master in making or unmaking reputations,” according to his personal requirements. Too brilliant a soldier would become too important; a subordinate should never be tempted to be less submissive. To this end he studies what he will omit in his bulletins, what alterations and what changes shall be made in them.
“It is convenient to keep silent about certain victories, or to convert the defeat of this or that marshal into a success. Sometimes a general learns by a bulletin of an action that he was never in and of a speech that he never made.”
If he complains, he is notified to keep still, or by way of recompense he is allowed to pillage, levy contributions, and enrich himself. On becoming duke or hereditary prince, with half a million or a million of revenue from his estate, he is not less held in subjection, for the creator has taken precautions against his own creations.
“There are men,”[57] he said, “who I have made independent, but I know well where to find them and keep them from being ungrateful.”
In effect, if he has endowed them magnificently it is with domains assigned to them in conquered countries, which insures their fortune being his fortune. Besides, in order that they may not enjoy any pecuniary stability, he expressly encourages them and all his grand dignitaries to make extravagant outlays; thus, through their financial embarrassments be holds them in a leash. “We have seen most of his marshals, constantly pressed by their creditors, come to him for assistance, which he has given as he fancied, or as he found it for his interest to attach some one to him.”[58]
Thus, beyond the universal ascendancy which his power and genius have conferred on him, he craves a personal, supplementary, and irresistible hold on everybody. Consequently,[59]”he carefully cultivates all the bad passions . . . . he is glad to find the bad side in a man, so as to get him in his power”; the thirst for money in Savary, the Jacobin defects of Fouché, the vanity and sensuality of Cambacérès, the careless cynicism and “the easy immorality” of Talleyrand, the “dry bluntness ” of Duroc, the courtier-like insipidity of Maret, “the silliness” of Berthier; he brings this out, diverts himself with it, and profits by it. “Where he sees no vice, he encourages weaknesses, and, in default of anything better, he provokes fear, so that he may be ever and continually the strongest. . . .He dreads ties of affection, and strives to alienate people from each other. . . . He sells his favors only by arousing anxiety; he thinks that the best way to attach individuals to him is to compromise them, and often, even, to ruin them in public opinion.” – ” If Caulaincourt is compromised,” said he, after the murder of the Duc d’Enghien, “it is no great matter, he will serve me all the better.”
Once that the creature is in his clutches, let him not imagine that he can escape or withhold anything of his own accord; all that he has belongs to him. Zeal and success in the performance of duty, punctual obedience within limits previously designated, is not enough; behind the functionary he claims the man. “All that may well be,” he replies, to whatever may be said in praise of him,[60] “but he does not belong to me as I would like.” It is devotion which he exacts, and, by devotion, he means the irrevocable and complete surrender “of the entire person, in all his sentiments and opinions.” According to him, writes a witness, “one must abandon every old habit, even the most trifling, and be governed by one thought alone,. that of his will and interests.”[61] For greater security, his servitors ought to extinguish in themselves the critical sense. “What he fears the most is that, close to him or far off, the faculty of judging should be applied or even preserved.”
“His idea is a marble groove,” out of which no mind should diverge.[62] Especially as no two minds could think of diverging at the same time, and on the same side, their concurrence, even when passive, their common understanding, even if kept to themselves, their whispers, almost inaudible, constitute a league, a faction, and, if they are functionaries, “a conspiracy.” On his return from Spain he declares, with a terrible explosion of wrath and threats,[63] “that the ministers and high dignitaries whom he has created must stop expressing their opinions and thoughts freely, that they cannot be otherwise than his organs, that treason has already begun when they begin to doubt, and that it is under full headway when, from doubt, they proceed to dissent.” If, against his constant encroachments, they strive to preserve a last refuge, if they refuse to abandon their conscience to him, their faith as Catholics or their honor as honest men, he is surprised and gets irritated. In reply to the Bishop of Ghent, who, in the most respectful manner, excuses himself for not taking a second oath that is against his conscience, he rudely turns his back, and says, “Very well, sir, your conscience is a blockhead!”[64] Portalis, director of the publishing office,[65] having received a papal brief from his cousin, the Abbé d’Astros, respected a confidential communication; he simply recommended his cousin to keep this document secret, and declared that, if it were made public, he would prohibit its circulation; by way of extra precaution he notified the prefect of police. But he did not specially denounce his cousin, have the man arrested and the document seized. On the strength of this, the Emperor, in full council of state, apostrophizes him to his face, and, “with one of those looks which go straight through one,”[66] declares that he has committed “the vilest of perfidies”; he bestows on him for half an hour a hailstorm of reproaches and insults, and then orders him out of the room as if a lackey who had been guilty of a theft. Whether he keeps within his function or not, the functionary must be content to do whatever is demanded of him, and readily anticipate every commission. If his scruples arrest him, if he alleges personal obligations, if he had rather not fail in delicacy, or even in common loyalty, he incurs the risk of offending or losing the favor of the master, which is the case with M. de Rémusat,[67] who is unwilling to become his spy, reporter, and denunciator for the Faubourg Saint-Germain, who does not offer, at Vienna, to pump out of Madame d’André the address of her husband so that M. d’André may be taken and immediately shot. Savary, who was the negotiator for his being given up, kept constantly telling M. de Rémusat, “You are going against your interest – I must say that I do not comprehend you!” And yet Savary, himself minister of the police, executor of most important services, head manager of the murder of the Duc d’Enghien and of the ambuscade at Bayonne, counterfeiter of Austrian bank-notes for the campaign of 1809 and of Russian banknotes for that of 1812,[68] Savary ends in getting weary; he is charged with too many dirty jobs; however hardened his conscience it has a tender spot; he discovers at last that he has scruples. It is with great repugnance that, in February, 1814, he executes the order to have a small infernal machine prepared, moving by clock-work, so as to blow up the Bourbons on their return into France.[69] “Ah,” said he, giving himself a blow on the forehead, “it must be admitted that the Emperor is sometimes hard to serve!”
If he exacts so much from the human creature, it is because, in playing the game he has to play, he must absorb everything; in the situation in which be has placed himself, caution is unnecessary. “Is a statesman,” said he, “made to have feeling? Is he not wholly an eccentric personage, always alone by himself, he on one side and the world on the other?”[70]
In this duel without truce or mercy, people interest him only whilst they are useful to him; their value depends on what he can make out of them; his sole business is to squeeze them, to extract to the last drop whatever is available in them.
“I find very little satisfaction in useless sentiments,” said he again,[71] “and Berthier is so mediocre that I do not know why I waste my time on him. And yet when I am not set against him, I am not sure that I do not like him.”
He goes no further. According to him, this indifference is necessary in a statesman. The glass he looks through is that of his own policy;[72] he must take care that it does not magnify or diminish objects. – Therefore, outside of explosions of nervous sensibility, “he has no consideration for men other than that of a foreman for his workmen,”[73] or, more precisely, for his tools; once the tool is worn out, little does he care whether it rusts away in a corner or is cast aside on a heap of scrap-iron. “Portalis, Minister of Justice,[74] enters his room one day with a downcast look and his eyes filled with tears. ‘What’s the matter with you, Portalis?’ inquired Napoleon, ‘are you ill? ‘No, sire, but very wretched. The poor Archbishop of Tours, my old schoolmate . . .’ ‘Eh, well, what has happened to him?’ ‘Alas, sire, he has just died.’ ‘What do I care? he was no longer good for anything.'” Owning and making the most of men and of things, of bodies and of souls, using and abusing them at discretion, even to exhaustion, without being responsible to any one, he reaches that point after a few years where he can say as glibly and more despotically than Louis XIV. himself,
“My armies, my fleets, my cardinals, my councils, my senate, my populations, my empire.”[75]
Addressing army corps about to rush into battle:
“Soldiers, I need your lives, and you owe them to me.”
He says to General Dorsenne and to the grenadiers of the guard:[76]
“I hear that you complain that you want to return to Paris, to your mistresses. Undeceive yourselves. I shall keep you under arms until you are eighty. You were born to the bivouac, and you shall die there.”
How he treats his brothers and relations who have become kings; how he reins them in; how he applies the spur and the whip and makes them trot and jump fences and ditches, may be found in his correspondence; every stray impulse to take the lead, even when justified by an unforeseen urgency and with the most evident good intention, is suppressed as a deviation, is arrested with a brusque roughness which strains the loins and weakens the knees of the delinquent. The amiable Prince Eugene, so obedient and so loyal,[77] is thus warned:
“If you want orders or advice from His Majesty in the alteration of the ceiling of your room you should wait till you get them; were Milan burning and you asked orders for putting out the fire, you should let Milan burn until you got them. . . His Majesty is displeased, and very much displeased, with you; you must never attempt to do his work. Never does he like this, and he will never forgive it.”
This enables us to judge of his tone with subalterns. The French battalions are refused admission into certain places in Holland:[78]
“Announce to the King of Holland, that if his ministers have acted on their own responsibility, I will have them arrested and all their heads cut off.”
He says to M. de Ségur, member of the Academy commission which had just approved M. de Chateaubriand’s discourse:[79]
“You, and M. de Fontaines, as state councillor and grand master, I ought to put in Vincennes. . . . Tell the second class of the Institute that I will have no political subjects treated at its meetings. . . . .If it disobeys, I will break it up like a bad club.
Even when not angry or scolding,[80] when the claws are drawn in, one feels the clutch. He says to Beugnot, whom he has just berated, scandalously and unjustly, – conscious of having done him injustice and with a view to produce an effect on the bystanders, –
“Well, you great imbecile, you have got back your brains?”
On this, Beugnot, tall as a drum-major, bows very low, while the smaller man, raising his hand, seizes him by the ear, “a heady mark of favor,” says Beugnot, a sign of familiarity and of returning good humor. And better yet, the master deigns to lecture Beugnot on his personal tastes, on his regrets, on his wish to return to France: What would he like? To be his minister in Paris? “Judging by what he saw of me the other day I should not be there very long; I might die of worry before the end of the month.” He has already killed Portalis, Cretet, and almost Treilhard, even though he had led a hard life: he could no longer urinate, nor the others either. The same thing would have happened to Beignot, if not worse. . . .
” Stay here . . . . after which you will be old, or rather we all shall be old, and I will send you to the Senate to drivel at your ease.”
Evidently,[81 the nearer one is to his person the more disagreeable life becomes.[82] “Admirably served, promptly obeyed to the minute, he still delights in keeping everybody around him in terror concerning the details of all that goes on in his palace.” Has any difficult task been accomplished? He expresses no thanks, never or scarcely ever praises, and, which happens but once, in the case of M. de Champagny, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is praised for having finished the treaty of Vienna in one night, and with unexpected advantages;[83] this time, the Emperor has thought aloud, is taken by surprise; “ordinarily, he manifests approbation only by his silence.” – When M. de Rémusat, prefect of the palace, has arranged “one of those magnificent fêtes in which all the arts minister to his enjoyment,” economically, correctly, with splendor and success, his wife never asks her husband[84] if the Emperor is satisfied, but whether he has scolded more or less.
“His leading general principle, which he applies in every way, in great things as well as in small ones, is that a man’s zeal depends upon his anxiety.”
How insupportable the constraint he exercises, with what crushing weight his absolutism bears down on the most tried devotion and on the most pliable characters, with what excess he tramples on and wounds the best dispositions, up to what point he represses and stifles the respiration of the human being, he knows as well as anybody. He was heard to say,
“The lucky man is he who hides away from me in the depths of some province.”
And, another day, having asked M. de Ségur what people would say of him after his death, the latter enlarged on the regrets which would be universally expressed. “Not at all,” replied the Emperor; and then, drawing in his breath in a significant manner indicative of universal relief, he replied,
“They’ll say, ‘Whew!'”[85]
IV. His Bad Manners.
His bearings in Society. – His deportment toward Women. – His disdain of Politeness.
There are very few monarchs, even absolute, who persistently, arid from morning to night, maintain a despotic attitude. Generally, and especially in France, the sovereign makes two divisions of his time, one for business and the other for social duties, and, in the latter case, while always head of the State, he is also head of his house: for he welcomes visitors, entertains his guests, and, that his guests may not be robots, he tries to put them at their ease. – That was the case with Louis XIV.[86] – polite to everybody, always affable with men, and sometimes gracious, always courteous with women, and some times gallant, carefully avoiding brusqueness, ostentation, and sarcasms, never allowing himself to use an offensive word, never making people feel their inferiority and dependence, but, on the contrary, encouraging them to express opinions, and even to converse, tolerating in conversation a semblance of equality, smiling at a repartee, playfully telling a story – such was his drawing-room constitution. The drawing-room as well as every human society needs one, and a liberal one; otherwise life dies out. Accordingly, the observance of this constitution in by-gone society is known by the phrase savoir-vivre, and, more rigidly than anybody else, Louis XIV. submitted himself to this code of proprieties. Traditionally, and through education, he had consideration for others, at least for the people around him; his courtiers becoming his guests without ceasing to be his subjects.
There is nothing of this sort with Napoleon. He preserves nothing of the etiquette he borrows from the old court but its rigid discipline and its pompous parade. “The ceremonial system,” says an eyewitness, “was carried out as if it had been regulated by the tap of a drum; everything was done, in a certain sense, ‘double-quick.'[87] . . . This air of precipitation, this constant anxiety which it inspires,” puts an end to all comfort, all ease, all entertainment, all agreeable intercourse; there is no common bond but that of command and obedience. ” The few individuals he singles out, Savary, Duroc, Maret, keep silent and simply transmit orders. . . . We did not appear to them, in doing what we were ordered to do, and we did not appear to ourselves, other than veritable machines, all resembling, or but little short of it, the elegant gilded arm-chairs with which the palaces of Saint-Cloud and the Tuileries had just been embellished.”
For a machine to work well it is important that the machinist should overhaul it frequently, which this one never fails to do, especially after a long absence. Whilst he is on his way from Tilsit, “everybody anxiously examines his conscience to ascertain what he has done that this rigid master will find fault with on his return. Whether spouse, family, or grand dignitary, each is more or less disturbed; while the Empress, who knows him better than any one, naively says, ‘As the Emperor is so happy it is certain that he will do a deal of scolding!'”[88] Actually, he has scarcely arrived when he gives a rude and vigorous wrench of the bolt; and then, “satisfied at having excited terror all around, he appears to have forgotten what has passed and resumes the usual tenor of his life.” “Through calculation as well as from taste,[89] he never ceases to be a monarch”; hence, “a mute, frigid court . . . . more dismal than dignified; every face wears an expression of uneasiness . . . a silence both dull and constrained.” At Fontainebleau, “amidst splendors and pleasures,” there is no real enjoyment nor anything agreeable, not even for himself. “I pity you,” said M. de Talleyrand to M. de Rémusat, “you have to amuse the unamusable.” At the theatre he is abstracted or yawns. Applause is prohibited; the court, sitting out “the file of eternal tragedies, is mortally bored . . . . the young ladies fall asleep, people leave the theatre, gloomy and discontented.” – There is the same constraint in the drawing-room. “He did not know how to appear at ease, and I believe that he never wanted anybody else to be so, afraid of the slightest approach to familiarity, and inspiring each with a fear of saying something offensive to his neighbor before witnesses. . . . During the quadrille, he moves around amongst the rows of ladies, addressing them with some trifling or disagreeable remark,” and never does he accost them otherwise than “awkwardly and ill at his ease.” At bottom, he distrusts them and is ill-disposed toward them.[90] It is because “the power they have acquired in society seems to him an intolerable usurpation. – “Never did he utter to a woman a graceful or even a well-turned compliment, although the effort to find one was often apparent on his face and in the tone of his voice. . . . He talks to them only of their toilet, of which he declares himself a severe and minute judge, and on which he indulges in not very delicate jests; or again, on the number of their children, demanding of them in rude language whether they nurse them themselves; or again, lecturing them on their social relations.”[91] Hence, “there is not one who does not rejoice when he moves off.”[92] He would often amuse himself by putting them out of countenance, scandalizing and bantering them to their faces, driving them into a corner the same as a colonel worries his canteen women. “Yes, ladies, you furnish the good people of the Faubourg Saint-Germain with something to talk about. It is said, Madame A…, that you are intimate with Monsieur B…, and you Madame C…., with Monsieur D .” On any intrigue chancing to appear in the police reports, “he loses no time in informing the husband of what is going on.” – He is no less indiscreet in relation to his own affairs;[93] when it is over he divulges the fact and gives the name; furthermore, he informs Josephine in detail and will not listen to any reproach: “I have a right to answer all your objections with an eternal I!”
This term, indeed, answers to everything, and he explains it by adding: “I stand apart from other men. I accept nobody’s conditions,” nor any species of obligation, no code whatever, not even the common code of outward civility, which, diminishing or dissimulating primitive brutality, allows men to associate together without clashing. He does not comprehend it, and he repudiates it. “I have little liking,”[94] he says, “for that vague, leveling word propriety (convenances), which you people fling out every chance you get. It is an invention of fools who want to pass for clever men; a kind of social muzzle which annoys the strong and is useful only to the mediocre. . . Ah, good taste ! Another classic expression which I do not accept.” “It is your personal enemy”; says Talleyrand to him, one day, “if you could have shot it away with bullets, it would have disappeared long ago!” – It is because good taste is the highest attainment of civilization, the innermost vestment which drapes human nudity, which best fits the person, the last garment retained after the others have been cast off, and which delicate tissue continues to hamper Napoleon; he throws it off instinctively, because it interferes with his natural behavior, with the uncurbed, dominating, savage ways of the vanquisher who knocks down his adversary and treats him as he pleases.
V. His Policy.
His tone and bearing towards Sovereigns. – His Policy. – His means and ends.- After Sovereigns he sets populations against him. – Final opinion of Europe.
Such behavior render social intercourse impossible, especially among the independent and armed personages known as nations or States. This is why they are outlawed in politics and in diplomacy and every head of a State or representative of a country, carefully and on principle, abstains from them, at least with those on his own level. He is bound to treat these as his equals, humor them, and, accordingly, not to give way to the irritation of the moment or to personal feeling; in short, to exercise self-control and measure his words. To this is due the tone of manifestos, protocols, dispatches, and other public documents the formal language of legations, so cold, dry, and elaborated, those expressions purposely attenuated and smoothed down, those long phrases apparently spun out mechanically and always after the same pattern, a sort of soft wadding or international buffer interposed between contestants to lessen the shocks of collision. The reciprocal irritations between States are already too great; there are ever too many unavoidable and regrettable encounters, too many causes of conflict, the consequences of which are too serious; it is unnecessary to add to the wounds of interest the wounds of imagination and of pride; and above all, it is unnecessary to amplify these without reason, at the risk of increasing the obstacles of to-day and the resentments of to-morrow. – With Napoleon it is just the opposite: his attitude, even at peaceful interviews, remains aggressive and militant; purposely or in-voluntarily, he raises his hand and the blow is felt to be coming, while, in the meantime, he insults. In his correspondence with sovereigns, in his official proclamations, in his deliberations with ambassadors, and even at public audiences,[95] he provokes, threatens, and defies.[96] He treats his adversary with a lofty air, insults him often to his face, and charges him with the most disgraceful imputations.[97] He divulges the secrets of his private life, of his closet, and of his bed; he defames or calumniates his ministers, his court, and his wife;[98] he purposely stabs him in the most sensitive part. He tells one that he is a dupe, a betrayed husband; another that he is an abettor of assassination; he assumes the air of a judge condemning a criminal, or the tone of a superior reprimanding an inferior, or, at best, that of a teacher taking a scholar to task. With a smile of pity, he points out mistakes, weak points, and incapacity, and shows him beforehand that he must be defeated. On receiving the envoy of the Emperor Alexander at Wilna,[99] be says to him:
“Russia does not want this war; none of the European powers are in favor of it; England herself does not want it, for she foresees the harm it will do to Russia, and even, perhaps, the greatest. . . I know as well as yourself, and perhaps even better, how many troops you have. Your infantry in all amounts to 120,000 men and your cavalry to about 60,000 or 70,000; I have three times as many. . . . The Emperor Alexander is badly advised. How can he tolerate such vile people around him – an Armfeld, an intriguing, depraved, rascally fellow, a ruined debauchee, who is known only by his crimes and who is the enemy of Russia; a Stein, driven from his country like an outcast, a miscreant with a price on his head; a Bennigsen, who, it is said, has some military talent, of which I know nothing, but whose hands are steeped in blood?[100] . . . . Let him surround himself with the Russians and I will say nothing. . . . Have you no Russian gentlemen among you who are certainly more attached to him than these mercenaries? Does he imagine that they are fond of him personally? Let him put Armfeld in command in Finland and I have nothing to say; but to have him about his person, for shame ! . . . . What a superb perspective opened out to the Emperor Alexander at Tilsit, and especially at Erfurt! . . . . He has spoilt the finest reign Russia ever saw. . . . How can he admit to his society such men as a Stein, an Armfeld, a Vinzingerode? Say to the Emperor Alexander, that as he gathers around him my personal enemies it means a desire to insult me personally, and, consequently, that I must do the same to him. I will drive all his Baden, Wurtemburg, and Weimar relations out of Germany. Let him provide a refuge for them in Russia!”
Note what he means by – personal insult[101], how he intends to avenge himself by reprisals of the worst kind, to what excess he carries his interference, how he enters the cabinets of foreign sovereigns, forcibly entering and breaking, to drive out their councilors and control their meetings: like the Roman senate with an Antiochus or a Prusias, like an English Resident with the King of Oude or of Lahore. With others as at home, he cannot help but act as a master. The aspiration for universal dominion is in his very nature; it may be modified, kept in check, but never can it be completely stifled.”[102]
It declares itself on the organization of the Consulate. It explains why the peace of Amiens could not last; apart from the diplomatic discussions and behind his alleged grievances, his character, his exactions, his avowed plans, and the use he intends making of his forces form the real and true causes of the rupture. In comprehensible sometimes even in explicit terms, he tells the English: Expel the Bourbons from your island and close the mouths of your journalists. If this is against your constitution so much the worse for it, or so much the worse for you. “There are general principles of international law to which the (special) laws of states must give way.”[103] Change your fundamental laws. Suppress the freedom of the press and the right of asylum on your soil, the same as I have done. “I have a very poor opinion of a government which is not strong enough to interdict things objectionable to foreign governments.”[104] As to mine, my interference with my neighbors, my late acquisitions of territory, that does not concern you: “I suppose that you want to talk about Piedmont and Switzerland? These are trifles”[105] “Europe recognizes that Holland, Italy, and Switzerland are at the disposition of France.[106] On the other hand, Spain submits to me and through her I hold Portugal. Thus, from Amsterdam to Bordeaux, from Lisbon to Cadiz and Genoa, from Leghorn to Naples and to Tarentum, I can close every port to you; no treaty of commerce between us. Any treaty that I might grant to you would be trifling: for each million of merchandise that you would send into France a million of French merchandise would be exported;[107] in other words, you would be subject to an open or concealed continental blockade, which would cause you as much distress in peace as if you were at war.” My eyes are nevertheless fixed on Egypt; “six thousand Frenchmen would now suffice to re-conquer it”;[108] forcibly, or otherwise, I shall return there; opportunities will not be lacking, and I shall be on the watch for them; “sooner or later she will belong to France, either through the dissolution of the Ottoman empire, or through some arrangement with the Porte.”[109] Evacuate Malta so that the Mediterranean may become a French lake; I must rule on sea as on land, and dispose of the Orient as of the Occident. In sum, “with my France, England must naturally end in becoming simply an appendix: nature has made her one of our islands, the same as Oleron or Corsica.”[110] Naturally, with such a perspective before them, the English keep Malta and recommence the war. He has anticipated such an occurrence, and his resolution is taken; at a glance, he perceives and measures the path this will open to him; with his usual clear-sightedness he has comprehended, and he announces that the English resistance “forces him to conquer Europe. . . .”[111] – “The First Consul is only thirty-three and has thus far destroyed only the second-class governments. Who knows how much time he will require to again change the face of Europe and resurrect the Western Roman Empire?”
To subjugate the Continent in order to form a coalition against England, such, henceforth, are his means, which are as violent as the end in view, while the means, like the end, are given by his character. Too imperious and too impatient to wait or to manage others, he is incapable of yielding to their will except through constraint, and his collaborators are to him nothing more than subjects under the name of allies. – Later, at St. Helena, with his indestructible imaginative energy and power of illusion, he plays on the public with his humanitarian illusions.[112] But, as he himself avows, the accomplishment of his retrospective dream required beforehand the entire submission of all Europe; a liberal sovereign and pacificator, “a crowned Washington, yes,” he used to say, “but I could not reasonably attain this point, except through a universal dictatorship, which I aimed at.”[113] In vain does common sense demonstrate to him that such an enterprise inevitably rallies the Continent to the side of England, and that his means divert him from the end. In vain is it repeatedly represented to him that he needs one sure great ally on the Continent;[114] that to obtain this he must conciliate Austria; that he must not drive her to despair, but rather win her over and compensate her on the side of the Orient; place her in permanent conflict with Russia, and attach her to the new French Empire by a community of vital interests. In vain does he, after Tilsit, make a bargain of this kind with Russia. This bargain cannot hold, because in this arrangement Napoleon, as usual with him, always encroaching, threatening, and attacking, wants to reduce Alexander to the role of a subordinate and a dupe.[115] No clear-sighted witness can doubt this. In 1809, a diplomat writes: “The French system, which is now triumphant, is directed against the whole body of great states,”[116] not alone against England, Prussia, and Austria, but against Russia, against every power capable of maintaining its independence; for, if she remains independent, she may become hostile, and as a precautionary step Napoleon crushes in her a probable enemy.
All the more so because this course once entered upon he cannot stop; at the same time his character and the situation in which he has placed himself impels him on while his past hurries him along to his future.[117] At the moment of the rupture of the treaty of Amiens he is already so strong and so aggressive that his neighbors are obliged, for their own security, to form an alliance with England; this leads him to break down all the old monarchies that are still intact, to conquer Naples, to mutilate Austria the first time, to dismember and cut up Prussia, to mutilate Austria the second time, to manufacture kingdoms for his brothers at Naples, in Holland and in Westphalia. — At this same date, all the ports of his empire are closed against the English, which leads him to close against them all the ports of the Continent, to organize against them the continental blockade, to proclaim against them an European crusade, to prevent the neutrality of sovereigns like the Pope, of lukewarm subalterns like his brother Louis, of doubtful collaborators or inadequate, like the Braganzas of Portugal and the Bourbons of Spain, and therefore to get hold of Portugal, Spain, the Pontifical States, and Holland, and next of the Hanseatic towns and the duchy of Oldenburg, to extending along the entire coast, from the mouths of the Cattaro and Trieste to Hamburg and Dantzic, his cordon of military chiefs, prefects, and custom- houses, a sort of net of which he draws the meshes tighter and tighter every day, even stifling not alone his home consumer, but the producer and the merchant.[118] – And all this sometimes by a simple decree, with no other alleged motive than his interest, his convenience, or his pleasure,[119] brusquely and arbitrarily, in violation of international law, humanity, and hospitality. It would take volumes to describe his abuses of power, the tissue of brutalities and knaveries,[120] the oppression of the ally and despoiling of the vanquished, the military brigandage exercised over populations in time of war, and by the systematic exactions practiced on them in times of peace.[121]
Accordingly, after 1808, these populations rise against him. He has so deeply injured them in their interests, and hurt their feelings to such an extent,[122] he has so trodden them down, ransomed, and forced them into his service. He has destroyed, apart from French lives, so many Spanish, Italian, Austrian, Prussian, Swiss, Bavarian, Saxon, and Dutch lives, he has slain so many men as enemies, he has enlisted such numbers at home, and slain so many under his own banners as auxiliaries, that nations are still more hostile to him than sovereigns. Unquestionably, nobody can live together with such a character; his genius is too vast, too baneful, and all the more because it is so vast. War will last as long as he reigns; it is in vain to reduce him, to confine him at home, to drive him back within the ancient frontiers of France; no barrier will restrain him; no treaty will bind him; peace with him will never be other than a truce; he will use it simply to recover himself, and, as soon as he has done this, he will begin again;[123] he is in his very essence anti-social. The mind of Europe in this respect is made up definitely and unshakably. One petty detail alone shows how unanimous and profound this conviction was. On the 7th of March the news reached Vienna that he had escaped from the island of Elba, without its being yet known where he would land. M. de Metternich[124] brings the news to the Emperor of Austria before eight o’clock in the morning, who says to him, “Lose no time in finding the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Russia, and tell them that I am ready to order my army to march at once for France.” At a quarter past eight M. de Metternich is with the Czar, and at half-past eight, with the King of Prussia; both of them reply instantly in the same manner. “At nine o’clock,” says M. de Metternich, “I was back. At ten o’clock aids flew in every direction countermanding army orders. . . . Thus was war declared in less than an hour.”
VI. Fundamental Defaults of his System.
Inward principle of his outward deportment. – He subordinates the State to him instead of subordinating himself to the State. – Effect of this.- His work merely a life-interest. – It is ephemeral. – Injurious. – The number of lives it cost. – The mutilation of France. – Vice of construction in his European edifice. – Analogous vice in his French edifice.
Other heads of states have similarly passed their lives in doing violence to mankind; but it was for something that was likely to last, and for a national interest. What they deemed the public good was not a phantom of the brain, a chimerical poem due to a caprice of the imagination, to personal passions, to their own peculiar ambition and pride. Outside of themselves and the coinage of their brain a real and substantial object of prime importance existed, namely, the State, the great body of society, the vast organism which lasts indefinitely through the long series of interlinked and responsible generations. If they drew blood from the passing generation it was for the benefit of coming generations, to preserve them from civil war or from foreign domination.[125] They have acted generally like able surgeons, if not through virtue, at least through dynastic sentiment and family traditions; having practiced from father to son, they had acquired the professional conscience; their first and only aim was the safety and health of their patient. It is for this reason that they have not recklessly undertaken extravagant, bloody, and over-risky operations; rarely have they given way to temptation through a desire to display their skill, through the need of dazzling and astonishing the world, through the novelty, keenness, and success of their saws and scalpels. They felt that a longer and superior existence to their own was imposed upon them; they looked beyond them-selves as far as their sight would reach, and so took measures that the State after them might do without them, live on intact, remain independent, vigorous, and respected athwart the vicissitudes of European conflict and the uncertain problems of coming history. Such, under the ancient régime, was what were called reasons of state; these had prevailed in the councils of princes for eight hundred years; along with unavoidable failures and after temporary deviations, these had become for the time being and remained the preponderating motive. Undoubtedly they excused or authorized many breaches of faith, many outrages, and, to come to the word, many crimes; but, in the political order of things, especially in the management of external affairs, they furnished a governing and a salutary principle. Under its constant influence thirty monarchs had labored, and it is thus that, province after province, they had solidly and enduringly built up France, by ways and means beyond the reach of individuals but available to the heads of States.
Now, this principle is lacking with their improvised successor. On the throne as in the camp, whether general, consul, or emperor, he remains the military adventurer, and cares only for his own advancement. Owing to the great defect in the education of both conscience and sentiments, instead of subordinating himself to the State, he subordinates the State to him; he does not look beyond his own brief physical existence to the nation which is to survive him. Consequently, he sacrifices the future to the present, and his work is not to be enduring. After him the deluge! Little does he care who utters this terrible phrase; and worse still, he earnestly wishes, from the bottom of his heart that everybody should utter it.
“My brother,” said Joseph, in 1803,[126] “desires that the necessity of his existence should be so strongly felt, and the benefit of this considered so great, that nobody could look beyond it without shuddering. He knows, and be feels it, that he reigns through this idea rather than through force or gratitude. If to-morrow, or on any day, it could be said, ‘Here is a tranquil, established order of things, here is a known successor; Bonaparte might die without fear of change or disturbance,’ my brother would no longer think himself secure. . . . Such is the principle which governs him.”
In vain do years glide by, never does he think of putting France in a way to subsist without him; on the contrary, he jeopardizes lasting acquisitions by exaggerated annexations, and it is evident from the very first day that the Empire will end with the Emperor. In 1805, the five per cents being at eighty francs, his Minister of the Finances, Gaudin, observes to him that this is a reasonable rate.[127] “No complaint can now be made, since these funds are an annuity on Your Majesty’s life.” – “What do you mean by that?” – “I mean that the Empire has become so great as to be ungovernable without you.” – “If my successor is a fool so much the worse for him!” – “Yes, but so much the worse for France!” Two years later, M. de Metternich, by way of a political summing up, expresses his general opinion: “It is remarkable that Napoleon, constantly disturbing and modifying the relations of all Europe, has not yet taken a single step toward ensuring the maintenance of his successors.”[128] In 1809, adds the same diplomat:[129] “His death will be the signal for a new and frightful upheaval; so many divided elements all tend to combine. Deposed sovereigns will be recalled by former subjects; new princes will have new crowns to defend. A veritable civil war will rage for half a century over the vast empire of the continent the day when the arms of iron which held the reins are turned into dust.” In 1811, “everybody is convinced[130] that on the disappearance of Napoleon, the master in whose hands all power is concentrated, the first inevitable consequence will be a revolution.” At home, in France, at this same date, his own servitors begin to comprehend that his empire is not merely a life-interest and will not last after he is gone, but that the Empire is ephemeral and will not last during his life; for he is constantly raising his edifice higher and higher, while all that his building gains in elevation it loses in stability. “The Emperor is crazy,” said Decrees to Marmont,[131]”completely crazy. He will ruin us all, numerous as we are, and all will end in some frightful catastrophe.” In effect, he is pushing France on to the abyss, forcibly and by deceiving her, through a breach of trust which willfully, and by his fault, grows worse and worse just as his own interests, as he comprehends these, diverge from those of the public from year to year.
At the treaty of Luneville and before the rupture of the peace of Amiens,[132] this variance was already considerable. It becomes manifest at the treaty of Presbourg and still more evident at the treaty of Tilsit. It is glaring in 1808, after the deposition of the Spanish Bourbons; it becomes scandalous and monstrous in 1812, when the war with Russia took place. Napoleon himself admits that this war is against the interests of France and yet he undertakes it.[133] Later, at St. Helena, he falls into a melting mood over “the French people whom he loved so dearly.”[134] The truth is, he loves it as a rider loves his horse; as he makes it rear and prance and show off its paces, when he flatters and caresses it; it is not for the advantage of the animal but for his own purposes, on account of its usefulness to him; to be spurred on until exhausted, to jump ditches growing wider and wider, and leap fences growing higher and higher; one ditch more, and still another fence, the last obstacle which seems to be the last, succeeded by others, while, in any event, the horse remains forcibly and for ever, what it already is, namely, a beast of burden and broken down. – For, on this Russian expedition, instead of frightful disasters, let us imagine a brilliant success, a victory at Smolensk equal to that of Friedland, a treaty of Moscow more advantageous than that of Tilsit, and the Czar brought to heel. As a result the Czar is probably strangled or dethroned, a patriotic insurrection will take place in Russia as in Spain, two lasting wars, at the two extremities of the Continent, against religious fanaticism, more irreconcilable than positive interests, and against a scattered barbarism more indomitable than a concentrated civilization. At best, a European empire secretly mined by European resistance; an exterior France forcibly superposed on the enslaved Continent;[135] French residents and commanders at St. Petersburg and Riga as at Dantzic, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Barcelona, and Trieste. Every able-bodied Frenchman that can be employed from Cadiz to Moscow in maintaining and administering the conquest. All the able-bodied youth annually seized by the conscription, and, if they have escaped this, seized again by decrees.[136] The entire male population thus devoted to works of constraint, nothing else in prospect for either the cultivated or the uncultivated, no military or civil career other than a prolonged guard duty, threatened and threatening, as soldier, customs-inspector, or gendarme, as prefect, sub-prefect, or commissioner of police, that is to say, as subaltern henchman and bully restraining subjects and raising contributions, confiscating and burning merchandise, seizing grumblers, and making the refractory toe the mark.[137] In 1810, one hundred and sixty thousand of the refractory were already condemned by name, and, moreover, penalties were imposed on their families to the amount of one hundred and seventy millions of francs In 1811 and 1812 the roving columns which tracked fugitives gathered sixty thousand of them, and drove them along the coast from the Adour to the Niemen; on reaching the frontier, they were en-rolled in the grand army; but they desert the very first month, they and their chained companions, at the rate of four or five thousand a day.[138] Should England be conquered, garrisons would have to be maintained there, and of soldiers equally zealous. Such is the dark future which this system opens to the French, even with the best of good luck. It turns out that the luck is bad, and at the end of 1812 the grand army is freezing in the snow; Napoleon’s horse has let him tumble. Fortunately, the animal has simply foundered; “His Majesty’s health was never better”;[139] nothing has happened to the rider; he gets up on his legs, and what concerns him at this moment is not the sufferings of his broken-down steed, but his own mishap; his reputation as a horseman is compromised; the effect on the public, the hooting of the audience, is what troubles him, the comedy of a perilous leap, announced with such a flourish of trumpets and ending in such a disgraceful fall. On reaching Warsaw[140] he says to himself, ten times over:
“There is only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous.”
The following year, at Dresden, he exposes still more foolishly, openly, and nakedly his master passion, the motives which determine him, the immensity and ferocity of his pitiless pride.
“What do they want of me?” said he to M. de Metternich.[141] ” Do they want me to dishonor myself? Never! I can die, but never will I yield an inch of territory! Your sovereigns, born to the throne, may be beaten twenty times over and yet return to their capitals: I cannot do this, because I am a parvenu soldier. My domination will not survive the day when I shall have ceased to be strong, and, consequently, feared.”
In effect, his despotism in France is founded on his European omnipotence; if he does not remain master of the Continent,” he must settle with the corps législatif.[142] Rather than descend to an inferior position, rather than be a constitutional monarch, controlled by parliamentary chambers, he plays double or quits, and will risk losing everything.
“I have seen your soldiers,” says Metternich to him, “they are children. When this army of boys is gone, what will you do then?”
At these words, which touch his heart, he grows pale, his features contract, and his rage overcomes him; like a wounded man who has made a false step and exposes himself, he says violently to Metternich:
“You are not a soldier You do not know the impulses of a soldier’s breast! I have grown up on the battle-field, and a man like me does not give a damn for the lives of a million men! “[143]
His imperial pipe-dreams has devoured many more. Between 1804 and 1815 he has had slaughtered 1,700,000 Frenchmen, born within the boundaries of ancient France,[144] to which must be added, probably, 2,000,000 men born outside of these limits, and slain for him, under the title of allies, or slain by him under the title of enemies. All that the poor, enthusiastic, and credulous Gauls have gained by entrusting their public welfare to him is two invasions; all that he bequeaths to them as a reward for their devotion, after this prodigious waste of their blood and the blood of others, is a France shorn of fifteen departments acquired by the republic, deprived of Savoy, of the left bank of the Rhine and of Belgium, despoiled of the northeast angle by which it completed its boundaries, fortified its most vulnerable point, and, using the words of Vauban, “made its field square,” separated from 4,000,000 new Frenchmen which it had assimilated after twenty years of life in common, and, worse still, thrown back within the frontiers of 1789, alone, diminished in the midst of its aggrandized neighbors, suspected by all Europe, and lastingly surrounded by a threatening circle of distrust and rancor.
Such is the political work of Napoleon, the work of egoism served by genius. In his European structure as in his French structure this sovereign egoism has introduced a vice of construction. This fundamental vice is manifest at the outset in the European edifice, and, at the expiration of fifteen years, it brings about a sudden downfall: in the French edifice it is equally serious but not so apparent; only at the end of half a century, or even a whole century, is it to be made clearly visible; but its gradual and slow effects will be equally pernicious and they are no less sure.
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Notes:
[1] See my “Philosophy of Art” for texts and facts, Part II., ch. VI. – Other analogies, which are too long for development here, may be found, especially in all that concerns the imagination and love. “He was disposed to accept the marvelous, presentiments, and even certain mysterious communications between beings. . . . I have seen him excited by the rustling of the wind, speak enthusiastically of the roar of the sea, and sometimes inclined to believe in nocturnal apparitions; in short, leaning to certain superstitions.” (Madame de Rémusat, I., 102, and III., 164.) – Meneval (III., 114) notes his “crossing himself involuntarily on the occurrence of some great danger, on the discovery of some important fact.” During the consulate, in the evening, in a circle of ladies, he sometimes improvised and declaimed tragic “tales,” Italian fashion, quite worthy of the story-tellers of the XVth and XVIth centuries. (Bourrienne, VI., 387, gives one of his improvisations. Cf. Madame de Rémusat, I., 102.) – As to love, his letters to Josephine during the Italian campaign form one of the best examples of Italian passion and “in most piquant contrast with the temperate and graceful elegance of his predecessor M. de Beauharnais.” (Madame de Rémusat, I., 143). – His other amours, simply physical, are too difficult to deal with; I have gathered some details orally on this subject which are almost from first hands and perfectly authentic. It is sufficient to cite one text already published: “According to Josephine, he had no moral principle whatever; did he not seduce his sisters one after the other? ” – “I am not a man like other men, he said of himself, “and moral laws and those of propriety do not apply to me.” (Madame de Rémusat, I., 204, 206.) – Note again (II., 350) his proposals to Corvisart. – Such are everywhere the sentiments, customs, and morality of the great Italian personages of about the year 1500.
[2] De Pradt, “Histoire de l’ambassade dans le grand-duché de Varsovie,” p.96. “with the Emperor, desire springs out of his imagination; his idea becomes passion the moment it comes into his head.”
[3] Bourrienne, II., 298. – De Ségur, I., 426.
[4] Bodin, “Recherches sur l’Anjou,” II., 325. – ” Souvenirs d’un nonagénaire,” by Besnard. – Sainte-Beuve, “Causeries du Lundi,” article on Volney. – Miot de Melito, I., 297. He wanted to adopt Louis’s son, and make him King of Italy. Louis refused, alleging that this marked favor would give new life to the reports spread about at one time in relation to this child.” Thereupon, Napoleon, exasperated, “seized Prince Louis by the waist and pushed him violently out of the room.” – ” Mémorial,” Oct.10, 1816. Napoleon relates that at the last conference of Campo-Fermio, to put an end to the resistance of the Austrian plenipotentiary, he suddenly arose, seized a set of porcelain on a stand near him and dashed it to the floor, exclaiming, “Thus will I shatter your monarchy before a month is over!” (Bourrienne questions this story.)
[5] Varnhagen von Ense, “Ausgewahlte Schriften,” III., 77 (Public reception of July 22, 1810). Napoleon first speaks to the Austrian Ambassador and next to the Russian Ambassador with a constrained air, forcing himself to be polite, in which he cannot persist. “Treating with I do not know what unknown personage, he interrogated him, reprimanded him, threatened him, and kept him for a sufficiently long time in a state of painful dismay. Those who stood near by and who could not help feeling a dismayed, stated later that there had been nothing to provoke such fury, that the Emperor had only sought an opportunity to vent his ill-humor; that he did it purposely on some poor devil so as to inspire fear in others and to put down in advance any tendency to opposition. Cf. Beugnot, “Mémoires,” I., 380, 386, 387. – This mixture of anger and calculation likewise explains his conduct at Sainte Helena with Sir Hudson Lowe, his unbridled diatribes and insults bestowed on the governor like so many slaps in the face. (W. Forsyth, “History of the Captivity of Napoleon at Saint Helena, from the letters and journals of Sir Hudson Lowe,” III., 306.)
[6] Madame de Rémusat, II., 46.
[7] “Les Cahiers de Coignat.” 191. “At Posen, already, I saw him mount his horse in such a fury as to land on the other side and then give his groom a cut of the whip.”
[8] Madame de Rémusat, I., 222.
[9] Especially the letters addressed to Cardinal Consalvi and to the Préfet of Montenotte (I am indebted to M. d’Haussonville for this information). – Besides, he is lavish of the same expressions in conversation. On a tour through Normandy, he sends for the bishop of Séez and thus publicly addresses him: “Instead of merging the parties, you distinguish between constitutionalists and non-constitutionalists. Miserable fool! You are a poor subject, – hand in your resignation at once!” – To the grand-vicars he says, “Which of you governs your bishop – who is at best a fool? ” – As M. Legallois is pointed out to him, who had of late been absent. “Fuck, where were you then?” “With my family.” “With a bishop who is merely a damned fool, why are you so often away, etc.?” (D’Haussonville,VI., 176, and Roederer, vol. III.)
[10] Madame de Rémusat – I., 101; II., 338.
[11] Ibid., I., 224. – M. de Meneval, I., 112, 347; III., 120: ” On account of the extraordinary event of his marriage, he sent a handwritten letter to his future father-in-law (the Emperor of Austria). It was a grand affair for him. Finally, after a great effort, he succeeded in penning a letter that was readable.” – Meneval, nevertheless, was obliged “to correct the defective letters without letting the corrections be too plainly seen.”
[12] For example, at Bayonne and at Warsaw (De Pradt); the outrageous and never-to-be forgotten scene which, on his return from Spain, occurred with Talleyrand – (“Souvenirs”, by PASQUIER Etienne-Dennis, duc, Chancelier de France. Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. I., 357); – The gratuitous insult of M. de Metternich, in 1813, the last word of their interview (“Souvenirs du feu duc de Broglie,” I., 230) . – Cf. his not less gratuitous and hazardous confidential communications to Miot de Melito, in 1797, and his five conversations with Sir Hudson Lowe, immediately recorded by a witness, Major Gorrequer. (W. Forsyth, I.,147, 161, 200.)
[13] De Pradt, preface X
[14] Pelet de la Lozére, p. 7. – Mollien, “Mémoires,” II., 222. – “Souvenirs du feu duc de Broglie,” I., 66, 69.
[15] “Madame de Rémusat,” I., 121: I have it from Corvisart that the pulsations of his arteries are fewer than is usual with men. He never experienced what is commonly called giddiness.” With him, the nervous apparatus is perfect in all its functions, incomparable for receiving, recording, registering, combining, and reflecting, but other organs suffer a reaction and are very sensitive.” (De Ségur, VI., 15 and 16, note of Drs. Yvan and Mestivier, his physicians.) “To preserve the equilibrium it was necessary with him that the skin should always fulfill its functions; as soon as the tissues were affected by any moral or atmospheric cause . . . . irritation, cough, ischuria.” Hence his need of frequent prolonged and very hot baths. “The spasm was generally shared by the stomach and the bladder. If in the stomach, he had a nervous cough which exhausted his moral and physical energies.” Such was the case between the eve of the battle of Moscow and the morning after his entry into Moscow: “a constant dry cough, difficult and intermittent breathing; the pulse sluggish, weak, and irregular; the urine thick and sedimentary, drop by drop and painful; the lower part of the legs and the feet extremely oedematous.” Already, in 1806, at Warsaw, “after violent convulsions in the stomach,” he declared to the Count de Loban, “that he bore within him the germs of a premature death, and that he would die of the same disease as his father’s.” (De Ségur,VI., 82.) After the victory of Dresden, having eaten a ragout containing garlic, he is seized with such violent gripings as to make him think he was poisoned, and he makes a retrograde movement, which causes the loss of Vandamme’s division, and, consequently, the ruin of 1813. “Souvenirs”, by Pasquier, Etienne-Dennis, duc, chancelier de France. Librarie Plon, Paris 1893, (narrative of Daru, an eye-witness.) – This susceptibility of the nerves and stomach is hereditary with him and shows itself in early youth. “One day, at Brienne, obliged to drop on his knees, as a punishment, on the sill of the refectory, he is seized with sudden vomiting and a violent nervous attack.” De Segur, I., 71. – It is well known that he died of a cancer in the stomach, like his father Charles Bonaparte. His grandfather Joseph Bonaparte, his uncle Fesch, his brother Lucien, and his sister Caroline died of the same, or of an analogous disease.
[16] Meneval, I., 269. Constant, “Mémoires,” V., 62. De Ségur, VI., 114, 117.
[17] Marshal Marmont, “Mémoires,” I., 306. Bourrienne, II., 119: “When off the political field he was sensitive, kind, open to pity.”
[18] Pelet de la Lozére, p.7. De Champagny, ” Souvenirs,” p.103. At first, the emotion was much stronger. “He had the fatal news for nearly three hours; he had given vent to his despair alone by himself. He summoned me . . . . plaintive cries involuntarily escaped him.”
[19] Madame de Rémusat, I., 121, 342 ; II., 50 ; III., 61, 294, 312.
[20] De Ségur, V., 348.
[21] Yung, II., 329, 331. (Narrated by Lucien, and report to Louis XVIII.)
[22] “Nouvelle relation de l’Itinéraire de Napoléon, de Fontainebleau à l’Ile de l’Elbe,” by Count Waldberg-Truchsees, Prussian commissioner (1885), pp.22, 24, 25, 26, 30, 32, 34, 37. – The violent scenes, probably, of the abdication and the attempt at Fontainebleau to poison himself had already disturbed his balance. On reaching Elba, he says to the Austrian commissioner, Koller, “As to you, my dear general, I have let you see my bare rump.” – Cf. in “Madame de Rémusat,” I., 108, one of his confessions to Talleyrand: he crudely points out in himself the distance between natural instinct and studied courage. – Here and elsewhere, we obtain a glimpse of the actor and even of the Italian buffoon; M. de Pradt called him “Jupiter Scapin.” Read his reflections before M. de Pradt, on his return from Russia, in which he appears in the light of a comedian who, having played badly and failed in his part, retires behind the scenes, runs down the piece, and criticize the imperfections of the audience. (De Pradt, p.219.)
[23] The reader may find his comprehension of the author’s meaning strengthened by the following translation of a passage from his essay on Jouffroy (Philosophes classiques du XIXth Siécle,” 3rd ed.):
“What is a man, master of himself? He is one who, dying with thirst, refrains from swallowing a cooling draft, merely moistening his lips: who insulted in public, remains calm in calculating his most appropriate revenge; who in battle, his nerves excited by a charge, plans a difficult maneuver, thinks it out, and writes it down with a lead-pencil while balls are whistling around him, and sends it to his colonels. In other words, it is a man in whom the deliberate and abstract idea of the greatest good is stronger than all other ideas and sensations. The conception of the greatest good once attained, every dislike, every species of indolence, every fear, every seduction, every agitation, are found weak. The tendency which arise from the idea of the greatest good constantly dominates all others and determines all actions.” TR.
[24] Bourrienne, I. 21.
[25] Yung, 1., 125.
[26] Madame de Rémusat, I., 267. – Yung, II., 109. On his return to Corsica he takes upon himself the government of the whole family. “Nobody could discuss with him, says his brother Lucien; he took offence at the slightest observation and got in a passion at the slightest resistance. Joseph (the eldest) dared not even reply to his brother.”
[27] Mémorial, August 27-31, 1815.
[28] “Madame de Rémusat,” I., 105. – Never was there an abler and more persevering sophist, more persuasive, more eloquent, in order to make it appear that he was right. Hence his dictations at St. Helena; his proclamations, messages, and diplomatic correspondence; his ascendancy in talking as great as through his arms, over his subject and over his adversaries; also his posthumous ascendancy over posterity. He is as great a lawyer as he is a captain and administrator. The peculiarity of this disposition is never submitting to truth, but always to speak or write with reference to an audience, to plead a cause. Through this talent one creates phantoms which dupe the audience; on the other hand, as the author himself forms part of the audience, he ends in not along leading others into error but likewise himself, which is the case with Napoleon.
[29] Yung, II., 111. (Report by Volney, Corsican commissioner, 1791. – II., 287. (Mémorial, giving a true account of the political and military state of Corsica in December, 1790.) – II., 270. (Dispatch of the representative Lacombe Saint-Michel, Sept. 10, 1793.) – Miot de Melito I.,131, and following pages. (He is peace commissioner in Corsica in 1797 and 1801.)
[30] Miot de Melito, II., 2. “The partisans of the First consul’s family . . . regarded me simply as the instrument of their passions, of use only to rid them of their enemies, so as to center all favors on their protégés.”
[31] Yung., I., 220. (Manifest of October -31, 1789.) – I., 265. (Loan on the seminary funds obtained by force, June 23, 1790.) – I., 267, 269. (Arrest of M. de la Jaille and other officers; plan for taking the citadel of Ajaccio.) – II., 115. (letter to Paoli, February 17, 1792.) “Laws are like the statues of certain divinities – veiled on certain occasions.” – II., 125. (Election of Bonaparte as lieutenant-colonel of a battalion of volunteers, April1, 1792.) The evening before he had Murati, one of the three departmental commissioners, carried off by an armed band from the house of the Peraldi, his adversaries, where he lodged. Murati, seized unawares, is brought back by force and locked up in Bonaparte’s house, who gravely says to him “I wanted you to be free, entirely at liberty; you were not so with the Peraldi.” – His Corsican biographer (Nasica, “Mémoires sur la jeunesse et l’enfance de Napoléon,”) considers this a very praiseworthy action
[32] Cf. on this point, the Memoirs of Marshal Marmont, I., 180, 196; the Memoirs of Stendhal, on Napoleon; the Report of d’Antraigues (Yung, III., 170, 171); the “Mercure Britannique” of Mallet-Dupan, and the first chapter of “La Chartreuse de Parme,” by Stendhal.
[33] “Correspondance de Napoléon,” I. (Letter of Napoleon to the Directory, April 26, 1796.) – Proclamation of the same date: “You have made forced marches barefoot, bivouacked without brandy, and often without bread.”
[34] Stendhal, “Vie de Napoléon,” p. 151. “The commonest officers were crazy with delight at having white linen and fine new boots. All were fond of music; many walked a league in the rain to secure a seat in the La Scala Theatre. . . . In the sad plight in which the army found itself before Castiglione and Arcole, everybody, except the knowing officers, was disposed to attempt the impossible so as not to quit Italy.” – ” Marmont,” I., 296: “We were all of us very young, . . . all aglow with strength and health, and enthusiastic for glory. . . . This variety of our occupations and pleasures, this excessive employment of body and mind gave value to existence, and made time pass with extraordinary rapidity.”
[35] “Correspondance de Napoléon,” I. Proclamation of March 27, 1796: ‘ Soldiers, you are naked and poorly fed. The government is vastly indebted to you; it has nothing to give you. . . . I am going to lead you to the most fertile plains in the world; rich provinces, large cities will be in your power; you will then obtain honor, glory, and wealth.” – Proclamation of April 26, 1796: – “Friends, I guarantee that conquest to you!” – Cf. in Marmont’s memoirs the way in which Bonaparte plays the part of tempter in offering Marmont, who refuses, an opportunity to rob a treasury chest.
[36] Miot de Melito, I., 154. (June, 1797, in the gardens of Montebello.) “Such are substantially the most remarkable expressions in this long discourse which I have recorded and preserved.”
[37] Miot de Melito, I. 184. (Conversation with Bonaparte, November 18, 1797, at Turin.) “I remained an hour with the general tête-à-tête. I shall relate the conversation exactly as it occurred, according to my notes, made at the time.”
[38] Mathieu Dumas, ” Mémoires,” III., 156. “It is certain that he thought of it from this moment and seriously studied the obstacles, means, and chances of success.” (Mathieu Dumas cites the testimony of Desaix, who was engaged in the enterprise): “It seems that all was ready, when Bonaparte judged that things were not yet ripe, nor the means sufficient.” – Hence his departure. “He wanted to get out of the way of the rule and caprices of these contemptible dictators, while the latter wanted to get rid of him because his military fame and influence in the army were obnoxious to them.
[39] Larevellière-Lepaux (one of the five directors on duty), “Mémoires,” II., 340. “All that is truly grand in this enterprise, as well as all that is bold and extravagant, either in its conception or execution, belongs wholly to Bonaparte. The idea of it never occurred to the Directory nor to any of its members. . . . His ambition and his pride could not endure the alternative of no longer being prominent or of accepting a post which, however eminent, would have always subjected him to the orders of the Directory.”
[40] Madame de Rémusat, I., 142. “Josephine laid great stress on the Egyptian expedition as the cause of his change of temper and of the daily despotism which made her suffer so much.”- “Mes souvenirs sur Napoleon,” 325 by the count Chaptal. (Bonaparte’s own words to the poet Lemercier who might have accompanied him to the Middle East and there would have learned many things about human nature): “You would have seen a country where the sovereign takes no account of the lives of his subjects, and where the subject himself takes no account of his own life. You would have got rid of your philanthropic ‘notions.”
[41] Roederer, III., 461 (Jan. 12, 1803)
[42] Cf. “The Revolution,” Vol. p. 773. (Note I., on the situation, in 1806, of the Conventionalists who had survived the revolution.) For instance, Fouché is minister; Jeanbon-Saint-André, prefect; Drouet (de Varennes), sub-prefect; Chépy (of Grenoble), commissary-general of the police at Brest; 131 regicides are functionaries, among whom we find twenty one prefects and forty-two magistrates. – Occasionally, a chance document that has been preserved allows one to catch “the man in the act.” (“Bulletins hebdomadaires de la censure, 1810 and 1814,” published by M. Thurot, in the Revue Critique, 1871): “Seizure of 240 copies of an indecent work printed for account of M. Palloy, the author. This Palloy enjoyed some celebrity during the Revolution, being one of the famous patriots of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. The constituent Assembly had conceded to him the ownership of the site of the Bastille, of which he distributed its stones among all the communes. He is a bon vivant, who took it into his head to write out in a very bad style the filthy story of his amours with a prostitute of the Palais-Royal. He was quite willing that the book should be seized on condition that he might retain a few copies of his jovial production. He professes high admiration for, and strong attachment to His Majesty’s person, and expresses his sentiments piquantly, in the style of 1789.”
[43] Mémorial,” June 12, 1816.
[44] Mathieu Dumas, III., 363 (July 4, 1809, a few days before Wagram). – Madame de Rémusat,” I., 105: “I have never heard him express any admiration or comprehension of a noble action.” – I., 179: On Augustus’s clemency and his saying, “Let us be friends, Cinna,” the following is his interpretation of it: “I understand this action simply as the feint of a tyrant, and approve as calculation what I find puerile as sentiment.”- “Notes par le Comte Chaptal”: “He believed neither in virtue nor in probity, often calling these two words nothing but abstractions; this is what rendered him so distrustful and so immoral. . . . He never experienced a generous sentiment; this is why he was so cold in company, and why he never had a friend. He regarded men as so much counterfeit coin or as mere instruments.”
[45] M. de Metternich, “Mémoires,” I., 241. – “Madame de Rémusat,” I., 93: “That man has been so harmful (si assommateur de toute vertu…) to all virtue.” – Madame de Staël, “Considerations sur la Revolution Française, ” 4th part, ch. 18. (Napoleon’s conduct with M. de Melzi, to destroy him in public opinion in Milan, in 1805.)
[46] Madame de Rémusat, I., 106; II., 247, 336: “His means for governing man were all derived from those which tend to debase him. . . . He tolerated virtue only when he could cover it with ridicule.”
[47] Nearly all his false calculations are due to this defect, combined with an excess of constructive imagination. – Cf. De Pradt, p.94: “The Emperor is all system, all illusion, as one cannot fail to be when one is all imagination. Whoever has watched his course has noticed his creating for himself an imaginary Spain, an imaginary Catholicism, an imaginary England, an imaginary financial state, an imaginary noblesse, and still more an imaginary France, and, in late times, an imaginary congress.”
[48] Roederer, III., 495. (March 8, 1804.)
[49] Ibid., III., 537 (February 11, 1809.)
[50] Roederer, III., 514. (November 4, 1804.)
[51] Marmont, II., 242.
[52] Correspondance de Napoléon,” I. (Letter to Prince Eugéne, April 14, 1806.)
[53] M. de Metternich, I., 284.
[54] Mollien, III., 427.
[55] “Notes par le Comte Chaptal”: During the Consulate, “his opinion not being yet formed on many points, he allowed discussion and it was then possible to enlighten him and enforce an opinion once expressed in his presence. But, from the moment that he possessed ideas of his own, either true or false, on administrative subjects, he consulted no one; . . . he treated everybody who differed from him in opinion contemptuously, tried to make them appear ridiculous, and often exclaimed, giving his forehead a slap, that here was an instrument far more useful than the counsels of men who were commonly supposed to be instructed and experienced. . . For four years, he sought to gather around him the able men of both parties. After this, the choice of his agents began to be indifferent to him. Regarding himself as strong enough to rule and carry on the administration himself, the talents and character of those who stood in his way were discarded. What he wanted was valets and not councillors. . . The ministers were simply head-clerks of the bureaus. The Council of State served only to give form to the decrees emanating from him; he ruled even in petty details. Everybody around him was timid and passive; his will was regarded as that of an oracle and executed without reflection. . . . Self-isolated from other men, having concentrated in his own hands all powers and all action, thoroughly convinced that another’s light and experience could be of no use to him, he thought that arms and hands were all that he required.”
[56] “Souvenirs”, by Pasquier (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. In VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. Vol I. chap. IX. and X. pp. 225-268. (Admirable portraiture of his principal agents, Cambacérès, Talleyrand, Maret, Cretet, Real, etc.) Lacuée, director of the conscription, is a perfect type of the imperial functionary. Having received the broad ribbon of the Legion d’Honneur, he exclaimed, at the height of his enthusiasm: “what will not France become under such a man? To what degree of happiness and glory will it not ascend, always provided the conscription furnishes him with 200,000 men a year! And, indeed, that will not be difficult, considering the extent of the empire.” – And likewise with Merlin de Douai: “I never knew a man less endowed with the sentiment of the just and the unjust; everything seems to him right and good, as the consequences of a legal text. He was even endowed with a kind of satanic smile which involuntarily rose to his lips . . . every time the opportunity occurred, when, in applying his odious science, he reached the conclusion that severity is necessary or some condemnation.” The same with Defermon, in fiscal matters
[57] Madame de Rémusat, II., 278; II., 175.
[58] Ibid., III., 275, II., 45. (Apropos of Savary, his most intimate agent.): “He is a man who must be constantly corrupted.”
[59] Ibid., I., 109; II., 247; III., 366.
[60] “Madame de Rémusat,” II., 142, 167, 245. (Napoleon’s own words.) “If I ordered Savary to rid himself of his wife and children, I am sure he would not hesitate.” – Marmont, II., 194: “We were at Vienna in 1809. Davoust said, speaking of his own and Maret’s devotion: “If the Emperor should say to us both, ‘My political interests require the destruction of Paris without any one escaping,’ Maret would keep the secret, I am sure; but nevertheless he could not help letting it be known by getting his own family out. I, rather than reveal it1 would leave my wife and children there.” (These are bravado expressions, wordy exaggerations, but significant.)
[61] Madame de Rémusat, II., 379.
[62] Souvenirs du feu duc de Broglie,” I., 230. (Words of Maret, at Dresden, in 1813; he probably repeats one of Napoleon’s figures.)
[63] Mollien, II., 9.
[64] D’Haussonville, “L’Église Romaine et le premier Empire,”VI., 190, and passim.
[65] Ibid., III., 460-473. – Cf. on the same scene, “Souvenirs”, by Pasquier (Etienne-Dennis, duc), Chancelier de France. (He was both witness and actor.)
[66] An expression of Cambacérès. M. de Lavalette, II., 154.
[67] Madame de Rémusat, III. 184
[68] “Souvenirs”, by Pasquier, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.-, I., 521. Details of the manufacture of counterfeit money, by order of Savary, in an isolated building on the plain of Montrouge. – Metternich, II., 358. (Words of Napoleon to M. de Metternich): “I had 300 millions of banknotes of the Bank of Vienna all ready and was going to flood you with them.” Ibid., Correspondence of M. de Metternich with M. de Champagny on this subject (June, 1810).
[69] “Souvenirs”, by Pasquier, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. – Vol. II. p. 196.
[70] Madame de Rémusat, II., 335.
[71] Madame de Rémusat, I., 231.
[72] Ibid., 335.
[73] M. de Metternich, I., 284. “One of those to whom he seemed the most attached was Duroc. ‘He loves me the same as a dog loves his master,’ is the phrase he made use of in speaking of him to me. He compared Berthier’s sentiment for his person to that of a child’s nurse. Far from being opposed to his theory of the motives influencing men these sentiments were its natural consequence whenever he came across sentiments to which he could not apply the theory of calculation based on cold interest, he sought the cause of it in a kind of instinct.”
[74] Beugnot, “Mémoires,” II., 59.
[75] “Mémorial.” “If I had returned victorious from Moscow, I would have brought the Pope not to regret temporal power: I would have converted him into an idol. . . I would have directed the religious world as well as the political world. . . My councils would have represented Christianity, and the Pope would have only been president of them.”
[76] De Ségur, III., 312. (In Spain, 1809.)
[77] “Mémoires du Prince Eugène.” (Letters of Napoleon, August, 1806.)
[78] Letter of Napoleon to Fouché, March 3, 1810. (Left out in the “Correspondance de Napoléon I.,” and published by M. Thiers in “Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire, XII., p. 115.
[79] De Ségur, III., 459.
[80] Words of Napoleon to Marmont, who, after three months in the hospital, returns to him in Spain with a broken arm and his hand in a black sling: “You hold on to that rag then?” Sainte-Beuve, who loves the truth as it really is, quotes the words as they came, which Marmont dared not reproduce. (Causeries du Lundi, VI., 16.) – “Souvenirs”, by Pasquier, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893: “M. de Champagny having been dismissed and replaced, a courageous friend defended him and insisted on his merit: “You are right,” said the Emperor, “he had some when I took him; but by cramming him too full, I have made him stupid.”
[81] Beugnot, I., 456, 464
[82] Mme. de Rémusat, II., 272.
[83] M. de Champagny, “Souvenirs,” 117.
[84] Madame de Rémusat, I., 125.
[85] De Ségur, III., 456.
[86] “The Ancient Regime,” p. 125. – “uvres de Louis XIV.,” 191: “If there is any peculiar characteristic of this monarchy, it is the free and easy access of the subjects to the king; it an egalité de justice between both, and which, so to say, maintains both in a genial and honest companionship, in spite of the almost infinite distance in birth, rank, and power. This agreeable society, which enables persons of the Court to associate familiarly with us, impresses them and