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_ Among the eminent persons of the nineteenth century, Bonaparte is far
the best known, and the most powerful; and owes his predominance to
the fidelity with which he expresses the tone of thought and belief,
the aims of the masses of active and cultivated men. It is Swedenborg's
theory, that every organ is made up of homogeneous particles; or, as
it is sometimes expressed, every whole is made of similars; that is,
the lungs are composed of infinitely small lungs; the liver, of
infinitely small livers; the kidney, of little kidneys, etc. Following
this analogy, if any man is found to carry with him the power and
affections of vast numbers, if Napoleon is France, if Napoleon is
Europe, it is because the people whom he sways are little Napoleons.
In our society, there is a standing antagonism between the conservative
and the democratic classes; between those who have made their fortunes,
and the young and the poor who have fortunes to make; between the
interests of dead labor,--that is, the labor of hands long ago still
in the grave, which labor is now entombed in money stocks, or in land
and buildings owned by idle capitalists,--and the interests of living
labor, which seeks to possess itself of land, and buildings, and money
stocks. The first class is timid, selfish, illiberal, hating innovation,
and continually losing numbers by death. The second class is selfish
also, encroaching, bold, self-relying, always outnumbering the other,
and recruiting its numbers every hour by births. It desires to keep
open every avenue to the competition of all, and to multiply
avenues;--the class of business men in America, in England, in France,
and throughout Europe; the class of industry and skill. Napoleon is
its representative. The instinct of active, brave, able men, throughout
the middle class everywhere, has pointed out Napoleon as the incarnate
Democrat. He had their virtues, and their vices; above all, he had
their spirit or aim. That tendency is material, pointing at a sensual
success, and employing the richest and most various means to that end;
conversant with mechanical powers, highly intellectual, widely and
accurately learned and skilful, but subordinating all intellectual and
spiritual forces into means to a material success. To be the rich man
is the end. "God has granted" says the Koran, "to every people a prophet
in its own tongue." Paris, and London, and New York, the spirit of
commerce, of money, and material power, were also to have their prophet;
and Bonaparte was qualified and sent.
Every one of the million readers of anecdotes, or memoirs, or lives
of Napoleon, delights in the page, because he studies in it his own
history. Napoleon is thoroughly modern, and, at the highest point of
his fortunes, has the very spirit of the newspapers. He is no saint,--to
use his own word, "no capuchin," and he is no hero, in the high sense.
The man in the street finds in him the qualities and powers of other
men in the street. He finds him, like himself, by birth a citizen,
who, by very intelligible merits, arrived at such a commanding position,
that he could indulge all those tastes which the common man possesses,
but is obliged to conceal and deny; good society, good books, fast
traveling, dress, dinners, servants without number, personal weight,
the execution of his ideas, the standing in the attitude of a benefactor
to all persons about him, the refined enjoyments of pictures, statues,
music, palaces, and conventional honors,--precisely what is agreeable
to the heart of every man in the nineteenth century,--this powerful
man possessed.
It is true that a man of Napoleon's truth of adaptation to the mind
of the masses around him becomes not merely representative, but actually
a monopolizer and usurper of other minds. Thus Mirabeau plagiarized
every good thought, every good word, that was spoken in France. Dumont
relates that he sat in the gallery of the Convention, and heard Mirabeau
make a speech. It struck Dumont that he could fit it with a peroration,
which he wrote in pencil immediately, and showed to Lord Elgin, who
sat by him. Lord Elgin approved it, and Dumont, in the evening, showed
it to Mirabeau. Mirabeau read it, pronounced it admirable, and declared
he would incorporate it into his harangue, to-morrow, to the Assembly.
"It is impossible," said Dumont, "as, unfortunately, I have shown it
to Lord Elgin." "If you have shown it to Lord Elgin, and to fifty
persons beside, I shall still speak it to-morrow:" and he did speak
it, with much effect, at the next day's session. For Mirabeau, with
his overpowering personality, felt that these things, which his presence
inspired, were as much his own, as if he had said them, and that his
adoption of them gave them their weight. Much more absolute and
centralizing was the successor to Mirabeau's popularity, and to much
more than his predominance in France. Indeed, a man of Napoleon's stamp
almost ceases to have a private speech and opinion. He is so largely
receptive, and is so placed, that he comes to be a bureau for all the
intelligence, wit, and power, of the age and country. He gains the
battle; he makes the code; he makes the system of weights and measures;
he levels the Alps; he builds the road. All distinguished engineers,
savants, statists, report to him; so likewise do all good heads in
every kind; he adopts the best measures, sets his stamp on them, and
not these alone, but on every happy and memorable expression. Every
sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves
reading, as it is the sense of France.
Bonaparte was the idol of common men, because he had in transcendent
degree the qualities and powers of common men. There is a certain
satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we
get rid of cant and hypocrisy. Bonaparte wrought, in common with that
great class he represented, for power and wealth,--but Bonaparte,
specially, without any scruple as to the means. All the sentiments
which embarrass men's pursuit of these objects, he set aside. The
sentiments were for women and children. Fontanes, in 1804, expressed
Napoleon's own sense, when, in behalf of the Senate, he addressed
him,--"Sire, the desire of perfection is the worst disease that ever
afflicted the human mind." The advocates of liberty, and of progress,
are "ideologists;"--a word of contempt often in his mouth;--"Necker
is an ideologist:" "Lafayette is an ideologist."
An Italian proverb, too well known, declares that, "if you would
succeed, you must not be too good." It is an advantage, within certain
limits, to have renounced the dominion of the sentiments of piety,
gratitude, and generosity; since, what was an impassable bar to us,
and still is to others, becomes a convenient weapon for our purposes;
just as the river which was a formidable barrier, winter transforms
into the smoothest of roads.
Napoleon renounced, once for all, sentiments and affections, and would
help himself with his hands and his head. With him is no miracle, and
no magic. He is a worker in brass, in iron, in wood, in earth, in
roads, in buildings, in money, and in troops, and a very consistent
and wise master-workman. He is never weak and literary, but acts with
the solidity and the precision of natural agents. He has not lost his
native sense and sympathy with things. Men give way before such a man
as before natural events. To be sure, there are men enough who are
immersed in things, as farmers, smiths, sailors, and mechanics
generally; and we know how real and solid such men appear in the
presence of scholars and grammarians; but these men ordinarily lack
the power of arrangement, and are like hands without a head. But
Bonaparte superadded to this mineral and animal force, insight and
generalization, so that men saw in him combined the natural and the
intellectual power, as if the sea and land had taken flesh and begun
to cipher. Therefore the land and sea seem to presuppose him. He came
unto his own, and they received him. This ciphering operative knows
what he is working with, and what is the product. He knew the properties
of gold and iron, of wheels and ships, of troops and diplomatists, and
required that each should do after its kind.
The art of war was the game in which he exerted his arithmetic. It
consisted, according to him, in having always more forces than the
enemy, on the point where the enemy is attacked, or where he attacks:
and his whole talent is strained by endless manoeuvre and evolution,
to march always on the enemy at an angle, and destroy his forces in
detail. It is obvious that a very small force, skilfully and rapidly
manoeuvring, so as always to bring two men against one at the point
of engagement, will be an overmatch for a much larger body of men.
The times, his constitution, and his early circumstances, combined to
develop this pattern democrat. He had the virtues of his class, and
the conditions for their activity. That common sense, which no sooner
respects any end, than it finds the means to effect it; the delight
in the use of means; in the choice, simplification, and combining of
means; the directness and thoroughness of his work; the prudence with
which all was seen, and the energy with which all was done, make him
the natural organ and head of what I may almost call, from its extent,
the modern party.
Nature must have far the greatest share in every success, and so in
his. Such a man was wanted, and such a man was born; a man of stone
and iron, capable of sitting on horseback sixteen or seventeen hours,
of going many days together without rest or food, except by snatches,
and with the speed and spring of a tiger in action; a man not
embarrassed by any scruples; compact, instant, selfish, prudent, and
of a perception which did not suffer itself to be balked or misled by
any pretences of others, or any superstition, or any heat or haste of
his own. "My hand of iron," he said, "was not at the extremity of my
arm; it was immediately connected with my head." He respected the power
of nature and fortune, and ascribed to it his superiority, instead of
valuing himself, like inferior men, on his opinionativeness and waging
war with nature. His favorite rhetoric lay in allusion to his star:
and he pleased himself, as well as the people, when he styled himself
the "Child of Destiny." "They charge me," he said, "with the commission
of great crimes: men of my stamp do not commit crimes. Nothing has
been more simple than my elevation: 'tis in vain to ascribe it to
intrigue or crime: it was owing to the peculiarity of the times, and
to my reputation of having fought well against the enemies of my
country. I have always marched with the opinion of great masses, and
with events. Of what use, then, would crimes be to me?" Again he said,
speaking of his son, "My son cannot replace me; I could not replace
myself. I am the creature of circumstances." He had a directness of
action never before combined with so much comprehension. He is a
realist, terrific to all talkers, and confused truth-obscuring persons.
He sees where the matter hinges, throws himself on the precise point
of resistance, and slights all other considerations. He is strong in
the right manner, namely, by insight. He never blundered into victory,
but won his battles in his head, before he won them on the field. His
principal means are in himself. He asks counsel of no other. In 1796,
he writes to the Directory: "I have conducted the campaign without
consulting any one. I should have done no good, if I had been under
the necessity of conforming to the notions of another person. I have
gained some advantages over superior forces, and when totally destitute
of everything, because, in the persuasion that your confidence was
reposed in me, my actions were as prompt as my thoughts."
History is full, down to this day, of the imbecility of kings and
governors. They are a class of persons much to be pitied, for they
know not what they should do. The weavers strike for bread; and the
king and his ministers, not knowing what to do, meet them with bayonets.
But Napoleon understood his business. Here was a man who, in each
moment and emergency, knew what to do next. It is an immense comfort
and refreshment to the spirits, not only of kings, but of citizens.
Few men have any next; they live from hand to mouth, without plan, and
are ever at the end of their line, and, after each action, wait for
an impulse from abroad. Napoleon had been the first man of the world
if his ends had been purely public. As he is, he inspires confidence
and vigor by the extraordinary unity of his action. He is firm, sure,
self-denying, self-postponing, sacrificing everything to his
aim,--money, troops, generals, and his own safety also, to his aim;
not misled, like common adventurers, by the splendor of his own means.
"Incidents ought not to govern policy," he said, "but policy,
incidents." "To be hurried away by every event, is to have no political
system at all. His victories were only so many doors, and he never for
a moment lost sight of his way onward, in the dazzle and uproar of the
present circumstance. He knew what to do, and he flew to his mark. He
would shorten a straight line to come at his object. Horrible anecdotes
may, no doubt, be collected from his history, of the price at which
he bought his successes; but he must not therefore be set down as
cruel; but only as one who knew no impediment to his will; not
bloodthirsty, not cruel,--but woe to what thing or person stood in his
way! Not bloodthirsty, but not sparing of blood,--and pitiless. He saw
only the object: the obstacle must give way. "Sire, General Clarke
cannot combine with General Junot, for the dreadful fire of the Austrian
battery."--"Let him carry the battery."--"Sire, every regiment that
approaches the heavy artillery is sacrified: Sire, what orders?"--
"Forward, forward!" Seruzier, a colonel of artillery, gives, in his
"Military Memoirs," the following sketch of a scene after the battle
of Austerlitz.--"At the moment in which the Russian army was making
its retreat, painfully, but in good order, on the ice of the lake, the
Emperor Napoleon came riding at full speed toward the artillery. 'You
are losing time,' he cried; 'fire upon those masses; they must be
engulfed; fire upon the ice!' The order remained unexecuted for ten
minutes. In vain several officers and myself were placed on the slope
of a hill to produce the effect; their balls and mine rolled upon the
ice, without breaking it up. Seeing that, I tried a simple method of
elevating light howitzers. The almost perpendicular fall of the heavy
projectiles produced the desired effect. My method was immediately
followed by the adjoining batteries, and in less than no time we buried
'some' [Footnote: As I quote at second-hand, and cannot procure
Seruzier, I dare not adopt the high figure I find.] thousands of
Russians and Austrians under the waters of the lake."
In the plenitude of his resources, every obstacle seemed to vanish.
"There shall be no Alps," he said; and he built his perfect roads,
climbing by graded galleries their steepest precipices, until Italy
was as open to Paris as any town in France. He laid his bones to, and
wrought for his crown. Having decided what was to be done, he did that
with might and main. He put out all his strength. He risked everything,
and spared nothing, neither ammunition, nor money, nor troops, nor
generals, nor himself.
We like to see everything do its office after its kind, whether it be
a milch-cow or a rattlesnake; and, if fighting be the best mode of
adjusting national differences (as large majorities of men seem to
agree), certainly Bonaparte was right in making it thorough. "The grand
principle of war," he said, "was, that an army ought always to be
ready, by day and by night, and at all hours, to make all the resistance
it is capable of making." He never economized his ammunition, but, on
a hostile position, rained a torrent of iron,--shells, balls,
grape-shot,--to annihilate all defense. On any point of resistance,
he concentrated squadron on squadron in overwhelming numbers, until
it was swept out of existence. To a regiment of horse-chasseurs at
Lobenstein, two days before the battle of Jena, Napoleon said, "My
lads, you must not fear death; when soldiers brave death, they drive
him into the enemy's ranks." In the fury of assault, he no more spared
himself. He went to the edge of his possibility. It is plain that in
Italy he did what he could, and all that he could. He came, several
times, within an inch of ruin; and his own person was all but lost.
He was flung into the marsh at Arcola. The Austrians were between him
and his troops, in the melee, and he was brought off with desperate
efforts. At Lonato, and at other places, he was on the point of being
taken prisoner. He fought sixty battles. He had never enough. Each
victory was a new weapon. "My power would fall, were I not to support
it by new achievements. Conquest has made me what I am, and conquest
must maintain me." He felt, with every wise man, that as much life is
needed for conservation as for creation. We are always in peril, always
in a bad plight, just on the edge of destruction, and only to be saved
by invention and courage.
This vigor was guarded and tempered by the coldest prudence and
punctuality. A thunderbolt in the attack, he was found invulnerable
in his intrenchments. His very attack was never the inspiration of
courage, but the result of calculation. His idea of the best defense
consists in being still the attacking party. "My ambition," he says,
"was great, but was of a cold nature." In one of his conversations
with Las Casas, he remarked, "As to moral courage, I have rarely met
with the two-o'clock-in-the-morning kind; I mean unprepared courage,
that which, is necessary on an unexpected occasion; and which, in spite
of the most unforeseen events, leaves full freedom of judgment and
decision;" and he did not hesitate to declare that he was himself
eminently endowed with this "two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, and
that he had met with few persons equal to himself in this respect."
Everything depended on the nicety of his combinations, and the stars
were not more punctual than his arithmetic. His personal attention
descended to the smallest particulars. "At Montebello, I ordered
Kellermann to attack with eight hundred horse, and with these he
separated the six thousand Hungarian grenadiers, before the very eyes
of the Austrian cavalry. This cavalry was half a league off, and
required a quarter of an hour to arrive on the field of action; and
I have observed, that it is always these quarters of an hour that
decide the fate of a battle." "Before he fought a battle, Bonaparte
thought little about what he should do in case of success, but a great
deal about what he should do in case of a reverse of fortune. "The
same prudence and good sense mark all his behavior. His instructions
to his secretary at the Tuilleries are worth remembering. "During the
night, enter my chamber as seldom as possible. Do not wake me when you
have any good news to communicate; with that there is no hurry. But
when you bring bad news, rouse me instantly, for then there is not a
moment to be lost." It was a whimsical economy of the same kind which
dictated his practice, when general in Italy, in regard to his
burdensome correspondence. He directed Bourienne to leave all letters
unopened for three weeks, and then observed with satisfaction how large
a part of the correspondence had thus disposed of itself, and no longer
required an answer. His achievement of business was immense, and
enlarges the known powers of man. There have been many working kings,
from Ulysses to William of Orange, but none who accomplished a tithe
of this man's performance.
To these gifts of nature, Napoleon added the advantage of having been
born to a private and humble fortune. In his latter days, he had the
weakness of wishing to add to his crowns and badges the prescription
of aristocracy; but he knew his debt to his austere education, and
made no secret of his contempt for the born kings, and for "the
hereditary asses," as he coarsely styled the Bourbons. He said that,
"in their exile, they had learned nothing, and forgot nothing."
Bonaparte had passed through all the degrees of military service, but
also was citizen before he was emperor, and so had the key to
citizenship. His remarks and estimates discover the information and
justness of measurement of the middle class. Those who had to deal
with him found that he was not to be imposed upon, but could cipher
as well as another man. This appears in all parts of his Memoirs,
dictated at St. Helena. When the expenses of the empress, of his
household, of his palaces, had accumulated great debts, Napoleon
examined the bills of the creditors himself, detected overcharges and
errors, and reduced the claims by considerable sums.
His grand weapon, namely, the millions whom he directed, he owed to
the representative character which clothed him. He interests us as he
stands for France and for Europe; and he exists as captain and king,
only as far as the Revolution, or the interest of the industrious
masses found an organ and a leader in him. In the social interests,
he knew the meaning and value of labor, and threw himself naturally
on that side. I like an incident mentioned by one of his biographers
at St. Helena. "When walking with Mrs. Balcombe, some servants, carrying
heavy boxes, passed by on the road, and Mrs. Balcombe desired them,
in rather an angry tone, to keep back. Napoleon interfered, saying,
'Respect the burden, Madam.'" In the time of the empire, he directed
attention to the improvement and embellishment of the market of the
capital. "The market-place," he said, "is the Louvre of the common
people." The principal works that have survived him are his magnificent
roads. He filled the troops with his spirit, and a sort of freedom and
companionship grew up between him and them, which the forms of his
court never permitted between the officers and himself. They performed,
under his eye, that which no others could do. The best document of his
relation to his troops is the order of the day on the morning of the
battle of Austerlitz, in which Napoleon promises the troops that he
will keep his person out of reach of fire. This declaration, which is
the reverse of that ordinarily made by generals and sovereigns on the
eve of a battle, sufficiently explains the devotion of the army to
their leader.
But though there is in particulars this identity between Napoleon and
the mass of the people, his real strength lay in their conviction that
he was their representative in his genius and aims, not only when he
courted, but when he controlled, and even when he decimated them by
his conscriptions. He knew, as well as any Jacobin in France, how to
philosophize on liberty and equality; and, when allusion was made to
the precious blood of centuries, which was spilled by the killing of
the Duc d'Enghien, he suggested, "Neither is my blood ditch-water" The
people felt that no longer the throne was occupied, and the land sucked
of its nourishment, by a small class of legitimates, secluded from all
community with the children of the soil, and holding the ideas and
superstitions of a long-forgotten state of society. Instead of that
vampire, a man of themselves held, in the Tuilleries, knowledge and
ideas like their own, opening, of course, to them and their children,
all places of power and trust. The day of sleepy, selfish policy, ever
narrowing the means and opportunities of young men, was ended, and a
day of expansion and demand was come. A market for all the powers and
productions of man was opened: brilliant prizes glittered in the eyes
of youth and talent. The old, iron-bound, feudal France was changed
into a young Ohio or New York; and those who smarted under the immediate
rigors of the new monarch, pardoned them as the necessary severities
of the military system which had driven out the oppressor. And even
when the majority of the people had begun to ask, whether they had
really gained anything under the exhausting levies of men and money
of the new master,--the whole talent of the country, in every rank and
kindred, took his part, and defended him as its natural patron. In
1814, when advised to rely on the higher classes, Napoleon said to
those around him, "Gentlemen, in the situation in which I stand, my
only nobility is the rabble of the Faubourgs."
Napoleon met this natural expectation. The necessity of his position
required a hospitality to every sort of talent, and its appointment
to trusts; and his feelings went along with this policy. Like every
superior person, he undoubtedly felt a desire for men and compeers,
and a wish to measure his power with other masters, and an impatience
of fools and underlings. In Italy, he sought for men, and found none.
"Good God!" he said, "how rare men are! There are eighteen millions
in Italy, and I have with difficulty found two,--Dandolo and Melzi."
In later years, with larger experience, his respect for mankind was
not increased. In a moment of bitterness, he said to one of his oldest
friends, "Men deserve the contempt with which they inspire me. I have
only to put some gold lace on the coat of my virtuous republicans, and
they immediately become just what I wish them." This impatience at
levity was, however, an oblique tribute of respect to those able persons
who commanded his regard, not only when he found them friends and
coadjutors, but also when they resisted his will. He could not confound
Fox and Pitt, Carnot, Lafayette, and Bernadotte, with the danglers of
his court; and, in spite of the detraction which his systematic egotism
dictated toward the great captains who conquered with and for him,
ample acknowledgements are made by him to Lannes Duroc, Kleber, Dessaix,
Massena, Murat, Ney, and Augereau. If he felt himself their patron,
and founder of their fortunes, as when he said, "I made my generals
out of mud," he could not hide his satisfaction in receiving from them
a seconding and support commensurate with the grandeur of his
enterprise. In the Russian campaign, he was so much impressed by the
courage and resources of Marshal Ney, that he said, "I have two hundred
millions in my coffers, and I would give them all for Ney." The
characters which he has drawn of several of his marshals are
discriminating, and, though they did not content the insatiable vanity
of French officers, are, no doubt, substantially just. And, in fact,
every species of merit was sought and advanced under his government.
"I know," he said, "the depth and draught of water of every one of my
generals." Natural power was sure to be well received at his court.
Seventeen men, in his time, were raised from common soldiers to the
rank of king, marshal, duke, or general; and the crosses of his Legion
of Honor were given to personal valor, and not to family connection.
"When soldiers have been baptized in the fire of a battle-field, they
have all one rank in my eyes."
When a natural king becomes a titular king, everybody is pleased and
satisfied. The Revolution entitled the strong populace of the Faubourg
St. Antoine, and every horse-boy and powder-monkey in the army, to
look on Napoleon as flesh of his flesh, and the creature of his party:
but there is something in the success of grand talent which enlists
an universal sympathy. For, in the prevalence of sense and spirit over
stupidity and malversation, all reasonable men have an interest; and,
as intellectual beings, we feel the air purified by the electric shock,
when material force is overthrown by intellectual energies. As soon
as we are removed out of the reach of local and accidental partialities,
man feels that Napoleon fights for him; these are honest victories;
this strong steam-engine does our work. Whatever appeals to the
imagination, by transcending the ordinary limits of human ability,
wonderfully encourages and liberates us. This capacious head, revolving
and disposing sovereignly trains of affairs, and animating such
multitudes of agents; this eye, which looked through Europe; this
prompt invention; this inexhaustible resource;--what events! what
romantic pictures! what strange situations!--when spying the Alps, by
a sunset in the Sicilian sea; drawing up his army for battle, in sight
of the Pyramids, and saying to his troops, "From the tops of those
pyramids, forty centuries look down on you;" fording the Red Sea;
wading in the gulf of the Isthmus of Suez. On the shore of Ptolemais,
gigantic projects agitated him. "Had Acre fallen, I should have changed
the face of the world." His army, on the night of the battle of
Austerlitz, which was the anniversary of his inauguration as Emperor,
presented him with a bouquet of forty standards taken in the fight.
Perhaps it is a little puerile, the pleasure he took in making these
contrasts glaring; as when he pleased himself with making kings wait
in his antechambers, at Tilsit, at Paris, and at Erfurt.
We cannot, in the universal imbecility, indecision, and indolence of
men, sufficiently congratulate ourselves on this strong and ready
actor, who took occasion by the beard, and showed us how much may be
accomplished by the mere force of such virtues as all men possess in
less degrees; namely, by punctuality, by personal attention, by courage,
and thoroughness. "The Austrians," he said, "do not know the value of
time." I should cite him, in his earlier years, as a model of prudence.
His power does not consist in any wild or extravagant force; in any
enthusiasm, like Mahomet's; or singular power of persuasion; but in
the exercise of common sense on each emergency, instead of abiding by
rules and customs. The lesson he teaches is that which vigor always
teaches,--that there is always room for it. To what heaps of cowardly
doubts is not that man's life an answer. When he appeared, it was the
belief of all military men that there could be nothing new in war; as
it is the belief of men to-day, that nothing new can be undertaken in
politics, or in church, or in letters, or in trade, or in farming, or
in our social manners and customs; and as it is, at all times, the
belief of society that the world is used up. But Bonaparte knew better
than society; and, moreover, knew that he knew better. I think all men
know better than they do; know that the institutions we so volubly
commend are go-carts and baubles; but they dare not trust their
presentiments. Bonaparte relied on his own sense, and did not care a
bean for other people's. The world treated his novelties just as it
treats everybody's novelties,--made infinite objection: mustered all
the impediments; but he snapped his finger at their objections. "What
creates great difficulty," he remarks, "in the profession of the land
commander, is the necessity of feeding so many men and animals. If he
allows himself to be guided by the commissaries, he will never stir,
and all his expeditions will fail." An example of his common sense is
what he says of the passage of the Alps in winter, which all writers,
one repeating after the other, had described as impracticable. "The
winter," says Napoleon, "is not the most unfavorable season for the
passage of lofty mountains. The snow is then firm, the weather settled,
and there is nothing to fear from avalanches, the real and only danger
to be apprehended in the Alps. On those high mountains, there are often
very fine days in December, of a dry cold, with extreme calmness in
the air." Read his account, too, of the way in which battles are gained.
"In all battles, a moment occurs, when the bravest troops, after having
made the greatest efforts, feel inclined to run. That terror proceeds
from a want of confidence in their own courage; and it only requires
a slight opportunity, a pretense, to restore confidence to them. The
art is to give rise to the opportunity, and to invent the pretense.
At Arcola, I won the battle with twenty-five horsemen. I seized that
moment of lassitude, gave every man a trumpet, and gained the day with
this handful. You see that two armies are two bodies which meet, and
endeavor to frighten each other: a moment of panic occurs, and that
moment must be turned to advantage. When a man has been present in
many actions, he distinguishes that moment without difficulty; it is
as easy as casting up an addition."
This deputy of the nineteenth century added to his gifts a capacity
for speculation on general topics. He delighted in running through the
range of practical, of literary, and of abstract questions. His opinion
is always original, and to the purpose. On the voyage to Egypt, he
liked, after dinner, to fix on three or four persons to support a
proposition, and as many to oppose it. He gave a subject, and the
discussions turned on questions of religion, the different kinds of
government, and the art of war. One day, he asked, whether the planets
were inhabited? On another, what was the age of the world? Then he
proposed to consider the probability of the destruction of the globe,
either by water or by fire; at another time, the truth or fallacy of
presentiments, and the interpretation of dreams. He was very fond of
talking of religion. In 1806, he conversed with Fournier, bishop of
Montpelier, on matters of theology. There were two points on which
they could not agree, viz., that of hell, and that of salvation out
of the pale of the church. The Emperor told Josephine, that he disputed
like a devil on these two points, on which the bishop was inexorable.
To the philosophers he readily yielded all that was proved against
religion as the work of men and time; but he would not hear of
materialism. One fine night, on deck, amid a clatter of materialism,
Bonaparte pointed to the stars, and said, "You may talk as long as you
please, gentlemen, but who made all that?" He delighted in the
conversation of men of science, particularly of Monge and Berthollet;
but the men of letters he slighted; "they were manufacturers of
phrases." Of medicine, too, he was fond of talking, and with those of
its practitioners whom he most esteemed,-with Corvisart at Paris, and
with Antonomarchi at St. Helena. "Believe me, "he said to the last,
"we had better leave off all these remedies: life is a fortress which
neither you nor I know anything about. Why throw obstacles in the way
of its defense? Its own means are superior to all the apparatus of
your laboratories. Corvisart candidly agreed with me, that all your
filthy mixtures are good for nothing. Medicine is a collection of
uncertain prescriptions, the results of which, taken collectively, are
more fatal than useful to mankind. Water, air, and cleanliness, are
the chief articles in my pharmacopeia."
His memoirs, dictated to Count Montholon and General Gourgaud, at St.
Helena, have great value, after all the deduction that, it seems, is
to be made from them, on account of his known disingenuousness. He has
the goodnature of strength and conscious superiority. I admire his
simple, clear narrative of his battles;--good as Caesar's; his
good-natured and sufficiently respectful account of Marshal Wurmser
and his other antagonists, and his own equality as a writer to his
varying subject. The most agreeable portion is the Campaign in Egypt.
He had hours of thought and wisdom. In intervals of leisure, either
in the camp or the palace, Napoleon appears as a man of genius,
directing on abstract questions the native appetite for truth, and the
impatience of words, he was wont to show in war. He could enjoy every
play of invention, a romance, a _bon mot_, as well as a stratagem
in a campaign. He delighted to fascinate Josephine and her ladies, in
a dim-lighted apartment, by the terrors of a fiction, to which his
voice and dramatic power lent every addition.
I call Napoleon the agent or attorney of the middle class of modern
society; of the throng who fill the markets, shops, counting-houses,
manufactories, ships, of the modern world, aiming to be rich. He was
the agitator, the destroyer of prescription, the internal improver,
the liberal, the radical, the inventor of means, the opener of doors
and markets, the subverter of monopoly and abuse. Of course, the rich
and aristocratic did not like him. England, the center of capital, and
Rome and Austria, centers of tradition and genealogy, opposed him. The
consternation of the dull and conservative classes, the terror of the
foolish old men and old women of the Roman conclave,--who in their
despair took hold of anything, and would cling to red-hot iron,--the
vain attempts of statists to amuse and deceive him, of the emperor of
Austria to bribe him; and the instinct of the young, ardent, and active
men, everywhere, which pointed him out as the giant of the middle
class, make his history bright and commanding. He had the virtues of
the masses of his constituents; he had also their vices. I am sorry
that the brilliant picture has its reverse. But that is the fatal
quality which we discover in our pursuit of wealth, that it is
treacherous, and is bought by the breaking or weakening of the
sentiments; and it is inevitable that we should find the same fact in
the history of this champion, who proposed to himself simply a brilliant
career, without any stipulation or scruple concerning the means.
Bonaparte was singularly destitute of generous sentiments. The
highest-placed individual in the most cultivated age and population
of the world,--he has not the merit of common truth and honesty. He
is unjust to his generals; egotistic, and monopolizing; meanly stealing
the credit of their great actions from Kellermann, from Bernadotte;
intriguing to involve his faithful Junot in hopeless bankruptcy, in
order to drive him to a distance from Paris, because the familiarity
of his manners offends the new pride of his throne. He is a boundless
liar. The official paper, his "Moniteurs," and all his bulletins, are
proverbs for saying what he wished to be believed; and worse,--he sat,
in his premature old age, in his lonely island, coldly falsifying
facts, and dates, and characters, and giving to history, a theatrical
eclat. Like all Frenchmen, he has a passion for stage effect. Every
action that breathes of generosity is poisoned by this calculation.
His star, his love of glory, his doctrine of the immortality of the
soul, are all French. "I must dazzle and astonish. If I were to give
the liberty of the press, my power could not last three days." To make
a great noise is his favorite design. "A great reputation is a great
noise; the more there is made, the farther off it is heard. Laws,
institutions, monuments, nations, all fall; but the noise continues,
and resounds in after ages." His doctrine of immortality is simply
fame. His theory of influence is not flattering. "There are two levers
for moving men,--interest and fear. Love is a silly infatuation, depend
upon it. Friendship is but a name. I love nobody. I do not even love
my brothers; perhaps Joseph, a little, from habit, and because he is
my elder; and Duroc, I love him too; but why?--because his character
pleases me; he is stern and resolute, and, I believe, the fellow never
shed a tear. For my part, I know very well that I have no true friends.
As long as I continue to be what I am, I may have as many pretended
friends as I please. Leave sensibility to women; but men should be
firm in heart and purpose, or they should have nothing to do with war
and government." He was thoroughly unscrupulous. He would steal,
slander, assassinate, drown, and poison, as his interest dictated. He
had no generosity; but mere vulgar hatred; he was intensely selfish;
he was perfidious; he cheated at cards; he was a prodigious gossip;
and opened letters; and delighted in his infamous police; and rubbed
his hands with joy when he had intercepted some morsel of intelligence
concerning the men and women about him, boasting that "he knew
everything;" and interfered with the cutting the dresses of the women;
and listened after the hurrahs and the compliments of the street,
incognito. His manners were coarse. He treated women with low
familiarity. He had the habit of pulling their ears and pinching their
cheeks, when he was in good humor, and of pulling the ears and whiskers
of men, and of striking and horse-play with them, to his last days.
It does not appear that he listened at keyholes, or, at least, that
he "was caught at it". In short, when you have penetrated through all
the circles of power and splendor, you were not dealing with a
gentleman, at last; but with an impostor and a rogue; and he fully
deserves the epithet of Jupiter Scapin, or a sort of Scamp Jupiter.
In describing the two parties into which modern society divides
itself,--the democrat and the conservative,--I said, Bonaparte
represents the democrat, or the party of men of business, against the
stationary or conservative party. I omitted then to say, what is
material to the statement, namely, that these two parties differ only
as young and old. The democrat is a young conservative; the conservative
is an old democrat. The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to
seed,--because both parties stand on the one ground of the supreme
value of property, which one endeavors to get, and the other to keep.
Bonaparte may be said to represent the whole history of this party,
its youth and its age; yes, and with poetic justice, its fate, in his
own. The counter-revolution, the counter-party, still waits for its
organ and representative, in a lover and a man of truly public and
universal aims.
Here was an experiment, under the most favorable conditions, of the
powers of intellect without conscience. Never was such a leader so
endowed, and so weaponed; never leader found such aids and followers.
And what was the result of this vast talent and power, of these immense
armies, burned cities, squandered treasures, immolated millions of
men, of this demoralized Europe? It came to no result. All passed away,
like the smoke of his artillery and left no trace. He left France
smaller, poorer, feebler, than he found it; and the whole contest for
freedom was to be begun again. The attempt was, in principle, suicidal.
France served him with life, and limb, and estate, as long as it could
identify its interest with him; but when men saw that after victory
was another war; after the destruction of armies, new conscriptions;
and they who had toiled so desperately were never nearer to the
reward,--they could not spend what they had earned, nor repose on their
down-beds, nor strut in their chateaux,--they deserted him. Men found
that his absorbing egotism was deadly to all other men. It resembled
the torpedo, which inflicts a succession of shocks on any one who takes
hold of it, producing spasms which contract the muscles of the hand,
so that the man cannot open his fingers; and the animal inflicts new
and more violent shocks, until he paralyzes and kills his victim. So,
this exorbitant egotist narrowed, impoverished, and absorbed the power
and existence of those who served him; and the universal cry of France,
and of Europe, in 1814, was, "enough of him;" "assez de Bonaparte."
It was not Bonaparte's fault. He did all that in him lay, to live and
thrive without moral principle. It was the nature of things, the eternal
law of man and of the world, which baulked and ruined him; and the
result, in a million experiments, will be the same. Every experiment,
by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim,
will fail. The pacific Fourier will be as inefficient as the pernicious
Napoleon. As long as our civilization is essentially one of property,
of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches
will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our
wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, which we can taste
with all doors open, and which serves all men. _
Read next: Lecture VII. Goethe; or, the Writer
Read previous: Lecture V. Shakspeare; or, the Poet
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