much perturbed. Is this general of ours going to make the Great Peace
all by himself? If he can do that, he will only have to come to Paris
afterwards, and with one hand he will be able to push us from our seats.
Most politely, therefore, they instruct him to await the coming of the
envoy they are sending. All the more does Bonaparte press the other
side for a decision. He knows what reports concerning him are current
in Paris, and he cracks his whip over the Directors’ heads: “I should
like to have a rest. I have justified your confidence in me; in all my
undertakings I have hazarded my life; I have covered myself with more
glory than the most fortunate man could wish; now I have advanced upon
Vienna, leaving Italy’s lovely plains behind me, as I advanced once
before in search of bread for the army which the republic could no longer
feed. Calumny vainly attempts to discredit my intentions. My civic
career, like my military career, will be unique and simple.”
Ironies, beneath whose mask the writer is moving towards unnamed goals.
Endless negotiations. But why should the matter drag on? Give us
Belgium and Lombardy. You can compensate the dispossessed princes with
possessions in the Holy Roman Empire! Habsburg accepts this principle,
for neither the emperor nor any one of the German princes is concerned
any longer about the Holy Roman Empire. It is very old, in poor health,
and will soon be laid in the tomb. This plan will give France a finger in
the pie across the Rhine. But how Habsburg is to be compensated for the
loss of Lombardy, remains uncertain.
Opportune is the arrival of letters from Venice reporting insurrections
against the French and the murder of a number of French soldiers. At
length the day of vengeance has come! Venice, too, is outworn, and ripe
for destruction. “Since the discovery of the Cape route to the Indies
and the rise of Triest and Ancona, Venice has been on the decline,” he
writes to the Directors, to soothe their conscientious scruples—i.e., for
use in a justificatory campaign. “It will hardly survive the blow. This
wretched and cowardly population, unfitted for freedom, without land or
water, must, of course, be handed over to those to whom the hinterland
is allotted. First of all, we shall take the ships, empty the arsenal,
carry off the big guns, and close the banks; we shall also keep Corfu and
Ancona.” Thus weakened, the Lagoons were to pass to Habsburg.
Bonaparte dealt in summary fashion with the old lords of the region,
with the few patrician families which, as the successors of strong men,
had ruled Venice for centuries, and had made of it one of the most
reactionary States in the world. “You have stirred up the peasants
against us,” he wrote to the doge while the negotiations with the
Austrians were in progress. “Thanks to you, every one is shouting: ‘Death
to the French!’ Hundreds of our soldiers have already perished through
your machinations. Do not lie to me! You incited these disturbances. Do
you imagine that because I am in the heart of Germany I shall be unable
to enforce respect for the greatest nation in the world? I shall take
vengeance for the blood of my companions-in-arms. War or peace! Unless
you instantly hand over the ringleaders, I shall declare war.”
This is his tone when he wishes to terrify a dozen tottering old
patricians. When the envoys from the Senate come to his camp, he
pretends to fly into a passion: “I shall have no more constitution and
no more Senate. For Venice, I shall be a second Attila. Make me no more
proposals. I will be your lawgiver.” When the city is being handed over,
the doge, a man of ninety, falls dead—the last doge of Venice. Bonaparte
never forgot this scene.
Has he done with Italy now? Has not he got all he wants; has not he
reached his end?
There is no end, for every step forward opens a new vista. Venice is
merely a springboard, whence he can start his swim into the open sea. The
islands first; then the Adriatic; and now he contemplates a more distant
horizon. When he was in Ancona a while back, forcing his terms of peace
upon Rome, he stood on the shore, looking seaward. There were the Ionian
Islands, and beyond them lay Turkey. He wrote: “From this point, we could
reach Macedonia in twenty-four hours; the place would be invaluable for
our influence upon the destinies of the Turkish Empire.” As brigadier on
the general staff he had thought of engulfing himself in Turkey. From
Ancona he sends agents to open up relationships with powerful pashas in
Janina, Scutari, and Bosnia.
Now, when he is in Leoben, he makes sure of the island possessions of
Venice, arranges for the occupation of Corfu and Zante, “to control
simultaneously the Adriatic and the East. No one will be able to save
the Turkish Empire. We shall watch its death agony. The occupation of the
Ionian Islands leaves us the choice between supporting Turkey and making
sure of our own share of the spoils.”
The political reality underlying this is an attack on England. France
has long looked forward to the acquisition of strongholds in the
Mediterranean, and to thus imposing a barrier between England and India.
In Bonaparte, this general aim acquires the impulsive energy of a
personal ambition. He does not want the East that he may inflict a mortal
wound on England as his arch enemy; he is in search of means to injure
England that thereby he may win the East. Since his imagination always
runs far ahead of his achievements, Europe, of which but yesterday he
first seized a corner, is already beginning to seem too small for him. He
says to Bourrienne:
“Only in the East have there been great empires and mighty changes; in
the East, where six hundred million people dwell. Europe is a mole-hill!”
VIII
A high-arched room, in the baroque style; the walls are white, picked out
with gold. On a long couch upholstered in green silk, a sixteen-year-old
lieutenant, a spoiled darling, with the fawning manners of a page, is
sitting between two women of ripe beauty. One of them is the youth’s
mother; but when her smiling glance roves coquettishly over the
surrounding group of smartly dressed officers, we gather that she is
thinking far less of maternal obligations than of hours in which such
boys as hers are engendered. Without words, she seems to add: “Creole
women are adepts in the art of love!” Another connoisseur in the same
art is the handsome general who stands behind her, craning forward
over her shoulder that he may see far down into her corsage—as fashion
and the lady’s pride in her charms make it easy for him to do. This is
Masséna, whose talent as a soldier is to be ever prompt to attack,
being too unrestrained and uncultured to count the cost; but his flaming
impetuosity often saves his troops in moments of danger. His temperament
is so ardent, that he must always have at least two women in his train;
and his appetite for money is no less keen. Money and women—he steals
both, whenever he has the chance.
All the qualities that Masséna lacks, you will find in the little man
with the big head who stands in front of the ladies making conversation.
He is ugly, touchingly grotesque in his movements, and at the moment
intoxicated by his success in winning—no one knows how—the love of a
pretty member of the Visconti family. This is Berthier, chief of general
staff, unresting in his activity; a man who will do administrative work
one day, and take a fortress by storm the next; a great student of maps,
for he is one of the few among these officers who is well grounded in the
theory of his profession.
There is Murat, theatrically decked out in green satin, twisting the huge
plumed hat he holds in his hands. Of proletarian birth, like most of the
men at this remarkable headquarters, he is fond of talking in asides.
Now he laughs too loudly because the ribald Augereau, the avaricious and
extravagant peasant’s son, has been telling him an after-dinner story.
Murat, though he fears neither artillery fire nor the frowns of princes,
is now painfully embarrassed because Josephine calls to him across the
room. She wants to hear the joke!
But Joseph, a man of the world, who dreads what the enfant terrible may
blurt out, nods meaningly to Murat, implying to him that for God’s sake
he must hold his tongue. Elise is sitting in the embrasure of one of the
windows. Not so good-looking as the other women, and finding her husband
a bore, she is apt to be censorious, and would carry tales to Mother
Letizia, who abhors Josephine’s loose morals.
Now comes the bright sound of laughter from the garden. That is
Pauline’s birdlike voice. She is making the most of the days of freedom
left to her before her marriage to General Leclerc, the husband chosen
for her by Napoleon. She is playing blind-man’s-bluff with Hippolyte, and
her pleasure in the game is doubled by the knowledge that she is annoying
Josephine.
Here is the chief, coming slowly along the passage. For two long hours
he has been walking up and down with the Parisian dramatist Arnault.
This companion has been carefully chosen. The newcomer has asked many
questions about the army and the battles. Bonaparte has answered them
with a detailed report of his own doings, which he knows that Arnault
will spread far and wide. Now he has steered the conversation to the
topic of the governmental crisis, long drawn out. As the two come into
the reception room, he says, ostensibly with indifference, and yet with
emphasis enough to fix the words in Arnault’s memory: “I can hardly
conceive any other way out of their difficulties than that they should
bend before the power of one strong man. But where is such a man to be
found?”
As Bonaparte enters, the officers rise to their feet, break off all
conversation, and look expectantly at this man of twenty-seven, though
most of them are older than he and all of them a good deal taller. Only
the page continues to loll on the couch, for Eugene knows that his mother
is unchallenged mistress of the house.
We are at Montebello, the huge castle near Milan, where Bonaparte is
passing the summer. He is almost wholly the statesman now, for the war
has been ended by the arrangement entered into at Leoben, and nothing
more is needed than a formal ratification. He might be in Paris,
receiving the adulation of which he dreamed in youth; but he prefers
to stay in Italy. He will not return to Paris until the political
consequences of his victories have assumed a concrete form, until the new
States are consolidated and the Italian business over and done with.
Meanwhile, during the many months he spends at Montebello, the life there
is not so much that of a military headquarters, as that of a minor court.
But in no respect does he behave like an upstart. There are no pretences.
In everything he will make his influence felt as one who is a child of
the revolution that established a regime of equality. He has appointed
sons of the people to the leading positions in his army; but he has no
fear of what his noble guests, the dukes and princes of Italy, may think
of it, should one of his valiant generals commit a solecism. He sees no
reason for hiding his origin like a parvenu, although his adoption of
French nationality might well incline him to conceal his Corsican birth.
In actual fact, he parades it. Before the close of the previous year,
he had summoned the whole family to Milan. Now, with lavish oriental
hospitality, he has invited them all to Montebello, and those who seek
his favour must show his relatives due honour. Half Italy pays court to
him, for his name is already acquiring the mythical power of that of a
man of destiny. Besides the numerous persons who wish to harness their
fortunes to his chariot, not a few come from afar to ask the sage’s
advice concerning family matters and private affairs.
He has found it hard to persuade his mother, proud and a woman of strict
principles, to make friends with Josephine, whose reputation is an
offence to her. Josephine reciprocates Madame Letizia’s dislike; but
Napoleon, though he idolises his wife and can refuse her nothing, compels
her to observe the outward forms of respect. Now, the friction between
the two women has become even greater than at first. “This Creole says
soft nothings to every man, and kisses every woman, instead of attending
to her business of bearing children.” The Corsican mother has given birth
to thirteen. Josephine’s barrenness dishonours Napoleon and his family.
Letizia fancies that in the eyes of many of his adversaries she can read
satisfaction and mockery because the great man cannot procreate a child.
But it is not his fault. Josephine has led, and still leads, too loose a
life. That is what is amiss.
When Letizia first met Napoleon again, after his battles and victories,
she embraced him and said:
“You are thinner than ever! You are wearing yourself out!”
“Not a bit of it. I am really living, now!”
“Yes, for posterity....”
“Well, do you call that dying?”
When he leaves her, he says to her: “Do take good care of yourself,
Mother. If you die, there will be no one left with any authority over
me.” His Corsican clannishness is almost as strong as his cosmopolitan
self-confidence.
Three sisters, three brothers, and Uncle Fesch are, in their various
ways, enjoying themselves at Montebello. The fascinating Pauline, sixteen
years of age, cannot forgive Josephine, who, in deference to Napoleon’s
wishes, has interfered with her plans for a love marriage. She weds
Leclerc in the castle chapel, and at the same time Elise and Bacciochi
have to resolemnise their union in church, for the chief is eager to keep
in the good graces of the Vatican. After the ceremony Letizia, who has no
interest in these intrigues, returns to Corsica.
“This island, this province,” as Bonaparte now calls it, as if it were
an island or a province like any other, has now been regained from
the English, who had occupied it in response to Paoli’s call for aid.
Bonaparte managed the affair from a distance, while busied in his
campaign on the mainland. One foggy night, a couple of dozen Frenchmen,
taking with them plenty of money and an abundance of weapons, landed in
Corsica “to encourage the patriots,” circulate pamphlets, and so on.
Napoleon also sent Saliceti, his friend and his opponent of earlier days.
Thus, by proxy and from afar, he was able to achieve what he had thrice
failed to do in person.
“Can it really be only four years?” thinks Signora Letizia, when those
who had driven her and hers into exile receive her with acclamations. Is
this the very citadel which was for so long the centre of Napoleon’s
thoughts and feelings? Now, simply because he orders it, Elise’s husband
is to be commandant there. For a long while, already, Lucien has been
intendant of the forces. To Napoleon, in Italy, his native island now
seems an ancient family seat, a romantic and medieval spot where his
kindred can dwell when convenient. With a contemptuous smile, not long
ago, he had read a letter from the Bourbon pretender, in which Louis
offered him the title of duke, or even hereditary viceroy, of Corsica, if
he would espouse the royalist cause.
In Montebello, Bonaparte first learns how to separate his private life
from his public life—a lesson which those born in the purple learn from
childhood upwards.
The guardianship of the castle, strangely enough, is entrusted, not to
French soldiers, but to three hundred Polish legionaries. In several of
his battles, there had been danger that he would be taken prisoner, so he
has formed a bodyguard, forty strong. They are called guides, are chosen
from among the tallest and best of his soldiers, and have a dare-devil
for their leader.
The castle is thronged with orderlies and couriers. Envoys are flocking
from all quarters. The lion of St. Mark and the key of St. Peter gleam on
foreign epaulettes; Vienna, Leghorn, and Genoa are also represented at
Montebello. Napoleon lives in state. Following the custom of the country,
he keeps open house. Interested spectators are admitted to the gallery
of the banqueting hall; and he drops a hint, lest they should forget to
spread the news when they return home, that like them he drinks the wine
of the country.
The reports of those who come to see him on service matters or other
official business express astonishment that this young commander-in-chief
is never embarrassed. He is dignified and yet perfectly natural; always
the most simply dressed man in the company. None the less, he knows quite
well how to keep people at a distance. Though nearly every one who comes
to see him towers over him in stature, he never tries to appear taller
than he is. Instead, those conversing with him are inclined to stoop a
little, and thus seem to be paying court to him. Henceforward, throughout
life, he is able from his natural defect to derive an advantage whose
ultimate psychical consequences are incalculable. One of the visitors
to Montebello wrote: “Should this man have the luck to escape death in
battle, within four years he will be in exile or seated on a throne.” The
writer was only three years out in his reckoning.
A student of his epoch, one who knows how fame is manufactured, he has
in attendance an able journalist, the first publicity agent in history,
whose business it is to blow Napoleon’s trumpet in Paris and subtly to
discredit the Directors. Being a disciple of Plutarch, Bonaparte knows
through whose agency the story of great men’s deeds is handed down to
posterity; that is why the faces of poets, historians, artists, and men
of science are so often seen at his Italian castle. A year before, a few
days after the triumphal entry into Milan, and when overwhelmed with
urgent business, he had found time to pen the following remarkable lines
to a great astronomer:
“The sciences which are the glory of the human mind, the arts which
beautify the world and bequeath great deeds to our offspring, must be
cherished with especial care in free States. All men of genius, all those
who are famous in the world of learning, are Frenchmen, no matter to what
country they may belong.” Hitherto, such men have had to lead a retired
life. Now, freedom of thought prevails; intolerance is a thing of the
past, there are no despots left. The talented can foregather under his
patronage, and fearlessly tell him all their wishes. Any such person who
wants to go to France may be sure of a cordial reception, “for the French
people would rather win a great mathematician, painter, or other man of
note, than win the wealthiest of provinces. That is why, Citizen, I ask
you to make these sentiments widely known among the great men of Milan!”
He commissions an attaché, who, like most of his tribe, has little to
think about and nothing to do, to make a register of the art treasures in
the possession of the petty States of Italy. In subsequent treaties, he
demands the best of these for Paris.
For the Paris Conservatoire, he instructs experts to make copies of the
best Italian music. Writing on this topic, he says: “Of all the arts,
music has the strongest influence on the passions, and for that reason
the legislator must make it one of his chief concerns. An inspired
symphony composed by a master cannot fail to stir our feelings, and
has far more influence than a treatise on morality, which convinces
our reason without affecting our conduct.” When he becomes a member of
the Institute, he flaunts this title at the head of all the letters he
writes as commander-in-chief, and declares: “The true power of the French
Republic must henceforward consist in this, that no new idea shall arise
anywhere which is not the property of France.” In confidential talk he
says: “The soldier must, above all, regard his commander as wiser and
more cultured than himself; and the soldier will regard this title with
respect for the very reason that its meaning is obscure to him.”
Such actions disclose, not the statesman alone, but the man born to
rule, the prince who regulates every gesture, every word that he says or
writes, with an eye to the legend as to his personality which he wishes
to inculcate upon his people. But when the door is closed, and he is
among intimates, he opens his heart.
Here is a description of Napoleon as he was in those days, penned by an
exceptionally shrewd observer: “The power of the man impressed every one
with whom he came in contact.... His demeanour was still rather ungainly
at times; but there was something imperious in his nature, his glance,
and his speech. Every one obeyed his orders. In public, he deliberately
tried to heighten this impression. In private life, on the other hand,
he was unconstrained, genial, and even confidential; with a taste for
witticisms, which were never ill-natured, but were merry and discreet.
Frequently, he shared in our amusements. He did not take his work too
strenuously, not finding it necessary at that time to measure out his
hours; and in leisure moments he was always accessible. But when he had
withdrawn to his work-room, his door was closed to every unauthorised
intruder, without distinction of rank.—He needed a great deal of sleep,
like all people of nervous temperament and very active mind. I have often
known him to stay in bed for ten or eleven hours at a stretch; but if it
was necessary to wake him up, he was unperturbed, and could easily make
up for the lost hours afterwards—or could store up reserves of sleep in
expectation of a strenuous time. He had the precious faculty of being
able to go to sleep wherever and as often as he pleased. Fond of vigorous
exercise, he rode very often, and at a great pace, though he had an
exceedingly bad seat.”
He has a taste for talking, and chooses politics or general questions of
life as his theme; if the conversation flags, he suggests the telling of
stories; should this be followed by a general silence, he spins a yarn of
his own, pregnant and humorous.
The loveliest women set their caps at him in vain; he is wholly devoted
to Josephine. Not, indeed, so frenzied in his adoration as he was a year
back, when she betrayed or disillusioned him; it is she, and she alone,
who has trifled away this passion for self-surrender. Now there is a
moving note in his tone towards her; a fervent courtship, a smile, a
petition: “You are sad,” he wrote to her while still in the field. “You
do not write; are you longing to get back to Paris? Have you ceased to
care for me? The thought makes me wretched. My life has become unbearable
since I have known that you are not happy. Perhaps I shall soon make
peace with the pope; then I shall join you at once.” Three days later:
“The peace with Rome has just been signed. Bologna, Ferrara, and Romagna
are ceded to us.—But there is not a word from you! Good God, how have I
offended you?—I fear you know only too well how absolute is your power
over me! For life, wholly yours.”
Now, at Montebello, he is for the first time tasting the joys of
uninterrupted connubiality, while he is delighted to watch Josephine’s
winning charm in social intercourse. Occasionally he steals time for a
brief love festival. They drive across to Lake Maggiore; and when, among
the rhododendron bushes beneath the baroque stone edifices on Isola
Bella, Grassini, the heroine of La Scala, uplifts her thrilling voice and
sings an appassionata by Monteverde, Napoleon sits wrapped in thought,
his companion’s hand clasped in his own.
“In the carriage”—so his adjutant relates—“he would take marital
liberties which were apt to be rather embarrassing to Berthier and me.
But it was all so simple and natural, that there was no ground for
offence.”
IX
What is Paris saying?