# Napoleon (O'Connor 1896)/Chapter 1

NAPOLEON.
CHAPTER I.
TAINE'S PORTRAIT.
I begin the series of portraits by giving that of Taine. It is the most finished and the most powerful. Indeed, I know scarcely any portrait in literature in which there is more dazzling literary skill; but it is a portrait by an avowed and a bitter enemy. It is too peremptory and too consistent; above all, it is a portrait drawn by what I may call a literary absolutist—the artist who insists that human figures should follow the rigidity of a philosopher's scientific rules.
I.
NAPOLEON AN ITALIAN.
The first point which Taine brings out is that this mighty despot, who ruled France as she had never been ruled before, was not even a Frenchman. Not only in blood and in birth, but in feeling he ​was an Italian. He remained, in some respects, an Italian all his life. In Taine's eyes, too, he is not only an Italian, but an Italian of the Middle Ages. "He belongs," says Taine, "to another race and another epoch." And then, in a series of wonderful passages, Taine traces back the heritage of Napoleon to those men and those times. "The man-plant," says Alfieri, "is in no country born more vigorous than in Italy," "and never," goes on Taine, "in Italy was it so vigorous as from 1300 to 1500, from the contemporaries of Dante down to those of Michael Angelo, Caesar Borgia, Julius II., and Macchiavelli." In those times great personalities fought for crowns, money, and life at one cast, and when they succeeded, established a government remarkable for splendour, order, and firmness. This was the period of great adventurers—great in battle, great in council, great in courage, great in imagination, great in their love of the arts. All these qualities are reproduced in Napoleon.
"He is," says Taine, "a posthumous brother of Dante and Michael Angelo; in the clear outlines of his vision, in the intensity, coherence, and inward logic of his reverie, in the profundity of his meditations, in the superhuman grandeur of his conceptions, he is, indeed, their fellow and their equal. His genius is of the same stature and the same structure; he is one of the three sovereign minds of the Italian Renaissance, only, ​while the first two operated on paper and on marble, the latter operates on the living being, on the sensitive and suffering flesh of humanity."
II.
HIS ITALIAN TEMPERAMENT.
Analysing Napoleon's temperament, Taine also finds that it belongs to another race and another epoch. "Three hundred years of police and of courts of justice," "of social discipline and peaceful habits," "have diminished the force and violence of the passions natural to men," but in Italy, at the period of the Renaissance, those passions were still intact.
"Human emotions at that time were keener and more profound than at the present day; the appetites were ardent and more unbridled; man's will was more impetuous and more tenacious; whatever motive inspired him, whether pride, ambition, jealousy, hatred, love, envy, or sensuality, the inward spring strained with an energy and relaxed with a violence that has now disappeared. All these energies reappear in the great survivor of the fifteenth century; in him the play of the nervous machine is the same as with his Italian ancestors. Never was there, even among the Malatestas or Borgias, a more sensitive and impulsive intellect, more capable of such electric shocks and explosions, in which the roar ​and flashes of the tempest lasted longer, and of which the effects were more irresistible. In his mind no idea seems speculative and pure; none is a simple transcript of the real, or a simple picture of the possible; each is an internal eruption, which suddenly and spontaneously spends itself in action; each darts forth to its goal, and would reach it without stopping were it not kept back and restrained by force."
Of this Italian explosiveness of nature, Taine gives scores of examples. This conception of Napoleon's character differs fundamentally from many of our preconceived notions; and from the idea of himself which Napoleon was able to convey in public and to all who did not know him intimately during his lifetime. "The public and the army regarded him as impassive;" in his battles "he wears a mask of bronze;" in "official ceremonies he wears a necessarily dignified air;" and in most pictures of him which I have seen, one gets the impression of a profoundly immutable calm. But the real Napoleon was altogether different from this. A more sensitive, restless, irritable nature never existed. His emotions are so rapid that they intercept each other, and emotion irresistibly compels immediate action.
"Impression and expression with him are almost always confounded, the inward overflowing in the outward, the action, like a blow, getting the better of him."
​"At Paris, towards the end of the Concordat, he says to Senator Volney, 'France wants a religion.' Volney replies, in a frank, sententious way, 'France wants the Bourbons.' Whereupon he gives Volney a kick in the stomach, and he falls unconscious. On his being conveyed to a friend's house he remains there ill for several days. No man is more irritable, so soon in a passion, and all the more because he purposely gives way to his irritation; for, doing this just at the right moment, and especially before witnesses, it strikes terror—it enables him to extort concessions and maintain obedience; while his explosions of anger, half calculated, half involuntary, serve him quite as much as they relieve him, in public as in private, with strangers as with intimates, before constituted bodies, with the Pope, with cardinals, with ambassadors, with Talleyrand, with Beugnot, with anybody that comes along, whenever he wishes to set an example or 'keep the people around him on the alert.'"
His unfortunate wife is one of the greatest victims of this violence, and even at the moment when she has most right to complain.
"At St. Cloud, caught by Josephine in an act of gallantry, he springs after the unlucky intruder in such a way that she has barely time to escape; and, again, that evening, keeping up his fury, so as to put her down completely, 'he treats her in the most outrageous manner, ​smashing every piece of furniture that comes in his way.'"
And here is another example of the way in which he treats his Ministers.
"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.' At the word 'king' Bonaparte's eyes flash. Grasping Berthier by the throat, he pushes his head against a 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, outbursts and assaults of this description; the physiognomy and intonation of a man who rushes forward and knocks people down."
III.
IN DÉSHABILLE.
And then there come some striking pictures of Napoleon in his study and his dressing-room—where we see him in déshabille and as the natural man. It is not a pleasant picture—indeed, the whole impression one gets from this study of Napoleon is brutal, revolting.
​"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 oaths, which are suppressed in what is written.' But these are not always suppressed, and those who have seen the original minutes of his correspondence on ecclesiastical affairs find dozens of them of the coarsest kind. . . .
"When dressing himself, 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 something on him. . . . He tears off or breaks whatever causes him the slightest discomfort, while the poor valet who has been the cause of it receives a violent and positive proof of his anger. No thought was ever carried away more by its own speed. 'His hand-writing,' when he tries to write, 'is a mass of disconnected and undecipherable signs; 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 writing an autograph 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 Méneval, and Maret invent a stenography of their own, for he never repeats any of his sentences; so much the worse for the pen if it lags behind, and so much the better if a volley of exclamations or of oaths give it a chance to catch up."
IV.
HIS ITALIAN LOQUACITY.
One generally associates extraordinary military genius with taciturnity; and there is also a disposition to regard reticence as an inevitable accompaniment of great force of will, and of genius in action. There are many good people who really think that Mr. Gladstone cannot be regarded as a man of genius in action for the reason that he has talked so much throughout his life. A study of Napoleon will dissipate this idea; never was there a talker so incessant, so impetuous, so daring. Here, again, his Italian origin reveals itself. Italy is the land of improvisation, and over and over again Taine applies to Napoleon the Italian term "improvisatore." This is his description, for instance, of Napoleon speaking at a Ministerial Council:—
"Never did speech flow and overflow in such torrents, often without either discretion or prudence, even when the outburst is neither useful nor creditable; subject to this inward pressure the improvisator and polemic, under full headway, ​take the place of the man of business and the statesman. 'With him,' says a good observer, 'talking is a prime necessity; and, assuredly, among the highest prerogatives, he ranks first that of speaking without interruption.' Even at the Council of State he allows himself to run on, forgetting the business before the meeting; he starts off right and left with some digression or demonstration, some invective or other for two or three hours at a stretch, insisting over and over again, bent on convincing or prevailing, and ending by 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 argument.' On reflection he knows the value of an assent thus obtained, and, pointing to his chair, he observes: 'It must be admitted that in that seat one thinks with facility!' Nevertheless, he has enjoyed his intellectual exercise and given way to his passion, which controls him far more than he controls it."
V.
AND HIS SENSIBILITY.
It is, however, one of the contradictions of this extraordinary character, that he has moments of intense and almost ingenuous sensibility. "He who has looked upon thousands of dying men, and has had thousands of men slaughtered, sobs after Wagram and after Bautzen at the couch of a dying comrade." "I saw him," says his valet, ​"weep while eating his breakfast, after coming from Marshal Lannes' 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. Speaking of the capitulation of Baylen, at a full meeting of the Council of State, 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. '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 crisis came on in 1808, when he was 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, and lie beside him, and he weeps over her; 'literally,' she says, 'he soaked the bed with his tears.'"
VI.
HIS MOMENTS OF COWARDICE.
It is also this extreme sensibility which accounts for those few moments of abject cowardice that stand out in the career of one of the most fearless human beings who ever lived. He himself has always the dread that there would be a breakdown in the nervous system—a loss of balance. "My nerves," he says of himself, "are very irritable, and when in this state, were my pulse not always regular, I should risk going crazy." But his pulse does not always beat regularly.
"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.' 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 instinct asserts its ​supremacy; he is afraid, and makes no attempt of concealment. After borrowing the uniform of an Austrian colonel, the casque of a Prussian quartermaster, and the cloak of a Russian quarter-master, he still considers that he is not sufficiently disguised. In the inn at Calade 'he starts and changes colour at the slightest noise;' the commissioners, who repeatedly enter the room, 'find him always in tears.' 'He wearies them with his anxieties and irresolution;' he says 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 ascendency."
This strange, tasteless loquacity of Napoleon—without dignity, self-respect, or decency—is one of ​the many features in his character which must always be remembered if one wishes to have a clear and full conception of him. I shall, by-and-by, bring out the severer and more sinister aspects of his nature; for a moment let me lay stress on this smaller, and what I might call more frivolous, side of his character; it adds grimness to his more fatal and awful qualities. Some of his sayings at the period to which I have just referred cannot be transferred to the chaste pages of an English book. Taine is justified in speaking of Napoleon as giving under such circumstances "a glimpse of the actor and even of the Italian buffoon;" and it was probably this aspect of his character conjoined to others—this petty buffoonery in association with almost divine genius—which suggested the felicitous title of "Jupiter Scapin," applied to him by M. de Pradt, who knew him well. To this same M. de Pradt Napoleon spoke very plainly after the return of the disastrous and terrible expedition to Russia; in these reflections 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 criticises the imperfections of the audience." This "piece" which had sent hundreds of thousands to violent death!
VII.
NAPOLEON'S FAMILY.
Napoleon's father, Charles Bonaparte, was weak and even frivolous, "too fond of pleasure to care about his children," or his affairs; he died at thirty-nine of cancer of the stomach—"which seems to be the only bequest he made to his son, Napoleon." His mother was altogether of a different type—a type, too, thoroughly Italian. "Serious, authoritative," she was "the real head of the family." She was, said Napoleon, "hard in her affections; she punished and rewarded without distinction good or bad; she made us all feel it."
On becoming head of the household "she was too parsimonious—even ridiculously so. This was due to excess of foresight on her part; she had known want, and her terrible sufferings were never out of her mind. . . . In other respects this woman, from whom it would have been difficult to extract five francs, would have given up everything to secure my return from Elba, and after Waterloo she offered me all she possessed to retrieve my fortunes."
Other accounts of her agree in saying that she was "unboundedly avaricious;" that she had "no knowledge whatever of the usages of society;" that she was very "ignorant, not alone of 'French' literature but of her own." "The character of the son," says Stendhal, "is to be explained by the ​perfectly Italian character of Madame Lætitia." From her, too, he inherited his extraordinary courage and resource. She was enceinte with her great son at the very moment of the French invasion, and she gave birth to him "amid the risks of battle and defeat. . . . amidst mountain rides on horseback, nocturnal surprises, and volleys of musketry." "Losses, privations, and fatigue," says Napoleon, "she endured all, and braved all. Hers was a man's head on a woman's shoulders."
The sisters of Napoleon are also remarkable in their way—though, as often happens, what is strength in the men, degenerates in them into self-destructive vice.
"Passion, sensuality, the habit of considering themselves outside of rules, and self-confidence, combined with talent, predominate in these women as in those of the fifteenth century. Elisa, of Tuscany, had a vigorous brain, was high-spirited and a genuine sovereign, notwithstanding the disorders of her private life, in which even appearances were not sufficiently maintained. Caroline of Naples, without being more scrupulous than her sister, 'better observed the proprieties; none of the others so much resembled the Emperor.' 'With her all tastes were subordinated to ambition; 'it was she who advised and prevailed upon her husband, Murat, to desert Napoleon in 1814. As to Pauline, the most beautiful woman of her epoch, 'no wife, since that of the Emperor Claudius, surpassed her ​in the use she dared make of her charms; nothing could stop her, not even a malady attributed to her dissipation, and on account of which we have often seen her borne on a litter.'"
This, perhaps, is the most effective and deadliest blow at Napoleon in Taine's terrible indictment. If to this despot had been apportioned the female belongings of a man in, say, Ratcliff Highway, we should know what it implied. It would imply a family of brutal, predatory, foul instincts. The inheritors of such instincts would, in the case of the men, be the denizens of gaols; in the case of the women, would swell the ranks of prostitutes.
It is healthy, though not wholly comforting, to be reminded of the similarity of human nature through the vast differences of human rank and fortunes. To those who are fearless realists like Taine, there is a sombre joy in penetrating through trappings and robes to the naked animal beneath. Reflect for a moment that behind the flowing Imperial robes at the High Altar in Nôtre Dame, there is a nature, which in other circumstances would be clothed in the garment of a violent convict; that these beautiful, delicate, richly-bedizened women, whom Napoleon and chance have placed on thrones, are of the same mould as that brawling drab who is being haled to the prison, or lies, broken and beaten, in the bed of a hospital!
​All the brothers of Napoleon were likewise remarkable in their way; and finally, the family picture is completed, and Napoleon's character is also indicated by what Napoleon himself says of one of his uncles. He "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."
VIII.
NAPOLEON'S BEGINNINGS.
Moody, rancorous, hating the French as the conquerors of his country, Napoleon as a youth looked on the events of the French Revolution with the detachment of a foreigner. In 1792, when the struggle between the monarchists and the revolutionists was at its height, he tries to find "some successful speculation," and thinks he will hire and sub-let houses at a profit. On June 20 in the same year he sees the invasion of the Tuileries, and the King at a window placing the red cap on his head. "Che Coglione!" (What a cuckold!) he exclaims, and immediately after, "How could they let the rabble enter! Mow down 400 or 500 of them with cannon-balls, and the rest of them would run away."
"On August 10, when the tocsin is sounding, he regards the people and the King with equal contempt; he rushes to a friend's house on the ​Carrousel, and there, still as a looker-on, views at his ease all the occurrences of the day; finally the Château is forced, and he strolls through the Tuileries, looks in at the neighbouring cafes, and that is all. He is not disposed to take sides; he has no Jacobin or Royalist impulse. His features, even, are so calm as to provoke many hostile and distrustful remarks, 'as unknown and suspicious.' None of the political or social conditions which then exercised such control over men's minds have any hold on him. . . . On returning to Paris, after having knocked at several doors, he takes Barras for a patron Barras, the most brazen of the corrupt; Barras, who has overthrown and contrived the death of his two former protectors. Among the contending parties and fanaticisms which succeed each other, he keeps cool and free to dispose of himself as he pleases, indifferent to every cause, and caring only for his own interest. On the evening of the 12th of Vendémiaire, on leaving the Feydeau Theatre, and noticing the preparations of the Sections, he said to Junot: 'Ah, if the Sections would only let me lead them! I would guarantee to place them in the Tuileries in two hours, and have all those rascals of the Convention turned out!' Five hours later, denounced by Barras and the Convention, he takes 'three minutes' to make up his mind, and instead of 'blowing up the representatives,' he shoots down ​Parisians like any other good condottiere, who, holding himself in reserve, inclines to the first that offers, and then to whoso offers the most, prepared to back out afterwards, and who finally grabs anything he can get."
And it is as a condottiere that Taine regards Napoleon to the end. From this point of view he surveys his whole career, and here is the result of the inspection:
"He is like a condottiere, that is to say, a leader of a band, getting more and more independent, pretending to submit under the pretext of public good, looking out solely for his own interest, centreing all on himself, general on his own account and for his own advantage in his Italian campaign before and after the 18th of Fructidor. Still he was a condottiere of the first class, already aspiring to the loftiest summits, 'with no stopping-place but the throne or the scaffold,' 'determined to master France, and Europe through France, ever occupied with his own plans, and demanding only three hours' sleep a night'; making playthings of ideas, people, religions, and governments; managing mankind with incomparable dexterity and brutality; in the choice of means, as of ends, a superior artist, inexhaustible in prestige, seduction, corruption, and intimidation; wonderful, and far more terrible than any wild beast suddenly turned on to a herd of browsing cattle. The expression is not too strong, and was uttered by an eye​witness almost at this very date, a friend and a competent diplomat.' You know that, though I am very fond of the dear General, I call him myself the little tiger, so as to properly characterise his looks, tenacity, and courage, the rapidity of his movements, and all that he has in him which may be fairly regarded in that sense.'"
IX.
HIS POWER OF COMMAND.
Poor, forlorn, discontented, at first sight insignificant in figure, and without any employment, Napoleon in these early days might have been passed by without much notice. But it is a singular thing that the moment he attains any position, people at once, involuntarily, even strongly against their will, recognise and bow down before his calmly arrogant capacity. There are, for instance, two portraits of him at the period in his existence just following that to which we have now reached, and both give the same impression—the one is by Madame de Staël, and is in words; the other is by Guérin, a truthful painter. Madame de Staël meets him at a time when, having gained some victories, she and the public generally are sympathetic towards him; and yet, she says, "the recovery from the first excitement of admiration was followed by a decided sense of apprehension." He had then no power, and ​might any day be dismissed, and "thus the terror he inspired was simply due to the singular effect of his person on all who approach him."
"I had met men worthy of respect, and had likewise met men of ferocious character; but nothing in the impression which Bonaparte produced on me reminded me of either. . . . A being like him, wholly unlike anybody else, could neither feel nor excite sympathy; he was both more and less than a man; his figure, intellect, and language bore the impress of a foreign nationality. . . . Far from being reassured on seeing Bonaparte oftener, he intimidated one more and more every day. . . . He regards a human being as a fact, an object, and not as a fellow-creature. He neither hates nor loves: he exists for himself alone; the rest of humanity are merely ciphers. . . . Every time that I heard him talk, I was struck with his superiority. It bore no resemblance to that of men informed and cultivated through study and social intercourse, such as we find in France and England; his conversation concerned the material fact only, like that of the hunter in pursuit of his prey. His spirit seemed a cold, keen sword-blade, which freezes while it wounds. I realised a profound sense of irony which nothing great or beautiful could withstand, not even his own fame, for he despised the nation whose suffrages he sought."
X.
AN EARLY PORTRAIT.
And now, here is Taine's description of the Guérin portrait:—
"Now, notice in Guérin, that spare body, those narrow shoulders under the uniform wrinkled by sudden movements, the neck swathed in its high twisted cravat, those temples covered by long, smooth, straight hair, exposing only the mask, the hard features intensified through strong contrasts of light and shade, the cheeks hollow up to the inner angle of the eye, the projecting cheekbones, the massive protuberant jaw, the sinuous, mobile lips, pressed together as if attentive, the large clear eyes, deeply sunk under the broad arched eyebrows, the fixed oblique look, as penetrating as a rapier, and the two creases which extend from the base of the nose to the brow, as if in a frown of suppressed anger and determined will."
"Add to this the accounts of his contemporaries who saw or heard the curt accent, or the sharp, abrupt gesture, the interrogating, imperious, absolute tone of voice, and we comprehend how it was that the moment they accosted him, they felt the dominating hand which seized them, pressed them down, held them firmly, never relaxing its grasp."
​Admiral Decrès, who had known him well in Paris, learns that he has to pass through Toulon on his way to take up the command of the army in Italy. He rushes to see an old acquaintance:—
"'I at once propose to my comrades to introduce them, venturing to do so on the grounds of my acquaintance with him in Paris. Full of eager ness and joy, I started off. The door opened, I am about to press forward,' he afterwards wrote, 'when the attitude, the look, and the tone of voice suffice to arrest me. And yet there was nothing offensive about him; still this was enough. I never tried after that to overstep the line thus imposed upon me.' A few days later, at Alberga, certain generals of division, and amongst them Augereau, a vulgar, heroic old soldier, vain of his tall figure and courage, arrive at head-quarters, not well disposed towards the little parvenu sent out to them from Paris. Recalling the description of him which had been given to them, Augereau is abusive and insubordinate beforehand:
"'One of Barras's favourites! The Vendémiaire General! A street General! Never been in action! Hasn't a friend! Looks like a bear, because he always thinks of himself! An insignificant figure! Said to be a mathematician and a dreamer!' They enter, and Bonaparte keeps them waiting. At last he appears with his sword and belt on, explains the disposition of the forces, gives them his orders and dismisses them. Augereau is ​thunderstruck. Only when he gets out of doors does he recover himself and fall back on his accustomed oaths. He agrees with Massena that 'that little —— of a general frightened him.' He cannot comprehend the ascendency 'which overawes him at the first glance.'"
One instance more will suffice. General Vandamme, an old revolutionary soldier, still more brutal and energetic than Augereau, said to Marshal D'Ornano, one day when they were ascending the staircase of the Tuileries together, "My dear fellow, that devil of a man" (speaking of the Emperor) "fascinates me in a way I cannot account for. I, who don't fear either God or the Devil, tremble like a child when I approach him. He would make me dash through the eye of a needle into the fire!"
XI.
HIS POWER OF WORK.
From almost the very first, Napoleon makes no secret of his final purposes. Let us study the causes which enabled him to so successfully use men and events to carry out these designs.
First among these are his extraordinary powers of work and of mastering and remembering all the details of every subject which can come under the notice of a commander or a ruler. When one reads the record of his gifts in this respect, one ​is for the moment tempted to forget all his crimes, and to feel that he honestly earned his success.
Take him, for instance, at the Council of State:
"Punctual at every sitting, prolonging the session four or six hours, discussing before and afterwards the subject brought forward . . . informing himself about bygone acts of jurisprudence, the laws of Louis XIV. and Frederick the Great. . . . Never did the Council adjourn without its members knowing more than they did the day before, if only through the researches he obliged them to make. Never did the members of the Senate and Corps Législatif, or of the tribunal, pay their respects to him without being rewarded for their homage by valuable instructions. He cannot be surrounded by public men without being the head of all, all forming for him a Council of State."
Here is another picture of him which tells the same tale:
"'What characterises him above them all,' is not alone the penetration and universality of his comprehension, but likewise and especially 'the force, flexibility, and constancy of his attention. He can work thirteen hours a day at a stretch, on one or on several subjects. I never saw him tired, I never found his mind lacking inspiration, even when weary in body, nor when violently exercised, ​nor when angry. I never saw him diverted from one matter by another, turning from that under discussion to one he had just finished or was about to take up. The news, good or bad, he received from Egypt did not divert his mind from the civil code, nor the civil code from the combinations which the safety of Egypt required. Never did man more wholly devote himself to the work in hand, nor better devote his time to what he had to do; never did mind more inflexibly set aside the occupation or thought which did not come at the right day or hour; never was one more ardent in seeking it, more alert in its pursuit, more capable of fixing it when the time came to take it up.'"
The best description, after all, of the working of the mind is his own. "Various subjects," he said, "and affairs are stowed away in my brains, as in a chest of drawers. When I want to take up any special business, I shut one drawer and open another. None of them ever get mixed, and never does this incommode me or fatigue me. If I feel sleepy I shut the drawer and go to sleep."
XII.
THE POWER OF TAKING PAINS.
This genius has not only the power of constant work, but also of taking infinite pains. It will be seen that nothing in which he succeeds is in ​the least degree the result of accident. Here is a description of himself which will bring this out:
"'I am always at work. I meditate a great deal. If I seem always equal to the occasion, ready to face what comes, it is because I have thought the matter over a long time before undertaking it. I have anticipated whatever might happen. It is no genius which suddenly reveals to me what I ought to do or say in any unlooked-for circumstance, but my own reflection, my own meditation. . . . I work all the time, at dinner, in the theatre. I wake up at night in order to resume my work. I got up last night at two o'clock. I stretched myself on my couch before the fire to examine the army reports sent to me by the Minister of War; I found twenty mistakes in them, and made notes which I have this morning sent to the Minister, who is now engaged with his clerks in rectifying them.'"
He wears out all his Ministers by this incessant power of work. When Consul, "he sometimes presides at special meetings of the Section of the Interior from ten o'clock in the evening until five o'clock in the morning." Often, at St. Cloud, he keeps the Councillors of State from nine o'clock in the morning until five in the evening, with fifteen minutes' intermission, and seems no more fatigued at the close of the sitting than when it began.
​"During the night sessions 'many of the members succumb through lassitude, while the Minister of War falls asleep.' He gives them a shake and wakes them up. 'Come, come, citizens, let us bestir ourselves; it is only two o'clock, and we must earn the money the French people pay us.' Consul or Emperor, he demands of each Minister an account of the smallest details. It is not rare to see them leaving the council-room overcome with fatigue, due to the long interrogations to which he has subjected them; he disdains to take any notice of this, and talks about the day's work simply as a relaxation which has scarcely exercised his mind."
XIII.
HIS MASTERY OF DETAIL.
All this work would be useless if it had not been backed by a mind which had an almost miraculous power both of absorbing and retaining facts and details.
"In each Ministerial department he knows more than the Ministers, and in each bureau he knows as much as the clerks. 'On his table lie reports of the positions of the forces on land and on water; he has furnished the plans of these, and fresh ones are issued every month.' Such is the daily reading he likes best. 'I have reports on positions always at hand: my memory for an ​Alexandrine is not good, but I never forget a syllable of my reports on positions. I shall find them in my room this evening, and I shall not go to bed until I have read them.'"
And the result is that he knows all the positions on land and at sea—the number, size, and quality of his ships in or out of port, the composition and strength of his enemies' armies, every detail of every ship and of every regiment, better than the naval commanders or staff officers themselves. Added to this, he has a marvellous power of remembering topographical facts; he can revive at will an inner picture of every detail at any distance of time. And this extraordinary result follows:
"His calculation of distance, marches, and manœuvres is so rigid a mathematical operation that, frequently, at a distance of two or four hundred leagues, his military foresight, calculated two or four months ahead, proves correct, almost on the day named, and precisely on the spot designated."
An even more remarkable example occurs when M. de Ségur sends in his report on the coast line. "I have read your reports," he says to M. de Ségur, "and they are exact. Nevertheless, you forgot two cannon at Ostend," and he pointed out the place, "on a road behind the town." "I went out," naturally exclaims M. de Ségur, "overwhelmed with astonishment that among thousands of cannon distributed among ​the mounted batteries or light artillery on the coast, two pieces should not have escaped his observation."
In March, 1800, he punctures a card with a pin, and tells Bourrienne, his secretary, four months before, the place he intends to beat Mélas at San Juliano. "Four months after this I found myself at San Juliano with his portfolio and despatches, and that very evening, at Torre-di-Gafolo, a league off, I wrote the bulletin of the battle under his dictation." Similarly in the campaign against Austria:—
"Order of marches, their duration, places of conveyance or meeting of the columns, attacks in full force, the various movements and mistakes of the enemy, all, in this rapid dictation, was foreseen two months beforehand and at a distance of 200 leagues. . . . The battlefields, the victories, and even the very days on which we were to enter Munich and Vienna were then announced, and written down as it all turned out. . . . Daru saw these oracles, fulfilled on the designated days up to our entry into Munich; if there were any differences of time and not of results between Munich and Vienna, they were all in our favour. . . . On returning from the camp at Bologna, Napoleon encounters a squad of soldiers who had got lost, asks what regiment they belong to, calculates the day they left, the road they took, what distance they should have marched, and then tells ​them: 'You will find your battalion at such a halting-place.' At this time the army numbered 200,000 men."
And here is another passage, which also gives an idea of the immense and practical grasp of this intense mind:
"'There is nothing relating to warfare that I cannot make myself. If nobody knows how to make gunpowder, I do. I can construct gun-carriages. If cannon must be cast, I will see that it is done properly. If tactical details must be taught, I will teach them.' Hence his competency at the outset—general in the artillery, major-general, diplomatist, financier, and administrator, all at once and in every direction. Thanks to his fecund apprenticeship, beginning with the Consulate, he shows Cabinet clerks and veteran Ministers who send in their reports to him what to do. 'I am a better administrator than they are: when one has been obliged to rack his brains to find out how to feed, maintain, control, and animate with the same spirit and will two or three hundred thousand men, a long distance from their country, one soon gets at the secrets of administration.' He takes in at a glance every part of the human machine. He fashions and manipulates each in its proper place and function; the generators of power, the organs of its transmission, the extra working gear, the composite action, the speed which ensues, their final result, ​the complete effect, the net product; never is he content with a superficial inspection; he penetrates into obscure corners and to the lowest depths, 'through the technical precision of his questions,' with the lucidity of a specialist."
XIV.
HIS GRASP OF CHARACTER.
An equally astonishing power of his is that of penetrating into the minds of men; he is, Taine says, "as great a psychologist as he is an accomplished strategist." "In fact, no one has surpassed him in the art of defining the various states and impulses of one or of many minds, either prolonged or for the time being, which impel or restrain men in general, or this or that individual in particular; what springs of action may be touched, and the kind and degree of pressure that may be applied to them. The central faculty rules all the others, and in the art of mastering man his genius is found supreme."
"Accordingly at the Council of State, while the others, either legislators or administrators, adduce abstractions, Articles of the Code, and precedents, he looks into natures as they are—the Frenchman's, the Italian's, the German's; that of the peasant, the workman, the noble, the returned émigré, the soldier, the officer, and the functionary—everywhere at the individual man as he is, the ​man who ploughs, manufactures, fights, marries, generates, toils, enjoys himself, and dies."
Taine dwells on the wonderful power, which, too, Napoleon derives from his Italian blood, of describing his thoughts. "His words," says Taine, "caught on the wing, and at the moment," are "vibrating and teeming with illustration and imagery." Here is a sample: "Adultery is no phenomenon; it is common enough—une affaire de canapé. . . . There should be some curb on women who commit adultery for trinkets, sentiment, Apollo and the Muses, etc."
Here are several others:
"'You Frenchmen are not in earnest about anything, except, perhaps, equality; and even this you would gladly give up, if you were sure of yourself being the first. . . . The hope of advancement in this world should be cherished by everybody. . . . Keep your vanity always alive. The severity of the Republican Government would have worried you to death. What started the revolution? Vanity! What will end it? Vanity again. Liberty is merely a pretext. Liberty is the craving of a class small and privileged by nature, with faculties superior to the common run of men; this class may, therefore, be put under restraint with impunity; equality, on the contrary, catches the multitude.' 'What do I care for the opinions and cackle of the drawing-room; I never ​heed it. I pay attention only to what rude peasants say.'"
"His estimates," says Taine, "of certain situations are masterpieces of picturesque conciseness."
"'Why did I stop and sign the preliminaries of Leoben? Because I was playing Vingt-et-un and was satisfied with twenty.' His insight into character is that of the most sagacious critic. 'The "Mahomet" of Voltaire is neither a prophet nor an Arab, only an impostor graduated out of the École Polytechnique.' 'Madame de Genlis tries to define virtue as if she were the discoverer of it.' (Of Madame de Staël), 'This woman teaches people to think who never took to it or have forgotten how.' (Of Châteaubriand, one of whose relations had just been shot), 'He will write a few pathetic pages and read them aloud in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; pretty women will shed tears, and that will console him.' (Of the Abbé Delille), 'He is wit in its dotage.' (Of Pasquier and Molé), 'I make the most of one, and made the other.'"
It is partly this power of grasping the thoughts and intentions of others which helps to make him such a general. Again and again the point must be insisted upon—that his victories were not happy accidents, but the final link in a long chain of reflection, work, knowledge, and preparation. All this is summed up in a picturesque phrase by Napoleon himself:—
​"'When I plan a battle,' said he to Roederer, 'no man is more pusillanimous than I am. I magnify to myself all the dangers and all the evils that are possible under the circumstances. I am in a state of agitation that is really painful. But this does not prevent me from appearing quite composed to people around me; I am like a woman giving birth to a child.'"
It is also a necessary part of this system that he should be always looking ahead, and this aspect of his character is also set forth with picturesqueness by himself:
"Passionately, in the throes of creation, he is thus absorbed with his coming greatness; he already anticipates and enjoys living in his imaginary edifice. 'General,' said Madame de Clermont-Tonnerre to him one day, 'you are building behind a scaffolding which you will take down when you have done with it.' 'Yes, madame, that's it,' replied Bonaparte; 'you are right, I'm always living two years in advance.' His response came with 'incredible vivacity,' as if it were the result of a sudden inspiration, that of a soul stirred in its innermost core."
XV.
WHAT HIS MEMORY HELD.
And then Taine proceeds to give some notion of all that was contained in this single brain, and, powerful as the summing-up is, it will yet be seen ​that it necessarily falls short of all that Napoleon had to know and remember.
"He has mentally within him three principal atlases, always at hand, each composed of 'about twenty note-books,' each distinct, and each regularly posted up. The first one is military, forming a vast collection of topographical charts as minute as those of an état-major, with detailed plans of every stronghold, also specific indications of the local distribution of all forces on sea and on land—crews, regiments, batteries, arsenals, storehouses, present and future resources in supplies of men, horses, vehicles, arms, ammunition, food, and clothing. The second, which is civil, resembles the heavy, thick volumes published every year, in which we now read the state of the Budget, and comprehend, first, the innumerable items of ordinary and extraordinary receipt and expenditure, internal taxes, foreign contributions, the products of the domains in France and out of France, the fiscal services, pensions, public works, and the rest; next, all administrative statistics, the hierarchy of functions and of functionaries, Senators, Deputies, Ministers, Prefects, Bishops, Professors, Judges, and those under their orders, where each of these resides, with his rank, jurisdiction, and salary. The third is a vast biographical and moral dictionary, in which, as in the pigeonholes of the Chef de Police, each notable personage and local group, each professional or social body, and even each population, had a label, along with ​a brief note on its situation and antecedents, and therefore its demonstrated character, eventual disposition, and probable conduct. Each label, or strip of paper, holds a summing-up; all these partial summaries, methodically classified, terminate in totals, and the totals of the three atlases combined together thus furnish their possessor with an estimate of his disposable forces. Now, in 1809, however full these atlases, they are clearly imprinted on Napoleon's mind; he knows not only the total and the partial summaries, but also the slightest details; he reads them readily and at every hour; he comprehends in a mass, and in all particulars, the various nations he governs directly or through some one else; that is to say, sixty million men, the different countries he has conquered or overrun, consisting of seventy thousand square miles; at first France increased by the addition of Belgium and Piedmont; next Spain, from which he is just returned, and where he has placed his brother Joseph; Southern Italy, where, after Joseph, he has placed Murat; Central Italy, where he occupies Rome; Northern Italy, where Eugène is his delegate; Dalmatia and Istria, which he has joined to his empire; Austria, which he invades for the second time; the Confederation of the Rhine, which he has made and which he directs; Westphalia and Holland, where his brothers are only his lieutenants; Prussia, which he has subdued and mutilated, and which he ​oppresses, and the strongholds of which he still retains. Add to this a last mental tableau, representing the Northern Seas, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean, all the fleets of the Continent, at sea and in port, from Dantzic to Flessingen and Bayonne, from Cadiz to Toulon and Gaëta, from Tarentum to Venice, Corfu, and Constantinople."
And, finally, there is this fact to be considered: that all this did not only extend over a small portion of his lifetime. General Grant worked prodigiously, and had an extraordinarily close and intimate knowledge of all the details of his army; but then the Civil War of America lasted for but four years. But think of the duration of Napoleon's career―think how many there were of those days and nights packed full of feverish, incessant, wild work.
"The quantity of facts he is able to retain and store away, the quantity of ideas he elaborates and produces, seems to surpass human capacity, and this insatiable, inexhaustible, immoveable brain thus keeps on working uninterruptedly for thirty years."
XVI.
HIS IMAGINATIVENESS.
Now I take him on another side of his character―the side which ultimately led to his ruin―that is, his imaginativeness. He has accomplished a ​tremendous amount; he has undertaken even more; but "whatever he may have undertaken is far surpassed by what he has imagined." For, great as was his practical power, "his poetical faculty is stronger." This poetical faculty it is which ultimately saved his enemies, for "it is too vigorous for a statesman"; "its grandeur is exaggerated into enormity, and its enormity degenerates into madness." And then Taine reproduces some of his wild dreamings, to which he gave vent when the moment of expansion was on him, and his brilliant Italian vocabulary was at the service of his excited imagination; as, for instance―he is talking to Bourrienne:
"'Europe is a molehill; never have there been great empires and great revolutions except in the Orient with its 600,000,000 of men.' The following year, at St. Jean d'Acre, on the eve of the last assault, he added: 'If I succeed, I shall find in the town the pacha's treasure and arms for 300,000 men. I stir up, and arm all Syria. . . . I march on to Damascus and Aleppo; as I advance in the country my army will be increased by the discontented. I proclaim to the people the abolition of slavery, and of the tyrannical government of the pachas. I reach Constantinople with armed masses. I overthrow the Turkish empire; I found in the East a new and grand empire, which fixes my place with posterity, and perhaps I return to Paris by the way of Adrianople, ​or by Vienna, after having annihilated the House of Austria.'"
XVII.
DREAMS OF A NEW RELIGION.
All this is before he has become Consul and Emperor; but even after he had reached the pinnacle of power the dream recurs again and again. "Since two hundred years," he said at Mayence, in 1804, "there is nothing more to do in Europe; it is only in the East that things can be carried out on a grand scale." And then, giving way to that extraordinary imagination of his, he says:
"'I created a religion; I saw myself on the road to Asia mounted on an elephant, with a turban on my head, and in my hand a new Koran, which I composed to suit myself.'"
This idea of founding a religion, and so exercising the same tyrannous influence on the future generations of men, as that which he exercised over his own generation, is a dream that constantly haunts him. Paris is to be the centre of the world. "I mean that every king shall build a grand palace in Paris for his own use. On the coronation of the Emperor of the French these kings will come and occupy it; they will grace this imposing ceremony with their presence, and honour it with their salutations." This is grandiose enough, but it is not all; the ​future of the soul still remains; and as he cannot make a new Eastern Empire and a new Koran, he must get at Europe through the Pope. The Pope must give up Rome and come to live in Paris permanently. And then the Pope will rule the conscience of the world, and Napoleon will rule the Pope. "Paris would become the capital of the Christian world, and I would have governed the religious world as well as the political world."
I put down all this not merely to the insatiable love of power, but to profound, unfathomable contempt for mankind, which made it delightful to the imagination of Napoleon to think of their grovelling in their folly before him long after he had gone. Here is a further example of this spirit:
"'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 to the conquerors of antiquity! Take Alexander! After having conquered Asia, and proclaimed himself to the people 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, there is not an old beldame that would not hoot at me ​as I walked along the streets. People nowadays know too much. Nothing is left to do.'"
And this imagination and poetic power are to be found in his private as well as his public concerns. For instance, he is superstitious: "He was disposed to accept the marvellous, presentiments, and even certain mysterious communications between human beings."
"I have seen him," writes Madame de Rémusat, "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."
XVIII.
HIS COURT.
I turn now to another and a different side of his character. It is part of his intense love of power that everybody about him must be perfectly dependent on him. "He considered himself," said an Italian diplomatist who had studied him for many years, "an isolated being in the world, made to govern and direct all minds as he pleased." By-and-by, I shall describe how he carried out this in the case of men; for the moment, I shall deal with the exercise of this passion in reference to women.
There had been despots in France before Napoleon; for instance, the sway of Louis XIV. was absolute; but then in him, as in most monarchs, there were two sides. As monarch and man of business, he was one thing; but when he was engaged in social duties, he was head of his house; "he welcomed visitors, entertained his guests, and that his guests should not be automatons, he tried to put them at their ease." He did not, above all things, "persistently, and from morning to night, maintain a despotic attitude;" quite the reverse:
"Polite to everybody, always affable with men and sometimes gracious, always courteous with women, and sometimes gallant, carefully avoiding ​brusqueness, ostentation, and sarcasm, 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 were his ways in the drawing-room. . . . Owing to education and tradition he had consideration for others, at least for the people around him, his courtiers being his guests without ceasing to be his subjects."
But Napoleon will have none of this. He borrows from the old Court "its rigid discipline, and its pompous parade;" but that is all.
"'The ceremonial system,' says an eye-witness, 'was carried out as if it had been regulated by tap of drum. Everything was done, in a certain sense, in double-quick time.'
". . . This air of precipitation, this instant 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 transmit orders.'"
And then comes this truly odious picture of Napoleon's Court:
"'Through calculation as well as from taste he never relaxes his state'; hence 'a mute, ​frigid Court . . . more dismal than dignified; every countenance wearing an expression of uneasiness . . . a silence both dull and constrained.' At Fontainebleau, 'amidst splendours and pleasures,' there is no real enjoyment or satisfaction, not even to himself. 'I pity you,' said M. de Talleyrand to M. de Rémusat; 'you have to amuse the unamuseable.' At the theatre he is abstracted or yawns. Applause is interdicted; 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 he never wanted anybody else to be so. He was afraid of the slightest approach to familiarity, and inspired every one with the fear of saying something offensive of his neighbour before witnesses. . . . During the quadrille he moves around amongst the row of ladies, addressing them with trifling or disagreeable remarks,' and never does he accost them otherwise than 'awkwardly and as if ill at ease.' At bottom he distrusts, and is ill-disposed towards them. It is because 'the power they have acquired in society seems to him an intolerable usurpation.'"
And if any picture could be more odious than this, here is another more odious still:
XIX.
HIS RUDENESS.
Napoleon's awkwardness with women was the theme of everybody who knew him intimately, and observed him closely. One of these says:
"It would be difficult to imagine any one more awkward than Napoleon in a drawing-room. . . . 'I never heard a harsher voice, or one so inflexible. When he smiled it was only with the mouth and a portion of the cheeks; the brow and eyes remained immovably sombre. . . . This combination of gaiety and seriousness, had something in it terrible and frightful.' On one occasion, at St. Cloud, Varnhagen heard him exclaim over and over again twenty times before a group of ladies, 'How hot!'"
This awkwardness of men of action when with women is not at all uncommon. There are examples even in our own day. "Small talk" is really a difficulty with men whose whole being is intent on great enterprises and on the ruling of men. Napoleon, living always two years ahead of himself—with all these images and recollections of terrible battle-fields, great combinations, world-wide empire—found it impossible to attune his mind to the trifles of the hour.
His restless, vivid, and realistic mind seems, indeed, always under an unpleasant restraint in ​civilian surroundings. A good deal of this is doubtless due to the fact that all his training had been in the guard-room and at mess, and many of his acts and expressions have the fine, full-flavoured tone of the soldier. Hence his dislike to all the conventions of society. Says Taine:
"It is because good taste is the highest attainment of civilisation, the innermost vestment which drapes human nudity, which best fits the person, the last garment retained after the others have been cast off, and whose delicate tissue continues to hamper Napoleon: he throws it off instinctively, because it interferes with his natural utterance, with the uncurbed, dominating, savage ways of the conqueror who knocks down his adversary and treats him as he pleases."
Napoleon himself was not slow to avow with characteristic frankness his feelings on the subject.
"'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 brutality, allows men to associate together without clashing.' He does not comprehend it, and he repudiates it. 'I have little liking,' he says, 'for that vague, levelling word politeness, which you people fling out whenever you have a chance. It is an invention of fools who want to surpass 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.'"
XX.
HIS AGGRESSIVENESS.
His hatred for all the conventions of society comes out in his intercourse with other nations and other monarchs. His diplomacy was as different from that of all other times and men as anything else. His everlasting desire to command is unchecked for a moment by good feeling, good taste, any of the finer sensibilities which influence the ordinary man.
"His attitude, even at pacific interviews, remains aggressive, and militant; purposely or involuntarily he raises his hand, and the blow is felt to be coming, while, in the meantime, he insults. In his correspondence with Sovereigns, or in his official proclamations, in his deliberations with Ambassadors, and even at public audiences, he provokes, threatens, and defies; he treats his adversary with a lofty air, insults him often to his face, and loads him with the most disgraceful imputations; he divulges the secrets of his life in private, of his study, and of his bed; he defames ​or calumniates his Minister, his Court, and his wife; he purposely stabs people 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."
Instance after instance can be given of this, as for instance:
"After the battle of Jena, 9th, 17th, 18th, and 19th, there is, in the bulletins, comparison of the Queen of Prussia with Lady Hamilton, open and repeated insinuations, imputing to her an intrigue with the Emperor Alexander. 'Everybody admits that the Queen of Prussia is the author of the evils that the Prussian nation suffers. This is heard everywhere. How changed she is since that fatal interview with the Emperor Alexander. . . . The portrait of the Emperor Alexander, presented to her by the Prince, was found in the apartment of the Queen at Potsdam.'"
XXI.
HIS TREATMENT OF HIS MINISTERS.
In Taine's picture, Napoleon is so overbearing towards his Ministers, that it seems incredible that he could have got any man to serve him―except ​that the love of power and office, as well as of money, will always give to rulers plenty of tools to assume and even to love the badge of servitude.
In his dealings with his Ministers, Napoleon proceeds on a plan―a plan which was impossible to any one except a man of hard and ungenerous nature. "His leading general principle," says Taine, "which he applies in every way, in great things as in small ones, is that a man's zeal depends on his anxiety."
"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 has had such success, he will certainly do a good deal of scolding!"' . . . In fact, he has scarcely arrived when he gives a rude and vigorous turn of the screw, and then, 'satisfied at having excited terror all round, he appears to have forgotten what has passed, and resumes the usual tenor of his life.'"
The experience of M. de Rémusat, Prefect of ​the Palace, and one of his most devoted servants, is the same.
"When the Prefect has arranged 'one of those magnificent fêtes in which all the arts minister to his enjoyment,' economically, correctly, with splendour and success, Madame never asks her husband if the Emperor is satisfied, but whether he has scolded more or less."
XXII.
THE DEPENDENCE OF THE MARSHALS.
As Napoleon trusts to no principle in his Ministers but fear and self-interest, he takes elaborate precautions against their ever becoming independent of him. In this respect he shows a delight in the degradation of human nature that sometimes almost appals one―it is as though the hideous sneer of Mephistopheles were transferred from the pages of the poet to the more moving drama of human life. Take, for instance, Napoleon's treatment of his Marshals. He claimed to "be sole master, making or marring reputations" according to his personal requirements.
"Too brilliant a soldier would become too important; a subordinate would never be tempted to be less submissive. To this end he plans 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 from a bulletin of an action that he was never in, and of a speech that he never made."
When the General complains, he is given the right to get rich by pillage, or has a title bestowed upon him. But even yet he does not feel the grasp of the iron hand of Napoleon removed.
"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 creatures. 'Some people there,' said he, 'I have made independent, but I know when to lay my hand upon them and keep them from being ungrateful.' In truth, if he has endowed them magnificently, it is with domains assigned to them in conquered countries, which ensures 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, he holds them in a leash. 'We have seen most of his Marshals, constantly pressed by their creditors, come to him for assistance which he gives as he pleases, or when he finds it for his interest to attach some one to himself.'"
There is an even deeper depth than this:― ​"'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 in 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 favours by arousing anxiety, and he thinks 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 Due d'Enghien, 'it is no great matter; he will serve me all the better.'"
XXIII.
HIS HATRED OF INDEPENDENCE.
It is a necessary part of this horrible system that all Napoleon's Ministers must surrender all their independence of judgment; their one law must be his will and his interest.
"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 favour of the master, which is the case with M. de Rémusat, who is willing to become his spy, reporter, and denunciator for the Faubourg Saint-Germain, but does not offer at Vienna to drag from 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 may say that I do not comprehend you!'"
This Savary was one of the most contemptible and villainous of Napoleon's agents. Napoleon himself said of him: "He is a man who must be constantly corrupted."
"And yet Savary, himself Minister of the Police, executor of most important arrests, head manager of the murder of the Due d'Enghien, and of the ambuscade at Bayonne, counterfeiter of Austrian banknotes for the campaign of 1809, and of Russian banknotes for that of 1812, 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 clockwork, so as to blow up the Bourbons on their return to France. ​'Ah,' he said, giving himself a blow on the forehead, 'it must be admitted that the Emperor is sometimes hard to serve.'"
And the final result is that Napoleon drives from his Court and his Cabinet every man of sense and honour. "Independence of any kind, even eventual and merely possible, puts him out of humour; intellectual or moral superiority is of this order, and he gradually gets rid of it."
"Towards the last 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, 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 men active scribes, mute executioners, docile and special hands, no honest and free 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.'"
And the result is the deadening in him of all real human feeling.
"Therefore, outside of explosions of nervous sensibility, 'he has no consideration for men—other than that of a foreman for his workmen,' 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, enters his room one day with a downcast look, and his eyes filled with tears. 'What is 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.'"
XXIV.
HIS ESTIMATE OF HUMANITY.
Surrounded by such creatures, it is not unnatural that the original and instinctive cynicism of Napoleon's nature should be aggravated. In the end, all faith in anything but the base and the selfish in human nature disappeared. His scepticism was not affected as it often is-it was genuine conviction. Nay more, it was almost a fanatical faith-a faith that was one of the chief causes which led to his final destruction. Everybody who knew him agrees in describing this disbelief in anything but the base in man as a fixed idea.
"'His opinions on men,' writes M. de Metternich, 'centred on one idea, which, unfortunately, with 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 interests.' 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 his vanity, provide him with an extreme and false opinion of himself and his fellow-men, and you can start him off, head downwards, wherever you please."
This theory of Napoleon sometimes finds difficulties in its way. There, for instance, are Lafayette and others, who have given proof of disinterestedness, loyalty, and zeal for the public good. But Napoleon is neither dismayed nor converted; whenever he meets such a man he tells him to his face that he regards him either as a conscious or a self-deceived impostor.
"'General Dumas,' says he abruptly to Mathieu Dumas, 'you were one of the imbeciles who believed in liberty?' 'Yes, sire, 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 are 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 honours enough; but he is not content. He wants to be a prince like Murat or Bernadotte. He would risk being shot to-morrow to be a prince. That is the incentive of Frenchmen.' 'I never heard him,' said Madame de Rémusat, 'express any admiration or comprehension of a noble action.' 'His means,' says the same writer, 'for governing men were all derived from those which tend to debase them. . . . He tolerated virtue only when he could cover it with ridicule.'"
His disbelief in anything but the base was, as I have said, one of the causes of his downfall, for it led to some of his grossest miscalculations; or, as Taine well puts it:—
XXV.
HIS JUDGMENTS ON HIMSELF.
His miscalculation arises from another cause—the excessive imagination, which so often led astray that cold, calculating, splendid mind. "The Emperor," said M. de Pradt, that keen observer of him, whom I have often quoted already, "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."
A curious thing about him is that occasionally he has glimpses of his own faults and of the verdict which will be passed upon him. Take, for instance, his judgment upon his treatment of his subordinates:
"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, Ouf!'" ​ And here is another self-condemnation:
"On reaching the Isle of Poplars, the First Consul stopped at Rousseau's grave and said: 'It would have been better for the repose of France if that man had never existed!' 'And why, citizen Consul?' 'He is the man who made the French Revolution.' 'It seems to me that you need not complain of the French Revolution.' 'Well, the future must decide whether it would not have been better for the repose of the whole world if neither myself nor Rousseau had ever lived,' He then resumed his promenade in a reverie."
And from the outset of his career, he boldly proclaims his selfish purposes.
"'Do you suppose,' says he to them, after the preliminaries of Leoben, 'that it is to aggrandise Directory lawyers, such as the Carnots, and the Barras, that 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 with which the French are infatuated, 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 cockade and ​it will see who is master. The nation needs a chief, one who is famous through his exploits, and not theories of Government, phrases, and speeches by ideologists, which Frenchmen do not comprehend.'"
And when he is recommended to make peace and end the war in Italy, he says:
"'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 the 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.'"
XXVI.
THE CAUSES OF HIS FALL.
Finally, his desire to rule the whole world brings Napoleon to his fall. He has been such a scourge to humanity that humanity rises up in revolt against him. He has taken Spanish, Italian, Austrian, Prussian, Swiss, Bavarian, Saxon, Dutch, as well as French lives; the nations hate him as much as their monarchs.
XXVII.
THE INSTABILITY OF HIS RULE.
And not only is Europe united against him, but his own country at last ceases to have any faith in him. Those who are immediately around him are soonest convinced that his day must come to an end, and that with such a despotism as his, abyssmal ruin is the foredoomed and inevitable result. It shows a strange lack somewhere in Napoleon's character and mind that he was always blind to consequences, which the commonest and the dullest man around him could see. I suppose that this is one of the penalties which men of inflexible and resistless wills have to pay for their great powers—the same fearlessness, the same tenacity, the same determination to succeed which make them, are also the very qualities which finally mar them. We have seen in Irish political history a remarkable and tragic example, in our own time, of how the same great qualities, which commanded success against gigantic odds, brought failure when the power to calculate the odds had been submerged by the inflexible will, imperious temper, and deadly and unyielding tenacity of purpose.
All those near Napoleon or at the centre of affairs, like Metternich, saw, as I have just said, that the fabric raised by him had not a single element of durability.
​"M. de Metternich," says Taine, "by way of a political summing up, expresses the following general opinion: 'It is remarkable that Napoleon, who is constantly disturbing and modifying the relations of all Europe, has not yet taken a single step towards ensuring the maintenance of his successors.'"
As time went on this opinion of Metternich is confirmed, and gradually it spreads to Napoleon's entourage.
The diplomat adds, in 1809: "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 whilom 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 of Europe."
In 1811, "Everybody is convinced 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 subjects begin to comprehend that his dominion is merely temporary, 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 Decres to Marmont, 'com​pletely crazy. He will ruin us all, numerous as we are, and all will end in some frightful catastrophe.'"
And the curious fact is that even Napoleon himself takes, "in lucid moments," as Taine put it, "the same view."
"'It will last as long as I do. After me, however, my son may deem himself fortunate if he has 40,000f. a year.' How often at this time (1811) was he heard to foretell that the weight of his Empire would crush his heir. 'Poor child,' said he, looking at the King of Rome, 'what an entanglement I shall leave you.'"
XXVIII.
HIS OBSTINATE EGOTISM.
But it was only in lucid moments that Napoleon was able to see this clearly; as a rule he was the slave of his imagination; and no disaster, no combination of Kings, no superiority of forces, could abate his self-confidence or curtail his schemes. Almost to the last he persisted in believing that everything would end as he desired.
And, in the meantime, how is it with France? At last, even the inexhaustible courage and patience of the people are coming to an end. But Napoleon persists. The more the people groan, the more ​of them are killed, the heavier becomes his hand, the greater the exactions, the more unsparing the conscription. Between January and October in the year 1813, 800,000 men had been raised. Other levies followed, and altogether 1,300,000 men were summoned in one year. "Never," says a writer of the time, "has any nation been thus asked to let itself be voluntarily led to the slaughter-house." Young men were torn from their wives the day after marriage, from the bedside of a wife in her confinement, from a dying father or sick child. "Some looked so feeble that they seemed dying;" and one-half of them died in the campaign of 1814. Self-mutilation became common; desertion still commoner. It had taken a long time; but Napoleon had at length exhausted France.
But Napoleon held out still; uncowed, unmoved by these awful catastrophes.
"'What do they want of me?' said he to M. de Metternich. 'Do they want me to dishonour myself? Never! I can die, but never will yield an inch of territory! Your sovereigns born on 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 dominion will not survive the day when I shall have ceased to be strong and, consequently, feared.' In fact, 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.' . . .
"'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 a battle-field, and a man like me does not care a —— for the lives of a million men.'"
Nor did he, for here is the final record of his rule of France:
"Between 1804 and 1815 he has had slaughtered 1,700,000 Frenchmen, born within the boundaries of ancient France, to which must be added, probably, 2,000,000 of men born outside 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 Saxony, of the left bank of the Rhine, and of Belgium, despoiled of the north-east angle by which it ​completed its boundaries, fortified its most vulnerable point, and, to use the words of Vauban, 'made its field square,' separated from 4,000,000 of 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 neighbours, suspected by all Europe, and lastingly surrounded by a threatening circle of distrust and rancour."