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The Modern Regime, Volume 1

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Title: The Modern Regime, Volume 1

Author: Hippolyte Taine

Annotator: Svend Rom

Translator: John Durand


        
Release date: June 22, 2008 [eBook #2581]
                Most recently updated: July 14, 2008

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2581

Credits: Produced by Svend Rom and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MODERN REGIME, VOLUME 1 ***




Produced by Svend Rom





THE ORIGINS OF CONTEMPORARY FRANCE, VOLUME 5

THE MODERN REGIME, VOLUME 1 [NAPOLEON]

by Hippolyte A. Taine



Contents:

PREFACE

BOOK FIRST. Napoleon Bonaparte.

 Chapter I. Historical Importance of his Character and Genius.

 Chapter II. His Ideas, Passions and Intelligence.


BOOK SECOND. Formation and Character of the New State.

 Chapter I. The Institution of Government.

 Chapter II. Use and Abuse of Government Services.

 Chapter III. The New Government Organization.


BOOK THIRD. Object and Merits of the System.

 Chapter I. Recovery of Social Order.

 Chapter II. Taxation and Conscription.

 Chapter III. Ambition and Self-esteem.


BOOK FOURTH. Defect and Effects of the System.

 Chapter I. Local Society.

 Chapter II. Local society since 1830.


*****




PREFACE

The following third and last part of the Origins of Contemporary France
is to consist of two volumes. After the present volume, the second is
to treat of the Church, the School and the Family, describe the modern
milieu and note the facilities and obstacles which a society like our
own encounters in this new milieu: here, the past and the present meet,
and the work already done is continued by the work which is going on
under our eyes.--The undertaking is hazardous and more difficult than
with the two preceding parts. For the Ancient Régime and the Revolution
are henceforth complete and finished periods; we have seen the end
of both and are thus able to comprehend their entire course. On the
contrary, the end of the ulterior period is still wanting; the great
institutions which date from the Consulate and the Empire, either
consolidation or dissolution, have not yet reached their historic term:
since 1800, the social order of things, notwithstanding eight changes
of political form, has remained almost intact. Our children or
grandchildren will know whether it will finally succeed or miscarry;
witnesses of the denouement, they will have fuller light by which to
judge of the entire drama. Thus far four acts only have been played;
of the fifth act, we have simply a presentiment.--On the other hand, by
dint of living under this social system, we have become accustomed to
it; it no longer excites our wonder; however artificial it may be
it seems to us natural. We can scarcely conceive of another that is
healthier; and what is much worse, it is repugnant to us to do so. For,
such a conception would soon lead to comparisons and hence to a judgment
and, on many points, to an unfavorable judgment, one which would be a
censure, not only of our institutions but of ourselves. The machine
of the year VIII,[1101] applied to us for three generations, has
permanently shaped and fixed us as we are, for better or for worse. If,
for a century, it sustains us, it represses us for a century. We
have contracted the infirmities it imports--stoppage of development,
instability of internal balance, disorders of the intellect and of
the will, fixed ideas and ideas that are false. These ideas are ours;
therefore we hold on to them, or, rather, they have taken hold of us.
To get rid of them, to impose the necessary recoil on our mind, to
transport us to a distance and place us at a critical point of view,
where we can study ourselves, our ideas and our institutions as
scientific objects, requires a great effort on our part, many
precautions, and long reflection.--Hence, the delays of this study; the
reader will pardon them on considering that an ordinary opinion, caught
on the wing, on such a subject, does not suffice. In any event, when one
presents an opinion on such a subject one is bound to believe it. I
can believe in my own only when it has become precise and seems to me
proven.

Menthon Saint-Bernard, September, 1890.


*****




BOOK FIRST. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.




CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE OF HIS CHARACTER AND GENIUS.

If you want to comprehend a building, you have to imagine the
circumstances, I mean the difficulties and the means, the kind and
quality of its available materials, the moment, the opportunity, and
the urgency of the demand for it. But, still more important, we must
consider the genius and taste of the architect, especially whether he
is the proprietor, whether he built it to live in himself, and, once
installed in it, whether he took pains to adapt it to how own way of
living, to his own necessities, to his own use.--Such is the social
edifice erected by Napoleon Bonaparte, its architect, proprietor, and
principal occupant from 1799 to 1814. It is he who has made modern
France; never was an individual character so profoundly stamped on any
collective work, so that, to comprehend the work, we must first study
the character of the Man.[1102]




I. Napoleon's Past and Personality.

     He is of another race and another century.--Origin of his
     paternal family.--Transplanted to Corsica.--His maternal
     family.--Laetitia Ramolino.--Persistence of Corsican
     souvenirs in Napoleon's mind.--His youthful sentiments
     regarding Corsica and France.--Indications found in his
     early compositions and in his style.--Current monarchical or
     democratic ideas have no hold on him.--His impressions of
     the 20th of June and 10th of August after the 31st of May.
     --His associations with Robespierre and Barras without
     committing himself.--His sentiments and the side he takes
     Vendémiaire 13th.--The great Condottière.--His character and
     conduct in Italy.--Description of him morally and physically
     in 1798.--The early and sudden ascendancy which he exerts.
     Analogous in spirit and character to his Italian ancestors
     of the XVth century.

Disproportionate in all things, but, stranger still, he is not only
out of the common run, but there is no standard of measurement for him;
through his temperament, instincts, faculties, imagination, passions,
and moral constitution he seems cast in a special mould, composed of
another metal than that which enters into the composition of his fellows
and contemporaries. Evidently he is not a Frenchman, nor a man of the
eighteenth century; he belongs to another race and another epoch.[1103]
We detect in him, at the first glance, the foreigner, the Italian,[1104]
and something more, apart and beyond these, surpassing all similitude
or analogy.-Italian he was through blood and lineage; first, through
his paternal family, which is Tuscan,[1105] and which we can follow
down from the twelfth century, at Florence, then at San Miniato; next
at Sarzana, a small, backward, remote town in the state of Genoa, where,
from father to son, it vegetates obscurely in provincial isolation,
through a long line of notaries and municipal syndics. "My origin,"
says Napoleon himself,[1106] "has made all Italians regard me as a
compatriot.... When the question of the marriage of my sister Pauline
with Prince Borghése came up there was but one voice in Rome and in
Tuscany, in that family, and with all its connections: 'It will
do,' said all of them, 'it's amongst ourselves, it is one of our own
families...'" When the Pope later hesitated about coming to Paris to
crown Napoleon, "the Italian party in the Conclave prevailed against
the Austrian party by supporting political arguments with the following
slight tribute to national amour propre: 'After all we are imposing
an Italian family on the barbarians, to govern them. We are revenging
ourselves on the Gauls.'" Significant words, which will one day throw
light upon the depths of the Italian nature, the eldest daughter of
modern civilization, imbued with her right of primogeniture, persisting
in her grudge against the transalpines, the rancorous inheritor of Roman
pride and of antique patriotism.[1107]

From Sarzana, a Bonaparte emigrates to Corsica, where he establishes
himself and lives after 1529. The following year Florence is taken and
subjugated for good. Henceforth, in Tuscany, under Alexander de Medici,
then under Cosmo I. and his successors, in all Italy under Spanish rule,
municipal independence, private feuds, the great exploits of political
adventures and successful usurpations, the system of ephemeral
principalities, based on force and fraud, all give way to permanent
repression, monarchical discipline, external order, and a certain
species of public tranquility. Thus, just at the time when the energy
and ambition, the vigorous and free sap of the Middle Ages begins to
run down and then dry up in the shriveled trunk,[1108] a small detached
branch takes root in an island, not less Italian but almost barbarous,
amidst institutions, customs, and passions belonging to the primitive
medieval epoch,[1109] and in a social atmosphere sufficiently rude for
the maintenance of all its vigor and harshness.--Grafted, moreover, by
frequent marriages, on the wild stock of the island, Napoleon, on the
maternal side, through his grandmother and mother, is wholly indigenous.
His grandmother, a Pietra-Santa, belonged to Sarténe,[1110] a Corsican
canton par excellence where, in 1800, hereditary vendettas still
maintained the system of the eleventh century; where the permanent
strife of inimical families was suspended only by truces; where, in many
villages, nobody stirred out of doors except in armed bodies, and
where the houses were crenellated like fortresses. His mother, Laetitia
Ramolini, from whom, in character and in will, he derived much more than
from his father,[1111] is a primitive soul on which Civilization
has taken no hold. She is simple, all of a piece, unsuited to the
refinements, charms, and graces of a worldly life; indifferent to
comforts, without literary culture, as parsimonious as any peasant
woman, but as energetic as the leader of a band. She is powerful,
physically and spiritually, accustomed to danger, ready in desperate
resolutions. She is, in short, a "rural Cornelia," who conceived and
gave birth to her son amidst the risks of battle and of defeat, in the
thickest of the French invasion, amidst mountain rides on horseback,
nocturnal surprises, and volleys of musketry.[1112]

"Losses, privations, and fatigue," says Napoleon, "she endured all and
braved all. Hers was a man's head on a woman's shoulders."

Thus fashioned and brought into the world, he felt that, from first to
the last, he was of his people and country.

"Everything was better there," said he, at Saint Helena,[1113] "even the
very smell of the soil, which he could have detected with his eyes shut;
nowhere had he found the same thing. He imagined himself there again
in early infancy, and lived over again the days of his youth, amidst
precipices, traversing lofty peaks, deep valleys, and narrow defiles,
enjoying the honors and pleasures of hospitality, "treated everywhere
as a brother and compatriot," without any accident or insult ever
suggesting to him that his confidence was not well grounded." At
Bocognano,[1114] where his mother, pregnant with him, had taken
refuge, "where hatred and vengeance extended to the seventh degree of
relationship, and where the dowry of a young girl was estimated by the
number of her Cousins, I was feasted and made welcome, and everybody
would have died for me." Forced to become a Frenchman, transplanted
to France, educated at the expense of the king in a French school, he
became rigid in his insular patriotism, and loudly extolled Paoli, the
liberator, against whom his relations had declared themselves. "Paoli,"
said he, at the dinner table,[1115]" was a great man. He loved his
country. My father was his adjutant, and never will I forgive him
for having aided in the union of Corsica with France. He should have
followed her fortunes and have succumbed only with her." Throughout his
youth he is at heart anti-French, morose, "bitter, liking very few and
very little liked, brooding over resentment," like a vanquished man,
always moody and compelled to work against the grain. At Brienne, he
keeps aloof from his comrades, takes no part in their sports, shuts
himself in the library, and opens himself up only to Bourrienne
in explosions of hatred: "I will do you Frenchmen all the harm I
can!"--"Corsican by nation and character," wrote his professor of
history in the Military Academy, "he will go far if circumstances
favor him."[1116]--Leaving the Academy, and in garrison at Valence and
Auxonne, he remains always hostile, denationalized; his old bitterness
returns, and, addressing his letters to Paoli, he says: "I was born when
our country perished. Thirty thousand Frenchmen vomited on our shores,
drowning the throne of liberty in floods of blood--such was the odious
spectacle on which my eyes first opened! The groans of the dying, the
shrieks of the oppressed, tears of despair, surrounded my cradle from
my birth... I will blacken those who betrayed the common cause with
the brush of infamy.... vile, sordid souls corrupted by gain!"[1117]
A little later, his letter to Buttafuoco, deputy in the Constituent
Assembly and principal agent in the annexation to France, is one long
strain of renewed, concentrated hatred, which, after at first trying
to restrain it within the bounds of cold sarcasm, ends in boiling over,
like red-hot lava, in a torrent of scorching invective.--From the age of
fifteen, at the Academy and afterwards in his regiment, he finds refuge
in imagination in the past of his island;[1118] he recounts its history,
his mind dwells upon it for many years, and he dedicates his work to
Paoli. Unable to get it published, he abridges it, and dedicates the
abridgment to Abbé Raynal, recapitulating in a strained style, with
warm, vibrating sympathy, the annals of his small community, its revolts
and deliverances, its heroic and sanguinary outbreaks, its public
and domestic tragedies, ambuscades, betrayals, revenges, loves,
and murders,--in short, a history similar to that of the Scottish
highlanders, while the style, still more than the sympathies, denotes
the foreigner. Undoubtedly, in this work, as in other youthful writings,
he follows as well as he can the authors in vogue--Rousseau, and
especially Raynal; he gives a schoolboy imitation of their tirades,
their sentimental declamation, and their humanitarian grandiloquence.
But these borrowed clothes, which incommode him, do not fit him;
they are too tight, and the cloth is too fine; they require too much
circumspection in walking; he does not know how to put them on, and they
rip at every seam. Not only has he never learned how to spell, but he
does not know the true meaning, connections, and relations of words,
the propriety or impropriety of phrases, the exact significance
of imagery;[1119] he strides on impetuously athwart a pell-mell of
incongruities, incoherencies, Italianisms, and barbarisms, undoubtedly
stumbling along through awkwardness and inexperience, but also through
excess of ardor and of heat;[1120] his jerking, eruptive thought,
overcharged with passion, indicates the depth and temperature of its
source. Already, at the Academy, the professor of belles-lettres[1121]
notes down that "in the strange and incorrect grandeur of his
amplifications he seems to see granite fused in a volcano." However
original in mind and in sensibility, ill-adapted as he is to the society
around him, different from his comrades, it is clear beforehand that the
current ideas which take such hold on them will obtain no hold on him.

Of the two dominant and opposite ideas which clash with each other,
it might be supposed that he would lean either to one or to the other,
although accepting neither.--Pensioner of the king, who supported him at
Brienne, and afterwards in the Military Academy; who also supported his
sister at Saint-Cyr; who, for twenty years, is the benefactor of his
family; to whom, at this very time, he addresses entreating or grateful
letters over his mother's signature--he does not regard him as his born
general; it does not enter his mind to take sides and draw his sword in
his patron's behalf;' in vain is he a gentleman, to whom, d'Hozier
has certified; reared in a school of noble cadets, he has no noble or
monarchical traditions.[1122]--Poor and tormented by ambition, a reader
of Rousseau, patronized by Raynal, and tacking together sentences of
philosophic fustian about equality, if he speaks the jargon of the day,
it is without any belief in it. The phrases in vogue form a decent,
academical drapery for his ideas, or serve him as a red cap for the
club; he is not bewildered by democratic illusions, and entertains no
other feeling than disgust for the revolution and the sovereignty of
the populace.--At Paris, in April,1792, when the struggle between the
monarchists and the revolutionaries is at its height, he tries to find
"some successful speculation,"[1123] and thinks he will hire and sublet
houses at a profit. On the 20th of June he witnesses, only as a matter
of curiosity, the invasion of the Tuileries, and, on seeing the king at
a window place the red cap on his head, exclaims, so as to be heard,"
Che Caglione!" Immediately after this: "How could they let that rabble
enter! Mow down four or five hundred of them with cannons and the rest
would run away." On August 10, when the tocsin sounds, 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.[1124] Finally, the chateau is forced and he
strolls through the Tuileries, looks in at the neighboring cafés, and
that is all: he is not disposed to take sides, he has no Jacobin or
royalist inclination. His features, even, are so calm "as to provoke
many hostile and distrustful stares, as someone who is unknown and
suspicious."--Similarly, after the 31st of May and the 2nd of June,
his "Souper de Beaucaire" shows that if he condemns the departmental
insurrection it is mainly because he deems it futile: on the side of
the insurgents, a defeated army, no position tenable, no cavalry, raw
artillerymen, Marseilles reduced to its own troops, full of hostile
sans-culottes and so besieged, taken and pillaged. Chances are against
it: "Let the impoverished regions, the inhabitants of Vivaris, of the
Cevennes, of Corsica, fight to the last extremity, but if you lose a
battle and the fruit of a thousand years of fatigue, hardship, economy,
and happiness become the soldier's prey."[1125] Here was something
with which the Girondists could be converted!--None of the political or
social convictions which then exercised such control over men's minds
have any hold on him. Before the 9th of Thermidor he seemed to be a
"republican montagnard," and we follow him for months in Provence, "the
favorite and confidential adviser of young Robespierre," "admirer"
of the elder Robespierre,[1126] intimate at Nice with Charlotte
Robespierre. After the 9th of Thermidor has passed, he frees himself
with bombast from this compromising friendship: "I thought him sincere,"
says he of the younger Robespierre, in a letter intended to be shown,
"but were he my father and had aimed at tyranny, I would have stabbed
him myself." 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.[1127] 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 concerning himself only
with his own interests.--On the evening of the 12th of Vendémiaire,
on leaving the Feydeau theatre, and noticing the preparations of the
sectionists,[1128] he said to Junot:

"Ah, if the sections put me in command, I would guarantee to place them
in the Tuileries in two hours and have all those Convention rascals
driven out!"

Five hours later, summoned by Barras and the Conventionalists, he takes
"three minutes" to make up his mind, and, instead of "blowing up the
representatives," he mows down the Parisians. Like a good condottière,
he does not commit himself, considers the first that offers and then
the one who offers the most, only to back out afterwards, and finally,
seizing the opportunity, to grab everything.--He will more and
more become a true condottière, that is to say, leader of a band,
increasingly independent, pretending to submit under the pretext of
the public good, looking out only for his own interest, self-centered,
general on his own account and for his own advantage in his Italian
campaign before and after the 18th of Fructidor.[1129] He is, however,
a condottière of the first class, already aspiring to the loftiest
summits, "with no stopping-place but the throne or the scaffold,"[1130]
"determined[1131] to master France, and through France Europe. Without
distraction, sleeping only three hours during the night," he plays
with ideas, men, religions, and governments, exploiting people with
incomparable dexterity and brutality. He is, in the choice of means
as of ends, a superior artist, inexhaustible in glamour, seductions,
corruption, and intimidation, fascinating, and yet more terrible than
any wild beast suddenly released among 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,
while I am very fond of the dear general, I call him to myself the
little tiger, so as to properly characterize his figure, tenacity, and
courage, the rapidity of his movements, and all that he has in him which
maybe fairly regarded in that sense."[1132]

At this very date, previous to official adulation and the adoption of
a recognized type, we see him face to face in two portraits drawn from
life, one physical, by a truthful painter, Guérin, and the other moral,
by a superior woman, Madame de Staël, who to the best European culture
added tact and worldly perspicacity. Both portraits agree so perfectly
that each seems to interpret and complete the other. "I saw him for the
first time,"[1133] says Madame de Staël, "on his return to France after
the treaty of Campo-Formio. After recovering from the first excitement
of admiration there succeeded to this a decided sentiment of fear." And
yet, "at this time he had no power, for it was even then supposed that
the Directory looked upon him with a good deal of suspicion." People
regarded him sympathetically, and were even prepossessed in his favor;

"thus the fear he inspired was simply due to the singular effect of his
person on almost all who approached 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. I soon
found, in the various opportunities I had of meeting him during his stay
in Paris, that his character was not to be described in terms commonly
employed; he was neither mild nor violent, nor gentle nor cruel, like
certain personages one happens to know. 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
imprint of a foreign nationality.. .. far from being reassured on seeing
Bonaparte oftener, he intimidated me more and more every day. I had a
confused impression that he was not to be influenced by any emotion of
sympathy or affection. 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 so many ciphers. The force of
his will consists in the imperturbable calculation of his egoism. He is
a skillful player who has the human species for an antagonist, and
whom he proposes to checkmate... 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 indicated the tact
of circumstances, like that of the hunter in pursuit of his prey. His
spirit seemed a cold, keen sword-blade, which freezes while it wounds.
I felt a profound irony in his mind, which nothing great or beautiful
could escape, not even his own fame, for he despised the nation whose
suffrages he sought... "--"With him, everything was means or aims;
spontaneity, whether for good or for evil, was entirely absent."

No law, no ideal and abstract rule, existed for him;

"he examined things only with reference to their immediate usefulness; a
general principle was repugnant to him, either as so much nonsense or as
an enemy."

Now, if we contemplate Guérin's portrait,[1134] we see a spare body,
whose narrow shoulders under the uniform wrinkled by sudden movements,
the neck swathed in its high twisted cravat, the 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 cheek-bones, 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[1135] who saw or heard the curt accent or
the sharp, abrupt gesture, the interrogating, imperious, absolute tone
of voice, and we comprehend how, the moment they accosted him, they felt
the dominating hand which seizes them, presses them down, holds them
firmly and never relaxes its grasp.

Already, at the receptions of the Directory, when conversing with men,
or even with ladies, he puts questions "which prove the superiority
of the questioner to those who have to answer them."[1136] "Are you
married?" says he to this one, and "How many children have you?"to
another. To that one, "When did you come here?" or, again, "When are you
going away? He places himself in front of a French lady, well-known for
her beauty and wit and the vivacity of her opinions, "like the stiffest
of German generals, and says: 'Madame, I don't like women who meddle
with politics!'" Equality, ease, familiarity and companionship, vanish
at his approach. Eighteen months before this, on his appointment as
commander-in-chief of the army in Italy, Admiral Decrès, who had known
him well at Paris,[1137] learns that he is to pass through Toulon: "I at
once propose to my comrades to introduce them, venturing to do so on my
acquaintance with him in Paris. Full of eagerness and joy, I start off.
The door opens and I am about to press forwards," 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 on
me." A few days later, at Albenga,[1138] certain generals of division,
and among them Augereau, a vulgar, heroic old soldier, vain of his tall
figure and courage, arrive at headquarters, not well disposed toward 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' favorites, the Vendémiaire general, a street
general, "not yet tried out on the field of battle,[1139] hasn't a
friend, considered a loner because he is the only one who can thinks for
himself, looking peaky, 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 has remained silent; It is only
when he gets out of doors does he recover himself and fall back on his
accustomed oaths. He admits to Massena that "that little bastard of a
general frightened him." He cannot "comprehend the ascendancy which made
him feel crushed right away."[1140]

Extraordinary and superior, made for command[1141] and for conquest,
singular and of an unique species, is the feeling of all his
contemporaries. Those who are most familiar with the histories of other
nations, Madame de Staël and, after her, Stendhal, go back to the
right sources to comprehend him, to the "petty Italian tyrants of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries," to Castruccio-Castracani, to the
Braccio of Mantua, to the Piccinino, the Malatestas of Rimini, and
the Sforzas of Milan. In their opinion, however, it is only a chance
analogy, a psychological resemblance. Really, however, and)historically
it is a positive relationship. He is a descendant of the great Italians,
the men of action of the year 1400, the military adventurers, usurpers,
and founders of governments lasting their life-time. He inherits in
direct affiliation their blood and inward organization, mental and
moral.[1142] A bud, collected in their forest, before the age of
refinement, impoverishment, and decay, has been transported into a
similar and remote nursery, where a tragic and militant régime is
permanently established. There the primitive germ is preserved intact
and transmitted from one generation to another, renewed and invigorated
by interbreeding. Finally, at the last stage of its growth, it springs
out of the ground and develops magnificently, blooming the same as ever,
and producing the same fruit as on the original stem. Modern cultivation
and French gardening have pruned away but very few of its branches and
blunted a few of its thorns: its original texture, inmost substance,
and spontaneous development have not changed. The soil of France and of
Europe, however, broken up by revolutionary tempests, is more favorable
to its roots than the worn-out fields of the Middle Ages and there it
grows by itself, without being subject, like its Italian ancestors, to
rivalry with its own species; nothing checks the growth; it may absorb
all the juices of the ground, all the air and sunshine of the region,
and become the Colossus which the ancient plants, equally deep-rooted
and certainly as absorbent, but born in a less friable soil and more
crowded together, could not provide.




II. The Leader and Statesman

     Intelligence during the Italian Renaissance and at the
     present day.--Integrity of Bonaparte's mental machinery.
     --Flexibility, force, and tenacity of his attention.--Another
     difference between Napoleon's intellect and that of his
     contemporaries.--He thinks objects and not words.--His
     antipathy to Ideology.--Little or no literary or
     philosophical education.--Self-taught through direct
     observation and technical instruction.--His fondness for
     details.--His inward vision of physical objects and places.
     --His mental portrayal of positions, distances, and
     quantities.

"The human plant," said Alfieri, "is in no country born more vigorous
than in Italy"; and never, 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.[1143] The first
distinguishing mark of a man of those times is the soundness of his
mental instrument. Nowadays, after three hundred years of service,
ours has lost somewhat of its moral fiber, sharpness, and versatility:
usually the compulsory specialization has caused it to become lop-sided
making it unfit for other purposes. What's more, the increase in
ready-made ideas and clichés and acquired methods incrusts it and
reduces its scope to a sort of routine. Finally, it is exhausted by
an excess of intellectual activity and diminished by the continuity of
sedentary habits. It is just the opposite with those impulsive minds
of uncorrupted blood and of a new stock.--Roederer, a competent and
independent judge, who, at the beginning of the consular government,
sees Bonaparte daily at the meetings of the Council of State, and who
notes down every evening the impressions of the day, is carried away
with admiration:[1144]

"Punctual at every sitting, prolonging the session five or six hours,
discussing before and afterwards the subjects brought forward, always
returning to two questions, 'Can that be justified?[1145]' 'Is that
useful?' examining each question in itself, in these two respects, after
having subjected it to a most exact and sharp analysis; next, consulting
the best authorities, the pasts, experience, and obtaining information
about bygone jurisprudence, the laws of Louis XIV. and of Frederick the
Great.... Never did the council adjourn without its members knowing more
than the day before; if not through knowledge derived from him, at least
through the researches he obliged them to make. Never did the members
of the Senate and the Legislative Corps, or of the tribunals, pay their
respects to him without being rewarded for their homage by valuable
instructions. He cannot be surrounded by public men without being the
statesman, all forming for him a council of state."

"What characterizes 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 eighteen
hours at a stretch, on one or on several subjects. I never saw him
tired. I never found his mind lacking in 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 a man more wholly devote himself to the work in
hand, nor better devote his time to what he had to do. Never did a 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."

He himself said later on:[1146]

"Various subjects and affairs are stowed away in my brain 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 all the drawers
and go to sleep."

Never has brain so disciplined and under such control been seen, one so
ready at all times for any task, so capable of immediate and absolute
concentration. Its flexibility[1147] is wonderful, "in the instant
application of every faculty and energy, and bringing them all to bear
at once on any object that concerns him, on a mite as well as on an
elephant, on any given individual as well as on an enemy's army. ...
When specially occupied, other things do not exist for him; it is a sort
of chase from which nothing diverts him." And this hot pursuit, which
nothing arrests save capture, this tenacious hunt, this headlong course
by one to whom the goal is never other than a fresh starting-point, is
the spontaneous gait, the natural, even pace which his mind prefers.

"I am always at work," says he to Roederer.[1148] "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
spirit 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."--

His associates weaken and sink under the burden imposed on them and
which he supports without feeling the weight. When Consul,[1149] "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 Saint-Cloud, he keeps the counselors 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 session
than when it began." During the night sessions "many of the members
succumb through weariness, 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,[1150] "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
interrogatories to which he has subjected them; he appears not to have
noticed, and talks about the day's work simply as a relaxation which has
scarcely given his mind exercise." And what is worse, "it often happens
that on returning home they find a dozen of his letters requiring
immediate response, for which the whole night scarcely suffices." 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, unmovable brain thus keeps on working
uninterruptedly for thirty years.

Through another result of the same mental organization, Napoleon's brain
is never unproductive; that's today our great danger.--During the past
three hundred years we have more and more lost sight of the exact and
direct meaning of things. Subject to the constraints of a conservative,
complex, and extended educational system we study

* the symbols of objects rather than on the objects themselves;

* instead of the ground itself, a map of it;

* instead of animals struggling for existence,[1151] nomenclatures and
classifications, or, at best, stuffed specimens displayed in a museum;

* instead of persons who feel and act, statistics, codes, histories,
literatures, and philosophies;

in short, printed words. Even worse, abstract terms, which from century
to century have become more abstract and therefore further removed
from experience, more difficult to understand, less adaptable and more
deceptive, especially in all that relates to human life and society.
Here, due to the growth of government, to the multiplication of
services, to the entanglement of interests, the object, indefinitely
enlarged and complex, now eludes our grasp. Our vague, incomplete,
incorrect idea of it badly corresponds with it, or does not correspond
at all. In nine minds out of ten, or perhaps ninety-nine out of a
hundred, it is but little more than a word. The others, if they desire
some significant indication of what society actually is beyond the
teachings of books, require ten or fifteen years of close observation
and study to re-think the phrases with which these have filled their
memory, to interpret them anew, to make clear their meaning, to get at
and verify their sense, to substitute for the more or less empty and
indefinite term the fullness and precision of a personal impression. We
have seen how ideas of Society, State, Government, Sovereignty, Rights,
Liberty, the most important of all ideas, were, at the close of the
eighteenth century, curtailed and falsified; how, in most minds, simple
verbal reasoning combined them together in dogmas and axioms; what an
offspring these metaphysical simulacra gave birth to, how many lifeless
and grotesque abortions, how many monstrous and destructive chimeras.
There is no place for any of these fanciful dreams in the mind of
Bonaparte; they cannot arise in it, nor find access to it; his aversion
to the unsubstantial phantoms of political abstraction extends beyond
disdain, even to disgust.[1152] That which was then called ideology, is
his particular bugbear; he loathes it not alone through calculation,
but still more through an instinctive demand for what is real, as a
practical man and statesman, always keeping in mind, like the great
Catherine, "that he is operating, not on paper, but on the human hide,
which is ticklish." Every idea entertained by him had its origin in
his personal observation, and he used his own personal observations to
control them.

If books are useful to him it is to suggest questions, which he never
answers but through his own experience. He has read only a little, and
hastily;[1153] his classical education is rudimentary; in the way of
Latin, he remained in the lower class. The instruction he got at the
Military Academy as well as at Brienne was below mediocrity, while,
after Brienne, it is stated that "for the languages and belles-lettres,
he had no taste." Next to this, the literature of elegance and
refinement, the philosophy of the closet and drawing-room, with which
his contemporaries are imbued, glided over his intellect as over a hard
rock. None but mathematical truths and positive notions about geography
and history found their way into his mind and deeply impressed it.
Everything else, as with his predecessors of the fifteenth century,
comes to him through the original, direct action of his faculties in
contact with men and things, through his prompt and sure tact, his
indefatigable and minute attention, his indefinitely repeated and
rectified divinations during long hours of solitude and silence.
Practice, and not speculation, is the source of his instruction, the
same as with a mechanic brought up amongst machinery.

"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."[1154]

This is why he is competent right from the beginning, general in the
artillery, major-general, diplomatist, financier and administrator of
all kinds. Thanks to this fertile apprenticeship, beginning with the
Consulate, he shows officials and veteran ministers who send in their
reports to him what to do.

"I am a more experienced administrator than they,[1155] when one has
been obliged to extract from his brains the ways and means with which to
feed, maintain, control, and move with the same spirit and will two or
three hundred thousand men, a long distance from their country, one has
soon discovered the secrets of administration."

In each of the human machines he builds and manipulates, he perceives
right away all the parts, each in its proper place and function, the
motors, the transmissions, the wheels, the composite action, the speed
which ensues, the final result, the complete effect, the net product.
Never is he content with a superficial and summary inspection; he
penetrates into obscure corners and to the lowest depths "through
the technical precision of his questions," with the lucidity of
a specialist, and in this way, borrowing an expression from the
philosophers, with him the concept should be adequate to its
purpose.[1156]

Hence his eagerness for details, for these form the body and substance
of the concept; the hand that has not grasped these, or lets them go,
retains only the shell, an envelope. With respect to these his curiosity
is "insatiable."[1157] In each ministerial department he knows more than
the ministers, and in each bureau he knows as much as the clerks. "On
his table[1158] lie reports of the positions of his 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 my 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."

He always knows "his position" on land and at sea better than is known
in the War and Navy departments; better even than his staff-officers the
number, size, and qualities of his ships in or out of port, the present
and future state of vessels under construction, the composition and
strength of their crews, the formation, organization, staff of officers,
material, stations, and enlistments, past and to come, of each army
corps and of each regiment. It is the same in the financial and
diplomatic services, in every branch of the administration, laic or
ecclesiastical, in the physical order and in the moral order. His
topographical memory and his geographical conception of countries,
places, ground, and obstacles culminate in an inward vision which he
evokes at will, and which, years afterwards, revives as fresh as on the
first day. His calculation of distances, marches, and maneuvers is so
rigid a mathematical operation that, frequently, at a distance of two
or four hundred leagues,[1159] his military foresight, calculated two
or four months ahead, turns out correct, almost on the day named, and
precisely on the spot designated.[1160] Add to this one other faculty,
and the rarest of all. For, if things turn out as he foresaw they would,
it is because, as with great chess-players, he has accurately measured
not alone the mechanical moves of the pieces, but the character and
talent of his adversary, "sounded his draft of water," and divined his
probable mistakes. He has added the calculation of physical quantities
and probabilities to the calculation of moral quantities and
probabilities, thus showing himself as great a psychologist as he is an
accomplished strategist. In fact, no one has surpassed him in the art
of judging the condition and motives of an individual or of a group of
people, the real motives, permanent or temporary, which drive or curb
men in general or this or that man in particular, the incentives to be
employed, the kind and degree of pressure to be employed. This central
faculty rules all the others, and in the art of mastering Man his genius
is found supreme.




III. His acute Understanding of Others.

     His psychological faculty and way of getting at the thought
     and feeling of others.--His self-analysis.--How he imagines
     a general situation by selecting a particular case,
     imagining the invisible interior by deducting from the
     visible exterior.--Originality and superiority of his style
     and discourse.--His adaptation of these to his hearers and
     to circumstances.--His notation and calculation of
     serviceable motives.

No faculty is more precious for a political engineer; for the forces he
acts upon are never other than human passions. But how, except
through divination, can these passions, which grow out of the deepest
sentiments, be reached? How, save by conjecture, can forces be estimated
which seem to defy all measurement? On this dark and uncertain ground,
where one has to grope one's way, Napoleon moves with almost absolute
certainty; he moves promptly. First of all, he studies himself; indeed,
to find one's way into another's soul requires, preliminarily, that one
should dive deep into one's own.[1161]

"I have always delighted in analysis," said he, one day, "and should I
ever fall seriously in love I would take my sentiment to pieces. Why and
How are such important questions one cannot put them to one's self too
often."

"It is certain," writes an observer, "that he, of all men, is the one
who has most meditated on the why which controls human actions."

His method, that of the experimental sciences, consists in testing every
hypothesis or deduction by some positive fact, observed by him under
definite conditions; a physical force being ascertained and accurately
measured through the deviation of a needle, or through the rise and
fall of a fluid, this or that invisible moral force can likewise be
ascertained and approximately measured through some emotional sign, some
decisive manifestation, consisting of a certain word, tone, or gesture.
It is these words, tones, and gestures which he dwells on; he detects
inward sentiments by the outward expression; he figures to himself
the internal by the external, by some facial appearance, some telling
attitude, some brief and topical scene, by such specimen and shortcuts,
so well chosen and detailed that they provide a summary of the
innumerable series of analogous cases. In this way, the vague, fleeting
object is suddenly arrested, brought to bear, and then gauged and
weighed, like some impalpable gas collected and kept in a graduated
transparent glass tube.--Accordingly, at the Council of State, while the
others, either jurists or administrators, see abstractions, articles of
the law and precedents, he sees people as they are--the Frenchman, the
Italian, the German; that of the peasant, the workman, the bourgeois,
the noble, the returned émigré,[1162] the soldier, the officer and the
functionary--everywhere the individual man as he is, the man who plows,
manufactures, fights, marries, brings forth children, toils, enjoys
himself, and dies.--Nothing is more striking than the contrast between
the dull, grave arguments advanced by the wise official editor, and
Napoleon's own words caught on the wing, at the moment, vibrating and
teeming with illustrations and imagery.[1163] Apropos of divorce, the
principle of which he wishes to maintain:

"Consult, now, national manners and customs. Adultery is no phenomenon;
it is common enough--une affaire de canapé... There must be some curb on
women who commit adultery for trinkets, poetry, Apollo, and the muses,
etc."

But if divorce be allowed for incompatibility of temper you undermine
marriage; the fragility of the bond will be apparent the moment the
obligation is contracted;

"it is just as if a man said to himself, 'I am going to marry until I
feel different.'"

Nullity of marriage must not be too often allowed; once a marriage is
made it is a serious matter to undo it.

"Suppose that, in marrying my cousin just arrived from the Indies, I wed
an adventuress. She bears me children, and I then discover she is not my
cousin--is that marriage valid? Does not public morality demand that it
should be so considered? There has been a mutual exchange of hearts, of
transpiration."

On the right of children to be supported and fed although of age, he
says:

"Will you allow a father to drive a girl of fifteen out of his house? A
father worth 60,000 francs a year might say to his son, 'You are stout
and fat; go and turn plowman.' The children of a rich father, or of one
in good circumstances, are always entitled to the paternal porridge.
Strike out their right to be fed, and you compel children to murder
their parents."

As to adoption:

"You regard this as law-makers and not as statesmen. It is not a civil
contract nor a judicial contract. The analysis (of the jurist) leads
to vicious results. Man is governed by imagination only; without
imagination he is a brute. It is not for five cents a day, simply to
distinguish himself, that a man consents to be killed; if you want to
electrify him touch his heart. A notary, who is paid a fee of twelve
francs for his services, cannot do that. It requires some other process,
a legislative act. Adoption, what is that? An imitation by which society
tries to counterfeit nature. It is a new kind of sacrament.... Society
ordains that the bones and blood of one being shall be changed into the
bones and blood of another. It is the greatest of all legal acts.
It gives the sentiments of a son to one who never had them, and
reciprocally those of a parent. Where ought this to originate? From on
high, like a clap of thunder!"

All his expressions are bright flashes one after another.[1164] Nobody,
since Voltaire and Galiani, has launched forth such a profusion of them;
on society, laws, government, France and the French, some penetrate and
explain, like those of Montesquieu, as if with a flash of lightening.
He does not hammer them out laboriously, but they burst forth, the
outpourings of his intellect, its natural, involuntary, constant action.
And what adds to their value is that, outside of councils and private
conversations, he abstains from them, employing them only in the service
of thought; at other times he subordinates them to the end he has in
view, which is always their practical effect. Ordinarily, he writes and
speaks in a different language, in a language suited to his audience;
he dispenses with the oddities, the irregular improvisations and
imagination, the outbursts of genius and inspiration. He retains and
uses merely those which are intended to impress the personage whom he
wishes to dazzle with a great idea of himself, such as Pius VII., or the
Emperor Alexander. In this case, his conversational tone is that of
a caressing, expansive, amiable familiarity; he is then before the
footlights, and when he acts he can play all parts, tragedy or comedy,
with the same life and spirit whether he fulminates, insinuates, or
even affects simplicity. When he is with his generals, ministers, and
principal performers, he falls back on the concise, positive, technical
business style; any other would be harmful. The keen mind only reveals
itself through the brevity and imperious strength and rudeness of
the accent. For his armies and the common run of men, he has his
proclamations and bulletins, that is to say, sonorous phrases
composed for effect, a statement of facts purposely simplified and
falsified,[1165] in short, an excellent effervescent wine, good for
exciting enthusiasm, and an equally excellent narcotic for maintaining
credulity,[1166] a sort of popular mixture to be distributed just at
the proper time, and whose ingredients are so well proportioned that
the public drinks it with delight, and becomes at once intoxicated.--His
style on every occasion, whether affected or spontaneous, shows his
wonderful knowledge of the masses and of individuals; except in two or
three cases, on one exalted domain, of which he always remains ignorant,
he has ever hit the mark, applying the appropriate lever, giving just
the push, weight, and degree of impulsion which best accomplishes his
purpose. A series of brief, accurate memoranda, corrected daily, enables
him to frame for himself a sort of psychological tablet whereon he notes
down and sums up, in almost numerical valuation, the mental and moral
dispositions, characters, faculties, passions, and aptitudes, the strong
or weak points, of the innumerable human beings, near or remote, on whom
he operates.




IV. His Wonderful Memory.

     His Three Atlases.--Their scale and completeness.

Let us try for a moment to show the range and contents of this
intellect; we may have to go back to Caesar to his equal; but, for lack
of documents, we have nothing of Caesar but general features--a summary
outline. Of Napoleon we have, besides the perfect outline, the features
in detail. Read his correspondence, day by day, then chapter by
chapter;[1167] for example, in 1806, after the battle of Austerlitz, or,
still better, in 1809, after his return from Spain, up to the peace of
Vienna; whatever our technical shortcomings may be, we shall find that
his mind, in its comprehensiveness and amplitude, largely surpasses all
known or even credible proportions.

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.--

1. The first one is military, forming a vast collection of topographical
charts as minute as those of an general staff, with detailed plans of
every stronghold, also specific indications and 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, munitions, food, and clothing.

2. 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, each where he resides, with his rank, jurisdiction,
and salary.

3. The third is a vast biographical and moral dictionary, in which, as
in the pigeon-holes of the Chief of Police, each notable personage and
local group, each professional or social body, and even each population,
has its label, along with a brief note on its situation, needs, and
antecedents, and, therefore, its demonstrated character, eventual
disposition, and probable conduct. Each label, card, or strip of paper
has its summary; 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, 60,000,000
men, the different countries he has conquered or overrun, consisting of
70,000 square leagues[1168]. 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; and, add
a last mental tableau, that which represents 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.[1169]--On
the psychological and moral atlas, besides a primitive gap which he will
never fill up, because this is a characteristic trait, there are some
estimates which are wrong, especially with regard to the Pope and to
Catholic conscience. In like manner he rates the energy of national
sentiment in Spain and Germany too low. He rates too high his own
prestige in France and in the countries annexed to her, the balance of
confidence and zeal on which he may rely. But these errors are rather
the product of his will than of his intelligence, he recognizes them at
intervals; if he has illusions it is because he fabricates them; left
to himself his good sense would rest infallible, it is only his passions
which blurred the lucidity of his intellect.--As to the other two
atlases, the topographical and the military, they are as complete and as
exact as ever; No matter how much the realities they contain will swell
and daily become ever more complex, they continue to correspond to it in
their fullness and precision, trait for trait.




V. His Imagination and its Excesses.

     His constructive imagination.--His projects and dreams.
     --Manifestation of the master faculty and its excesses.

But this multitude of information and observations form only the
smallest portion of the mental population swarming in this immense
brain; for, on his idea of the real, germinate and swarm his concepts of
the possible; without these concepts there would be no way to handle and
transform things, and that he did handle and transform them we all know.
Before acting, he has decided on his plan, and if this plan is adopted,
it is one among several others,[1170] after examining, comparing,
and giving it the preference; he has accordingly thought over all the
others. Behind each combination adopted by him we detect those he has
rejected; there are dozens of them behind each of his decisions, each
maneuver effected, each treaty signed, each decree promulgated, each
order issued, and I venture to say, behind almost every improvised
action or word spoken. For calculation enters into everything he does,
even into his apparent expansiveness, also into his outbursts when in
earnest; if he gives way to these, it is on purpose, foreseeing the
effect, with a view to intimidate or to dazzle. He turns everything in
others as well as in himself to account--his passion, his vehemence, his
weaknesses, his talkativeness, he exploits it all for the advancement
of the edifice he is constructing.[1171] Certainly among his diverse
faculties, however great, that of the constructive imagination is
the most powerful. At the very beginning we feel its heat and boiling
intensity beneath the coolness and rigidity of his technical and
positive instructions.

"When I plan a battle," said he to Roederer, "no man is more spineless
than I am. I over exaggerate to myself all the dangers and all the evils
that are possible under the circumstances. I am in a state of truly
painful agitation. But this does not prevent me from appearing quite
composed to people around me; I am like a woman giving birth to a
child.[1172]

Passionately, in the throes of the creator, he is thus absorbed with
his coming creation; 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 am always living two years in
advance."[1173] His response came with "incredible vivacity," as if a
sudden inspiration, that of a soul stirred in its innermost fiber.--Here
as well, the power, the speed, fertility, play, and abundance of his
thought seem unlimited. What he has accomplished is astonishing, but
what he has undertaken is more so; and whatever he may have undertaken
is far surpassed by what he has imagined. However vigorous his practical
faculty, his poetical faculty is stronger; it is even too vigorous for
a statesman; its grandeur is exaggerated into enormity, and its enormity
degenerates into madness. In Italy, after the 18th of Fructidor, he said
to Bourrienne:

"Europe is a molehill; never have there been great empires and
great revolutions, except in the Orient, with its 600,000,000
inhabitants."[1174]

The following year at Saint-Jean d'Acre, on the eve of the last assault,
he added

"If I succeed I shall find in the town the pasha's treasure and arms
for 300,000 men. I stir up and arm all Syria.... I march on Damascus
and Aleppo; as I advance in the country my army will increase with the
discontented. I proclaim to the people the abolition of slavery, and
of the tyrannical government of the pashas. 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." [1175]

Become consul, and then emperor, he often referred to this happy period,
when, "rid of the restraints of a troublesome civilization," he could
imagine at will and construct at pleasure.[1176]

"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."

Confined to Europe, he thinks, after 1804, that he will reorganize
Charlemagne's empire.

"The French Empire will become the mother country of other
sovereignties... I mean that every king in Europe shall build a grand
palace at 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 honor it with their
salutations."[1177] The Pope will come; he came to the first one; he
must necessarily return to Paris, and fix himself there permanently.
Where could the Holy See be better off than in the new capital of
Christianity, under Napoleon, heir to Charlemagne, and temporal
sovereign of the Sovereign Pontiff? Through the temporal the emperor
will control the spiritual,[1178] and through the Pope, consciences."

In November, 1811, unusually excited, he says to De Pradt:

"In five years I shall be master of the world; only Russia will remain,
but I will crush her.[1179]... Paris will extend out to St. Cloud."

To render Paris the physical capital of Europe is, through his own
confession, "one of his constant dreams."

"At times," he says,[1180]"I would like to see her a city of two, three,
four millions of inhabitants, something fabulous, colossal, unknown down
to our day, and its public establishments adequate to its population....
Archimedes proposed to lift the world if he could be allowed to place
his lever; for myself, I would have changed it wherever I could have
been allowed to exercise my energy, perseverance, and budgets."

At all events, he believes so; for however lofty and badly supported
the next story of his structure may be, he has always ready a new
story, loftier and more unsteady, to put above it. A few months before
launching himself, with all Europe at his back, against Russia, he said
to Narbonne:[1181]

"After all, my dear sir, this long road is the road to India. Alexander
started as far off as Moscow to reach the Ganges; this has occurred
to me since St. Jean d'Acre.... To reach England to-day I need the
extremity of Europe, from which to take Asia in the rear.... Suppose
Moscow taken, Russia subdued, the czar reconciled, or dead through some
court conspiracy, perhaps another and dependent throne, and tell me
whether it is not possible for a French army, with its auxiliaries,
setting out from Tiflis, to get as far as the Ganges, where it needs
only a thrust of the French sword to bring down the whole of that grand
commercial scaffolding throughout India. It would be the most gigantic
expedition, I admit, but practicable in the nineteenth century. Through
it France, at one stroke, would secure the independence of the West and
the freedom of the seas."

While uttering this his eyes shone with strange brilliancy, and he
accumulates subjects, weighing obstacles, means, and chances: the
inspiration is under full headway, and he gives himself up to it. The
master faculty finds itself suddenly free, and it takes flight; the
artist,[1182] locked up in politics, has escaped from his sheath; he is
creating out of the ideal and the impossible. We take him for what
he is, a posthumous brother of Dante and Michael Angelo. In the clear
outlines of his vision, in the intensity, coherency, and inward logic
of his dreams, 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.


*****

[Footnote 1101: Reforms introduced by Napoleon after his coup d'état 9
Nov. 1799. (SR.)]

[Footnote 1102: The main authority is, of course, the "correspondance
de l'Empereur Napoléon I.," in thirty-two-volumes. This correspondance,
unfortunately, is still incomplete, while, after the sixth volume, it
must not be forgotten that much of it has been purposely stricken out.
"In general," say the editors (XVI., p.4), "we have been governed simply
by this plain rule, that we were required to publish only what the
Emperor himself would have given to the public had he survived himself,
and, anticipating the verdict of time, exposed to posterity his own
personality and system."--The savant who has the most carefully examined
this correspondence, entire in the French archives, estimates that it
comprises about 80,000 pieces, of which 30,000 have been published in
the collection referred to; passages in 20,000 of the others have been
stricken out on account of previous publication, and about 30,000 more,
through considerations of propriety or policy. For example, but little
more than one-half of the letters from Napoleon to Bigot de Préameneu
on ecclesiastical matters have been published; many of these omitted
letters, all important and characteristic, may be found in "L'Église
romaine et le Premier Empire," by M. d'Haussonville. The above-mentioned
savant estimates the number of important letters not yet published at
2,000.]

[Footnote 1103: "Mémorial de Sainte Héléne," by Las Casas (May 29,
1816).--"In Corsica, Paoli, on a horseback excursion, explained
the positions to him, the places where liberty found resistance or
triumphed. Estimating the character of Napoleon by what he saw of it
through personal observation, Paoli said to him, "Oh, Napoleon, there
is nothing modern in you, you belong wholly to Plutarch!"--Antonomarchi,
"Mémoires," Oct. 25, 1819. The same account, slightly different, is
there given: "Oh. Napoleon," said Paoli to me, "you do not belong to
this century; you talk like one of Plutarch's characters. Courage, you
will take flight yet!"]

[Footnote 1104: De Ségur, "Histoire et Mémoires," I., 150. (Narrative by
Pontécoulant, member of the committee in the war, June, 1795.) "Boissy
d'Anglas told him that he had seen the evening before a little Italian,
pale, slender, and puny, but singularly audacious in his views and
in the vigor of his expressions.--The next day, Bonaparte calls on
Pontécou1ant, Attitude rigid through a morbid pride, poor exterior,
long visage, hollow and bronzed.... He is just from the army and talks
like one who knows what he is talking about."]

[Footnote 1105: Coston, "Biographie des premières années de Napoléon
Buonaparte," 2 vols. (1840), passim.--Yung, "Bonaparte et son Temps,"
I., 300, 302. (Pièces généalogiques.)--King Joseph, "Mémoires," I., 109,
111. (On the various branches and distinguished men of the Bonaparte
family.)--Miot de Melito, "Mémoires," II., 30. (Documents on the
Bonaparte family, collected on the spot by the author in 1801.)]

[Footnote 1106: "Mémorial," May 6, 1816.--Miot de Melito, II., 30. (On
the Bonapartes of San Miniato): "The last offshoot of this branch was a
canon then still living in this same town of San Miniato, and visited by
Bonaparte in the year IV, when he came to Florence."]

[Footnote 1107: "Correspondance de l'Empereur Napoléon I." (Letter of
Bonaparte, Sept.29, 1797, in relation to Italy): "A people at bottom
inimical to the French through the prejudices, character, and customs of
centuries."]

[Footnote 1108: Miot de Melito, I., 126, (1796): "Florence, for two
centuries and a half, had lost that antique energy which, in the stormy
times of the Republic, distinguished this city. Indolence was the
dominant spirit of all classes.. . Almost everywhere I saw only men
lulled to rest by the charms of the most exquisite climate, occupied
solely with the details of a monotonous existence, and tranquilly
vegetating under its beneficent sky."--(On Milan, in 1796, cf. Stendhal,
introduction to the "Chartreuse de Parme.")]

[Footnote 1109: "Miot de Melito," I., 131: "Having just left one of the
most civilized cities in Italy, it was not without some emotion that I
found myself suddenly transported to a country (Corsica) which, in
its savage aspect, its rugged mountains, and its inhabitants uniformly
dressed in coarse brown cloth, contrasted so strongly with the rich and
smiling landscape of Tuscany, and with the comfort, I should almost
say elegance, of costume worn by the happy cultivators of that fertile
soil."]

[Footnote 1110: Miot de Melito, II., 30: "Of a not very important family
of Sartène."--II., 143. (On the canton of Sartène and the Vendettas of
1796).--Coston, I., 4: "The family of Madame Laetitia, sprung from the
counts of Cotalto, came originally from Italy."]

[Footnote 1111: His father, Charles Bonaparte, weak and even frivolous,
"too fond of pleasure to care about his children," and to see to his
affairs, tolerably learned and an indifferent head of a family, died at
the age of thirty-nine of a cancer in the stomach, which seems to be the
only bequest he made to his son Napoleon.--His mother, on the contrary,
serious, authoritative, the true head of a family, 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.... Paoli had tried persuasion
with her before resorting to force... . Madame replied heroically, as a
Cornelia would have done.... From 12 to 15,000 peasants poured down from
the mountains of Ajaccio; our house was pillaged and burnt, our vines
destroyed, and our flocks. ... In other respects, this woman, from whom
it would have been so 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 restore my affairs." (" Mémorial," May
29, 1816, and "Mémoires d'Antonomarchi," Nov. 18, 1819.--On the ideas
and ways of Bonaparte's mother, read her "Conversation" in "Journal
et Mémoires," vol. IV., by Stanislas Girardin.) Duchesse d'Abrantès,"
Mémoires," II., 318, 369. "Avaricious out of all reason except on a few
grave occasions.... No knowledge whatever of the usages of society....
very ignorant, not alone of our literature, but of her own."--Stendhal,
"Vie de Napoleon": "The character of her son is to be explained by the
perfectly Italian character of Madame Laetitia."]

[Footnote 1112: The French conquest is effected by armed force between
July 30, 1768, and May 22, 1769. The Bonaparte family submitted May 23,
1769, and Napoleon was born on the following 15th of August.]

[Footnote 1113: Antonomarchi, "Mémoires," October 4, 1819. "Mémorial,"
May 29, 1816.]

[Footnote 1114: "Miot de Melito," II., 33: "The day I arrived at Bocognano
two men lost their lives through private vengeance. About eight years
before this one of the inhabitants of the canton had killed a neighbor,
the father of two children.... On reaching the age of sixteen or
seventeen years these children left the country in order to dog the
steps of the murderer, who kept on the watch, not daring to go far from
his village.... Finding him playing cards under a tree, they fired at
and killed him, and besides this accidentally shot another man who was
asleep a few paces off. The relatives on both sides pronounced the act
justifiable and according to rule." Ibid., I., 143: "On reaching Bastia
from Ajaccio the two principal families of the place, the Peraldi
and the Visuldi, fired at each other, in disputing over the honor of
entertaining me."]

[Footnote 1115: Bourrienne, "Mémoires," I., 18, 19.]

[Footnote 1116: De Ségur, "Histoire et Mémoires," I,, 74.]

[Footnote 1117: Yung, I., 195. (Letter of Bonaparte to Paoli, June 12,
1789); I., 250 (Letter of Bonaparte to Buttafuoco, January 23 1790).]

[Footnote 1118: Yung, I., 107 (Letter of Napoleon to his father, Sept.
12, 1784); I., 163 (Letter of Napoleon to Abbé Raynal, July, 1786); I.,
197 (Letter of Napoleon to Paoli, June 12, 1789). The three letters on
the history of Corsica are dedicated to Abbé Raynal in a letter of June
24, 1790, and may be found in Yung, I., 434.]

[Footnote 1119: Read especially his essay "On the Truths and Sentiments
most important to inculcate on Men for their Welfare" (a subject
proposed by the Academy of Lyons in 1790). "Some bold men driven by
genius.. .. Perfection grows out of reason as fruit out of a tree....
Reason's eyes guard man from the precipice of the passions... The
spectacle of the strength of virtue was what the Lacedaemonians
principally felt.... Must men then be lucky in the means by which they
are led on to happiness?.... My rights (to property) are renewed along
with my transpiration, circulate in my blood, are written on my nerves,
on my heart.... Proclaim to the rich--your wealth is your misfortune,
withdrawn within the latitude of your senses.... Let the enemies of
nature at thy voice keep silence and swallow their rabid serpents'
tongues.... The wretched shun the society of men, the tapestry of gayety
turns to mourning.... Such, gentlemen, are the Sentiments which, in
animal relations, mankind should have taught it for its welfare."]

[Footnote 1120: Yung, I., 252 (Letter to Buttafuoco). "Dripping with the
blood of his brethren, sullied by every species of crime, he presents
himself with confidence under his vest of a general, the sole reward of
his criminalities."--I., 192 (Letter to the Corsican Intendant, April 2,
1879). "Cultivation is what ruins us"--See various manuscript letters,
copied by Yung, for innumerable and gross mistakes in French.--Miot de
Melito, I., 84 (July, 1796). "He spoke curtly and, at this time, very
incorrectly."--Madame de Rémusat, I., 104. "Whatever language he
spoke it never seemed familiar to him; he appeared to force himself
in expressing his ideas."--Notes par le Comte Chaptal (unpublished),
councillor of state and afterwards minister of the interior under
the Consulate: "At this time, Bonaparte did not blush at the slight
knowledge of administrative details which he possessed; he asked a good
many questions and demanded definitions and the meaning of the commonest
words in use. As it very often happened with him not to clearly
comprehend words which he heard for the first time, he always repeated
these afterwards as he understood them; for example, he constantly
used section for session, armistice for amnesty, fulminating point for
culminating point, rentes voyagères for 'rentes viagères,' etc."]

[Footnote 1121: De Ségur, I., 174]

[Footnote 1122: Cf. the "Mémoires" of Marshal Marmont, I., 15, for the
ordinary sentiments of the young nobility. "In 1792 I had a sentiment
for the person of the king, difficult to define, of which I recovered
the trace, and to some extent the power, twenty-two years later; a
sentiment of devotion almost religious in character, an innate respect
as if due to a being of a superior order. The word King then possessed a
magic, a force, which nothing had changed in pure and honest breasts....
This religion of royalty still existed in the mass of the nation,, and
especially amongst the well-born, who, sufficiently remote from power,
were rather struck with its brilliancy than with its imperfections....
This love became a sort of worship."]

[Footnote 1123: Bourrienne, "Mémoires," I. 27.--Ségur, I. 445. In 1795,
at Paris, Bonaparte, being out of military employment, enters upon
several commercial speculations, amongst which is a bookstore, which
does not succeed. (Stated by Sebastiani and many others.)]

[Footnote 1124: "Mémorial," Aug. 3, 1816.]

[Footnote 1125: Bourrienne, I., 171. (Original text of the "Souper de
Beaucaire.")]

[Footnote 1126: Yung, II., 430, 431. (Words of Charlotte Robespierre.)
Bonaparte as a souvenir of his acquaintance with her, granted her a
pension, under the consulate, of 3600 francs.--Ibid. (Letter of Tilly,
chargé d'affaires at Genoa, to Buchot, commissioner of foreign affairs.)
Cf. in the "Mémorial," Napoleon's favorable judgment of Robespierre.]

[Footnote 1127: Yung, II., 455. (Letter from Bonaparte to Tilly, Aug.
7, 1794.) Ibid., III., 120. (Memoirs of Lucien.) "Barras takes care of
Josephine's dowry, which is the command of the army in Italy." Ibid.,
II., 477. (Grading of general officers, notes by Schérer on Bonaparte.)
"He knows all about artillery, but is rather too ambitious, and too
intriguing for promotion."]

[Footnote 1128: De Ségur, I., 162.--La Fayette, "Mémoires," II., 215.
"Mémorial" (note dictated by Napoleon). He states the reasons for and
against, and adds, speaking of himself: "These sentiments, twenty-five
years of age, confidence in his strength, his destiny, determined him."
Bourrienne, I., 51: "It is certain that he has always bemoaned that day;
he has often said to me that he would give years of his life to efface
that page of his history."]

[Footnote 1129: "Mémorial," I., Sept 6, 1815. "It is only after Lodi
that the idea came to me that I might, after all, become a decisive
actor on our political stage. Then the first spark of lofty ambition
gleamed out." On his aim and conduct in the Italian campaign of
Sybel, "Histoire de l'Europe pendant la Révolution Française" (Dosquet
translation), vol. IV., books II. and III., especially pp.182, 199, 334,
335, 406, 420, 475, 489.]

[Footnote 1130: Yung, III., 213. (Letter of M. de Sucy, August 4,
1797.)]

[Footnote 1131: Ibid., III., 214. (Report of d'Entraigues to M. de
Mowikinoff, Sept., 1797.) "If there was any king in France which was not
himself, he would like to have been his creator, with his rights at the
end of his sword, this sword never to be parted with, so that he might
plunge it in the king's bosom if he ever ceased to be submissive to
him."--Miot de Melito, I., 154. (Bonaparte to Montebello, before Miot
and Melzi, June, 1797.) Ibid, I., 184. (Bonaparte to Miot, Nov. 18,
1797, at Turin.)]

[Footnote 1132: D'Haussonville, "L'Église Romaine et la Premier Empire,"
I., 405. (Words of M. Cacault, signer of the Treaty of Tolentino,
and French Secretary of Legation at Rome, at the commencement of
negotiations for the Concordat.) M. Cacaut says that he used this
expression, "After the scenes of Tolentino and of Leghorn, and
the fright of Manfredini, and Matéi threatened, and so many other
vivacities."]

[Footnote 1133: Madame de Staël, "Considérations sur la Révolution
Française," 3rd part, ch. XXVI., and 4th part, ch. XVIII.]

[Footnote 1134: Portrait of Bonaparte in the "Cabinet des Etampes,"
"drawn by Guérin, engraved by Fiesinger, deposited in the National
Library, Vendémiaire 29, year VII."]

[Footnote 1135: Madame de Rémusat, "Mémoires," I., 104.--Miot de Melito,
I., 84.]

[Footnote 1136: Madame de Staël, "Considerations," etc., 3rd part, ch.
XXV.--Madame de Rémusat, II., 77.]

[Footnote 1137: Stendhal, "Mémoires sur Napoléon," narration of Admiral
Decrès.--Same narration in the "Mémorial."]

[Footnote 1138: De Ségur, I., 193.]

[Footnote 1139: Roederer, "Oeuvres complétes," II., 560. (Conversations
with General Lasalle in 1809, and Lasalle's judgment on the débuts of
Napoleon).]

[Footnote 1140: Another instance of this commanding influence is found
in the case of General Vandamme, an old revolutionary soldier still more
brutal and energetic than Augereau. In 1815, Vandamme said to Marshal
d'Ornano, one day, on 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, when I approach him I tremble like a child. He would
make me dash through the eye of a needle into the fire!" ("Le Général
Vandamme," by du Casse, II., 385).]

[Footnote 1141: Roederer, III., 356. (Napoleon himself says, February
11, 1809): "I, military! I am so, because I was born so; it is my habit,
my very existence. Wherever I have been I have always had command. I
commanded at twenty-three, at the siege of Toulon; I commanded at Paris
in Vendémiaire; I won over the soldiers in Italy the moment I presented
myself. I was born for that."]

[Footnote 1142: Observe the various features of the same mental and
moral structure among different members of the family. (Speaking of his
brothers and sisters in the "Memorial" Napoleon says): "What family
as numerous presents such a splendid group?"--"Souvenirs", by PASQUIER
(Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France, in VI volumes, Librarie
Plon, Paris 1893. Vol. I. p. 400. (This author, a young magistrate under
Louis XVI., a high functionary under the Empire, an important political
personage under the restoration and the July monarchy, is probably the
best informed and most judicious of eye-witnesses during the first half
of our century.): "Their vices and virtues surpass ordinary proportions
and have a physiognomy of their own. But what especially distinguishes
them is a stubborn will, and inflexible resolution.... All possessed
the instinct of their greatness." They readily accepted "the highest
positions; they even got to believing that their elevation was
inevitable.... Nothing in the incredible good fortune of Joseph
astonished him; often in January, 1814, I heard him say over and over
again that if his brother had not meddled with his affairs after the
second entry into Madrid, he would still be on the throne of Spain.
As to determined obstinacy we have only to refer to the resignation
of Louis, the retirement of Lucien, and the resistances of Fesch; they
alone could stem the will of Napoleon and sometimes break a lance with
him.--Passion, sensuality, the habit of considering themselves outside
of rules, and self-confidence combined with talent, super abound
among the women, as in the fifteenth century. Elisa, in 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 at Naples,
"without being more scrupulous than her sisters," better observed the
proprieties; none of the others so much resembled the Emperor; "with
her, all tastes succumbed 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 Claude, surpassed her in the use she dared make of her
charms; nothing could stop her, not even a malady attributed to the
strain of this life-style and for which we have so often seen her
borne in a litter."--Jerome, "in spite of the uncommon boldness of his
debaucheries, maintained his ascendancy over his wife to the last."--On
the "pressing efforts and attempts" of Joseph on Maria Louise in 1814,
Chancelier Pasquier, after Savary's papers and the evidence of M. de
Saint-Aignan, gives extraordinary details.--"Mes souvenirs sur Napoléon,
346, by the count Chaptal: "Every member of this numerous family
(Jérôme, Louis, Joseph, the Bonaparte sisters) mounted thrones as if
they had recovered so much property."]

[Footnote 1143: Burkhardt, "Die Renaissance in Italien,"
passim.--Stendhal, "Histoire de la peinture en Italie"(introduction),
and" Rome, Naples, et Florence," passim.--"Notes par le Comte Chaptal":
When these notes are published, many details will be found in them in
support of the judgment expressed in this and the following chapters.
The psychology of Napoleon as here given is largely confirmed by them.]

[Footnote 1144: Roederer, III, 380 (1802).]

[Footnote 1145: Napoleon uses the French word just which means both
fair, justifiable, pertinent, correct, and in music true.]

[Footnote 1146: "Mémorial."]

[Footnote 1147: De Pradt, "Histoire de l'Ambassade dans la grande-duché
de Varsovie en 1812," preface, p. X, and 5.]

[Footnote 1148: Roederer, III., 544 (February 24, 1809). Cf. Meneval,
"Napoléon et Marie-Louise, souvenirs historiques," I., 210-213.]

[Footnote 1149: Pelet de la Lozère," Opinions de Napoléon au conseil
d'état," p.8.--Roederer, III., 380.]

[Footnote 1150: Mollien, "Mémoires," I., 379; II., 230.--Roederer,
III., 434. "He is at the head of all things. He governs, administrates,
negotiates, works eighteen hours a day, with the clearest and best
organized head; he has governed more in three years than kings in
a hundred years."--Lavalette, "Mémoires," II., 75. (The words of
Napoleon's secretary on Napoleon's labor in Paris, after Leipsic) "He
retires at eleven, but gets up at three o'clock in the morning, and
until the evening there is not a moment he does not devote to work.
It is time this stopped, for he will be used up, and myself before he
is."--Gaudin, Duc de Gaëte, "Mémoires," III. (supplement), p.75. Account
of an evening in which, from eight o'clock to three in the morning,
Napoleon examines with Gaudin his general budget, during seven
consecutive hours, without stopping a minute.--Sir Neil Campbell,
"Napoléon at Fontainebleau and at Elbe," p.243. "Journal de Sir Neil
Campbell a' l'ile d'Elbe": I never saw any man, in any station in life,
so personally active and so persistent in his activity. He seems to
take pleasure in perpetual motion and in seeing those who accompany
him completely tired out, which frequently happened in my case when I
accompanied him.. . Yesterday, after having been on his legs from eight
in the morning to three in the afternoon, visiting the frigates and
transports, even to going down to the lower compartments among the
horses, he rode on horseback for three hours, and, as he afterwards said
to me, to rest himself."]

[Footnote 1151: The starting-point of the great discoveries of Darwin is
the physical, detailed description he made in his study of animals and
plants, as living; during the whole course of life, through so many
difficulties and subject to a fierce competition. This study is wholly
lacking in the ordinary zoologist or botanist, whose mind is busy only
with anatomical preparations or collections of plants. In every science,
the difficulty lies in describing in a nutshell, using significant
examples, the real object, just as it exists before us, and its
true history. Claude Bernard one day remarked to me, "We shall know
physiology when we are able to follow step by step a molecule of carbon
or azote in the body of a dog, give its history, and describe its
passage from its entrance to its exit."]

[Footnote 1152: Thibaudeau, "Mémoires sur le Consulat," 204. (Apropos of
the tribunate): "They consist of a dozen or fifteen metaphysicians who
ought to be flung into the water; they crawl all over me like vermin."]

[Footnote 1153: Madame de Rémusat, I., 115: "He is really ignorant,
having read very little and always hastily."--Stendhal, "Mémoires sur
Napoleon": "His education was very defective....He knew nothing of the
great principles discovered within the past one hundred years," and
just those which concern man or society. "For example, he had not read
Montesquieu as this writer ought to be read, that is to say, in a way to
accept or decidedly reject each of the thirty-one books of the 'Esprit
des lois.' He had not thus read Bayle's Dictionary nor the Essay on the
Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. This ignorance of the Emperor's was not
perceptible in conversation, and first, because he led in conversation,
and next because with Italian finesse no question put by him,
or careless supposition thrown out, ever betrayed that
ignorance."--Bourrienne. I., 19, 21: At Brienne, "unfortunately for us,
the monks to whom the education of youth was confided knew nothing, and
were too poor to pay good foreign teachers.... It is inconceivable
how any capable man ever graduated from this educational
institution."--Yung, I., 125 (Notes made by him on Bonaparte, when
he left the Military Academy): "Very fond of the abstract sciences,
indifferent to others, well grounded in mathematics and geography."]

[Footnote 1154: Roederer, III., 544 (March 6, 1809), 26, 563 (Jan. 23,
1811, and Nov. 12, 1813).]

[Footnote 1155: Mollien, I., 348 (a short time before the rupture of the
peace of Amiens), III., 16: "It was at the end of January, 1809, that he
wanted a full report of the financial situation on the 31st of December,
1808 .... This report was to be ready in two days."--III., 34: "A
complete balance sheet of the public treasury for the first six months
of 1812 was under Napoleon's eyes at Witebsk, the 11th of August, eleven
days after the close of these first six months. What is truly wonderful
is, that amidst so many different occupations and preoccupations.... he
could preserve such an accurate run of the proceedings and methods of
the administrative branches about which he wanted to know at any moment.
Nobody had any excuse for not answering him, for each was questioned in
his own terms; it is that singular aptitude of the head of the State,
and the technical precision of his questions, which alone explains how
he could maintain such a remarkable ensemble in an administrative system
of which the smallest threads centered in himself."]

[Footnote 1156: 200 years after the death of Napoleon Sir Alfred Ayer
thus writes in "LANGUAGE, TRUTH AND LOGIC": 'Actually, we shall see that
the only test to which a form of scientific procedure which satisfies
the necessary condition of self-consistency is subject, is the test of
its success in practice. We are entitled to have faith in our procedure
just so long as it does the work it is designed to do--that is, enables
us to predict future experience, and so to control our environment.'
And on the Purpose of Inquiry: 'The traditional disputes of philosophers
are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful. The
surest way to end them is to establish beyond question what should be
the purpose and the method of philosophical inquiry.' (SR.)]

[Footnote 1157: An expression of Mollien.]

[Footnote 1158: Meneval, I., 210, 213.--Roederer, III., 537, 545
(February and March, 1889): Words of Napoleon: "At this moment it was
nearly midnight."--Ibid., IV., 55 (November, 1809). Read the admirable
examination of Roederer by Napoleon on the Kingdom of Naples. His
queries form a vast systematic and concise network, embracing the entire
subject, leaving no physical or moral data, no useful circumstance not
seized upon.--Ségur, II., 231: M. De Ségur, ordered to inspect every
part of the coast-line, had sent in his report: "'I have seen
your reports,' said the First Consul to me, 'and they are exact.
Nevertheless, you forgot at Osten two cannon out of the four.'--And
he pointed out the place, 'a roadway behind the town.' I went out
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 recollection."--"Correspondance," letter to
King Joseph, August 6, 1806: "The admirable condition of my armies is
due to this, that I give attention to them every day for an hour or two,
and, when the monthly reports come in, to the state of my troops and
fleets, all forming about twenty large volumes. I leave every other
occupation to read them over in detail, to see what difference there
is between one month and another. I take more pleasure in reading those
than any young girl does in a novel."--Cadet de Gassicourt, "Voyage en
Autriche"(1809). On his reviews at Schoenbrunn and his verification of
the contents of a pontoon-wagon, taken as an example.]

[Footnote 1159: One ancient French league equals app. 4 km. (SR.)]

[Footnote 1160: Bourrienne, II., 116; IV., 238: "He had not a good
memory for proper names, words, and dates, but it was prodigious for
facts and localities. I remember that, on the way from Paris to Toulon,
he called my attention to ten places suitable for giving battle.... It
was a souvenir of his youthful travels, and he described to me the lay
of the ground, designating the positions he would have taken even before
we were on the spot." March 17, 1800, puncturing a card with a pin,
he shows Bourrienne the place where he intends to beat Mélas, at San
Juliano. "Four months after this I found myself at San Juliano with his
portfolio and dispatches, and, that very evening, at Torre-di-Gafolo, a
league off, I wrote the bulletin of the battle under his dictation" (of
Marengo).--De Ségur, II., 30 (Narrative of M. Daru to M. De Ségur Aug.
13, 1805, at the headquarters of La Manche, Napoleon dictates to M. Daru
the complete plan of the campaign against Austria): "Order of marches,
their duration, places of convergence 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 two hundred leagues.... The battle-field, 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 favor."--M. de La Vallette, "Mémoires,"
II., p. 35. (He was postmaster-general): "It often happened to me that
I was not as certain as he was of distances and of many details in my
administration on which he was able to set me straight."--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."]

[Footnote 1161: Madame de Rémusat, I., 103, 268.]

[Footnote 1162: Thibaudeau, p.25, I (on the Jacobin survivors):
"They are nothing but common artisans, painters, etc., with lively
imaginations, a little better instructed than the people, living amongst
the people and exercising influence over them."--Madame de Rémusat,
I., 271 (on the royalist party): "It is very easy to deceive that party
because its starting-point is not what it is, but what it would like to
have."--I., 337: "The Bourbons will never see anything except through
the Oeil de Boeuf."--Thibaudeau, p.46: "Insurrections and emigrations
are skin diseases; terrorism is an internal malady." Ibid., 75: "What
now keeps the spirit of the army up is the idea soldiers have that they
occupy the places of former nobles."]

[Footnote 1163: Thibaudeau, pp.419 to 452. (Both texts are given
in separate columns.) And passim, for instance, p.84, the following
portrayal of the decadal system of worship under the Republic: "It was
imagined that citizens could be got together in churches, to freeze
with cold and hear, read, and study laws, in which there was already but
little fun for those who executed them." Another example of the way
in which his ideas expressed themselves through imagery (Pelet de la
Lozère, p. 242): "I am not satisfied with the customs regulations on
the Alps. They show no life. We don't hear the rattle of crown pieces
pouring into the public treasury." To appreciate the vividness of
Napoleon's expressions and thought the reader must consult, especially,
the five or six long conversations, noted on the very evening of the day
they occurred by Roederer; the two or three conversations likewise noted
by Miot de Melito; the scenes narrated by Beugnot; the notes of Pelet de
la Lozère and by Stanislas de Girardin, and nearly the entire volume by
Thibaudeau.]

[Footnote 1164: Pelet de la Lozère, 63, 64. (On the physiological
differences between the English and the French.)--Madame de Rémusat, I.,
273, 392: "You, Frenchmen, are not in earnest about anything, except,
perhaps, equality, and even here you would gladly give this up if you
were sure of being the foremost.... The hope of advancement in the 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."--III., 153 "Liberty is the craving of a
small and privileged class by nature, with faculties superior to the
common run of men; this class, therefore, may be put under
restraint with impunity; equality, on the contrary, catches the
multitude."--Thibaudeau, 99: "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 of certain situations are masterpieces of
picturesque concision. "Why did I stop and sign the preliminaries of
Leoben? Because I played vingt-et-un and was satisfied with twenty." His
insight into (dramatic) 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."--(On Madame
de Staël): "This woman teaches people to think who never took to it, or
have forgotten how."--(On Chateaubriand, 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."--(On Abbé Delille): "He is wit in its dotage."--(On
Pasquier and Molé): "I make the most of one, and made the
other."--Madame de Rémusat, II., 389, 391, 394, 399, 402; III., 67.]

[Footnote 1165: Bourrienne, II., 281, 342: "It pained me to write
official statements under his dictation, of which each was an
imposture." He always answered: "My dear sir, you are a simpleton--you
understand nothing!"--Madame de Rémusat, II., 205, 209.]

[Footnote 1166: See especially the campaign bulletins for 1807, so
insulting to the king and queen of Prussia, but, owing to that fact,
so well calculated to excite the contemptuous laughter and jeers of the
soldiers.]

[Footnote 1167: In "La Correspondance de Napoleon," published in
thirty-two volumes, the letters are arranged under dates.--In his
'"Correspondance avec Eugène, vice-roi d'Italie," they are arranged
under chapters; also with Joseph, King of Naples and afterwards King of
Spain. It is easy to select other chapters not less instructive: one on
foreign affairs (letters to M. de Champagny, M de Talleyrand, and M.
de Bassano); another on the finances (letters to M. Gaudin and to M.
Mollien); another on the navy (letters to Admiral Decrès); another on
military administration (letters to General Clarke); another on the
affairs of the Church (letters to M. Portalis and to M. Bigot de
Préameneu); another on the Police (letters to Fouché), etc.--Finally, by
dividing and distributing his letters according as they relate to this
or that grand enterprise, especially to this or that military campaign,
a third classification could be made.--In this way we can form a concept
of the vastness of his positive knowledge, also of the scope of his
intellect and talents. Cf. especially the following letters to Prince
Eugène, June II, 1806 (on the supplies and expenses of the Italian
army); June 1st and 18th, 1806 (on the occupation of Dalmatia, and on
the military situation, offensive and defensive). To Gen. Dejean, April
28, 1806 (on the war supplies); June 27, 1806 (on the fortifications
of Peschiera) July 20, 1806 (on the fortifications of Wesel and of
Juliers).--"Mes souvenirs sur Napoleon", p. 353 by the Count Chaptal:
"One day, the Emperor said to me that he would like to organize a
military school at Fontainebleau; he then explained to me the principal
features of the establishment, and ordered me to draw up the necessary
articles and bring them to him the next day. I worked all night and they
were ready at the appointed hour. He read them over and pronounced them
correct, but not complete. He bade me take a seat and then dictated to
me for two or three hours a plan which consisted of five hundred and
seventeen articles. Nothing more perfect, in my opinion, ever issued
from a man's brain.--At another time, the Empress Josephine was to
take the waters at Aix-la-Chapelle, and the Emperor summoned me.
'The Empress,' said he, 'is to leave to-morrow morning. She is a
good-natured, easy-going woman and must have her route and behavior
marked out for her. Write it down.' He then dictated instructions to me
on twenty-one large sheets of paper, in which everything she was to say
and to do was designated, even the questions and replies she was to make
to the authorities on the way."]

[Footnote 1168: One French league equals approximately 4 km. 70,000
square leagues then equal 1,120,000 km.2, or 400,000 square miles or 11%
of the United States but 5 times the size of Great Britain. (SR.)]

[Footnote 1169: Cf. in the "Correspondance" the letters dated at
Schoenbrunn near Vienna, during August and September, 1809, and
especially: the great number of letters and orders relating to the
English expeditions to Walcheren; the letters to chief-judge Régnier and
to the arch-chancellor Cambacérès on expropriations for public benefit
(Aug. 21, Sept. 7 and 29); the letters and orders to M. de Champagny
to treat with Austria (Aug. 19, and Sept. 10, 15, 18, 22, and 23);
the letters to Admirable Decrès, to despatch naval expeditions to the
colonies (Aug.17 and Sept. 26); the letter to Mollien on the budget of
expenditure (Aug. 8); the letter to Clarke on the statement of guns
in store throughout the empire (Sept. 14). Other letters, ordering the
preparation of two treatises on military art (Oct. 1), two works on
the history and encroachments of the Holy See (Oct. 3), prohibiting
conferences at Saint-Sulpice (Sept. 15), and forbidding priests to
preach outside the churches (Sept. 24).--From Schoenbrunn, he watches
the details of public works in France and Italy; for instance, the
letters to M. le Montalivet (Sept.30), to send an auditor post to Parma,
to have a dyke repaired at once, and (Oct. 8) to hasten the building of
several bridges and quays at Lyons.]

[Footnote 1170: He says himself; "I always transpose my theme in many
ways."]

[Footnote 1171: Madame de Rémusat, I., 117, 120. "1 heard M. de
Talleyrand exclaim one day, some what out of humor, 'This devil of a
man misleads you in all directions. Even his passions escape you, for he
finds some way to counterfeit them, although they really exist.'"--For
example, immediately prior to the violent confrontation with Lord
Whitworth, which was to put an end to the treaty of Amiens, he was
chatting and amusing himself with the women and the infant Napoleon, his
nephew, in the gayest and most unconcerned manner: "He is suddenly told
that the company had assembled. His countenance changes like that of
an actor when the scene shifts. He seems to turn pale at will and his
features contract"; he rises, steps up precipitately to the English
ambassador, and fulminates for two hours before two hundred persons.
(Hansard's Parliamentary History, vol. XXVI, dispatches of Lord
Whitworth, pp. 1798, 1302, 1310.)--"He often observes that the
politician should calculate every advantage that could be gained by his
defects." One day, after an explosion he says to Abbé de Pradt: "You
thought me angry! you are mistaken. Anger with me never mounts higher
than here (pointing to his neck)."]

[Footnote 1172: Roederer, III. (The first days of Brumaire, year VIII.)]

[Footnote 1173: Bourrienne, III., 114.]

[Footnote 1174: Bourrienne, II., 228. (Conversation with Bourrienne in
the park at Passeriano.)]

[Footnote 1175: Ibid., II., 331. (Written down by Bourrienne the same
evening.)]

[Footnote 1176: Madame de Rémusat, I., 274.--De Ségur, II., 459.
(Napoleon's own words on the eve of the battle of Austerlitz): "Yes, if
I had taken Acre, I would have assumed the turban, I would have put the
army in loose breeches; I would no longer have exposed it, except at the
last extremity; I would have made it my sacred battalion, my immortals.
It is with Arabs, Greeks, and Armenians that I would have ended the war
against the Turks. Instead of one battle in Moravia I would have gained
a battle of Issus; I would have made myself emperor of the East,
and returned to Paris by the way of Constantinople."--De Pradt, p.19
(Napoleon's own words at Mayence, September, 1804): "Since two hundred
years there is nothing more to do in Europe; it is only in the East that
things can be carried out on a grand scale."]

[Footnote 1177: Madame de Rémusat, I., 407.--Miot de Melito, II., 214
(a few weeks after his coronation): "There will be no repose in Europe
until it is under one head, under an Emperor, whose officers would be
kings, who would distribute kingdoms to his lieutenants, who would make
one of them King of Italy, another King of Bavaria, here a landmann of
Switzerland, and here a stadtholder of Holland, etc."]

[Footnote 1178: "Correspondance de Napoleon I.," vol. XXX., 550, 558.
(Memoirs dictated by Napoleon at Saint Hélène.)--Miot de Melito, II.,
290.--D'Hausonvillc, "l'Église Romaine et le Premier Empire, passim.--
Mémorial." "Paris would become the capital of the Christian world, and
I would have governed the religious world as well as the political
world."]

[Footnote 1179: De Pradt, 23.]

[Footnote 1180: "Mémoires et Mémorial." "It was essential that Paris
should become the unique capital, not to be compared with other
capitals. The masterpieces of science and of art, the museums, all that
had illustrated past centuries, were to be collected there. Napoleon
regretted that he could not transport St. Peter's to Paris; the meanness
of Notre Dame dissatisfied him."]

[Footnote 1181: Villemain, "Souvenir contemporaines," I., 175.
Napoleon's statement to M. de Narbonne early in March, 1812, and
repeated by him to Villemain an hour afterwards. The wording is at
second hand and merely a very good imitation, while the ideas are
substantially Napoleon's. Cf. his fantasies about Italy and the
Mediterranean, equally exaggerated ("Correspondence," XXX., 548), and an
admirable improvisation on Spain and the colonies at Bayonne.--De Pradt.
"Mémoires sur les revolutions d'Espagne," p.130: "Therefore Napoleon
talked, or rather poetised; he Ossianized for a long time... like a man
full of a sentiment which oppressed him, in an animated, picturesque
style, and with the impetuosity, imagery, and originality which were
familiar to him,... on the vast throne of Mexico and Peru, on the
greatness of the sovereigns who should possess them.. .. and on the
results which these great foundations would have on the universe. I had
often heard him, but under no circumstances had I ever heard him develop
such a wealth and compass of imagination. Whether it was the richness of
his subject, or whether his faculties had become excited by the scene he
conjured up, and all the chords of the instrument vibrated at once, he
was sublime."]

[Footnote 1182: Roederer, III., 541 (February 2, 1809): "I love power.
But I love it as an artist.... I love it as a musician loves his violin,
for the tones, chords, and harmonies he can get out of it."]




CHAPTER II. HIS IDEAS, PASSIONS AND INTELLIGENCE.




I. Intense Passions.

     Personality and character during the Italian Renaissance and
     during the present time.--Intensity of the passions in
     Bonaparte.--His excessive touchiness.--His immediate
     violence.--His impatience, rapidity, and need of talking.
     --His temperament, tension, and faults.

On taking a near view of the contemporaries of Dante and Michael
Angelo, we find that they differ from us more in character than in
intellect.[1201] With us, three hundred years of police and of courts
of justice, of social discipline and peaceful habits, of hereditary
civilization, have diminished the force and violence of the passions
natural to Man. In Italy, in the Renaissance epoch, they 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,
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 this 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
with the Malatestas and the Borgias, a more sensitive and more impulsive
intellect, one capable of such electric shocks and explosions, in which
the roar and flashes of tempest lasted longer and of which the effects
were more irresistible. In his mind no idea remains 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[1202] Sometimes, the eruption is so sudden, that the restraint
does not come soon enough. One day, in Egypt,[1203] on entertaining
a number of French ladies at dinner, he has one of them, who was
very pretty and whose husband he had just sent off to France, placed
alongside of him; suddenly, as if accidentally, he overturns a pitcher
of water on her, and, under the pretence of enabling her to rearrange
her wet dress, he leads her into another room where he remains with her
a long time, too long, while the other guests seated at the table wait
quietly and exchange glances. Another day, at Paris, toward the epoch
of the Concordat,[1204] 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 being moved to a friend's house, he remains there ill in
bed 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. His explosions of anger, half-calculated, half-involuntary,
serve him quite as much as they relieve him, in public as well 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,[1205] whenever he wishes to set
an example or "keep the people around him on the alert." The public and
the army regard him as impassible; but, apart from the battles in which
he wears a mask of bronze, apart from the official ceremonies in which
he assumes a necessarily dignified air, 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 Saint Cloud,
caught by Josephine in the arms of another woman, he runs after
the unlucky interrupter in such a way that "she barely has time to
escape";[1206] 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." 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."[1207] 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."[1208] 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.[1209]

Never was there such impatient touchiness. "When dressing himself,[1210]
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;[1211] 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,[1212] take the place of the man of business and the
statesman.

"With him," says a good observer,[1213] "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,[1214] 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."[1215]

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,[1216] 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.[1217] Speaking of the capitulation
of Baylen, at a full meeting of the Council of State,[1218] 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.[1219] "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,[1220] "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."[1221] 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.[1222] 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.[1223]




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.[1224] And the notes of the Military Academy
add;[1225]

"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.[1226]--"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.[1227] "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."[1228]

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,[1229] "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.[1230] 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.[1231] 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.[1232] 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."[1233] 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,[1234] 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,[1235]
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,[1236] 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[1237] 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,[1238]
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."[1239]--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.[1240] 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,"[1241] 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.[1242] 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."[1243] 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,"[1244] 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,[1245] "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.[1246]--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;[1247]
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,[1248] "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,[1249] 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.[1250] "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:[1251]

"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[1252] 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."[1253]

Hence, whoever has anything to do with him, must abandon his
independence and become his tool of government.

"That terrible man," often exclaimed Decrés[1254] "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;[1255] 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,[1256] 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,"[1257] 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."[1258]

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,[1259] "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,[1260] "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."[1261]
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.[1262] 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,[1263] "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!"[1264] Portalis,
director of the publishing office,[1265] 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,"[1266] 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,[1267] 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,[1268] 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.[1269] "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 he 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?"[1270]

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,[1271] "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;[1272] 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,"[1273] 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,[1274]
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."[1275]

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:[1276]

"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,[1277] 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:[1278]

"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:[1279]

"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,[1280] 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,[1281] the nearer one is to his person the more disagreeable
life becomes.[1282] "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;[1283] 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[1284] 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!'"[1285]




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, and
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.[1286]--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.'[1287]... 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!'"[1288] 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,[1289] 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.[1290] 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."[1291] Hence, "there is not one who does not rejoice when he
moves off."[1292] 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;[1293] 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,"[1294]
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,[1295] he
provokes, threatens, and defies.[1296] He treats his adversary with a
lofty air, insults him often to his face, and charges him with the most
disgraceful imputations.[1297] 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;[1298] 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,[1299] 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?[12100].... 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[12101], 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."[12102]

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."[12103] 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."[12104] 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"[12105] "Europe recognizes that
Holland, Italy, and Switzerland are at the disposition of France.[12106]
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;[12107]
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";[12108] 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."[12109] 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."[12110]
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...." [12111]--"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.[12112] 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."[12113] 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;[12114] 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.[12115] 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,"[12116] 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.[12117] 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.[12118]--And all
this sometimes by a simple decree, with no other alleged motive than
his interest, his convenience, or his pleasure,[12119] 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,[12120] 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.[12121]

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,[12122] 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;[12123] 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[12124] 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.[12125] 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,[12126] "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 he 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.[12127] "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."[12128] In 1809, adds the same diplomat:[12129] "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[12130] 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,[12131]"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,[12132] 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.[12133] Later, at St.
Helena, he falls into a melting mood over "the French people whom he
loved so dearly."[12134] 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;[12135] 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.[12136] 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.[12137] 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.[12138]
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";[12139] 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[12140] 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.[12141] "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,

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