enthusiasm!... You struck shrewd blows for your princes.... But your
princes have by no means covered themselves with glory. Why were they not
in Vendée to lead the fight? Was not that their place?”
“They were kept in London by political considerations,” answered the
nobles.
“They should have crossed the Channel in the first fishing smack they
could get hold of,” he answered passionately, and, so the report runs,
“in a voice that seemed to come from the depths of his stomach.” Yes, my
fine noblemen, from the depths of his stomach! The phrase carries with
it the implications of an incident in universal history which was still
recent, still vivid in Napoleon’s memory. That was the tone proper to
the bold adventurer who, in a tiny frigate, had made his way across the
storm-tost Mediterranean, through the enemy fleet, to reach the coast
where power was his for the seizing. Hear how he mingles flattery and
threats, the young wizard who has turned the whole continent upside down!
“What would you like to be? General or prefect? You and yours can have
whatever you please, if you will come over to my side. Nothing? Would you
think it a disgrace to wear the coat that Bonaparte wears?... Unless you
will make peace, I will march against you with a hundred thousand men,
and burn your towns to ashes!”
“If you do,” answers the count firmly, “we shall annihilate your columns.”
“You dare to threaten me?” he exclaims—this time “with a terrible voice.”
But upon receiving a matter-of-fact answer, he is calm once more. The
noble emissaries retire in disgust, having achieved nothing, having been
perplexed by his foreign accent, and by the impetuous imagination, which
leads him to complicate the issues to such an extent that it is often
hard to follow his meaning.
None the less, the Consul induces a great many of the émigrés to return,
disarming their hostility by making suitable provision for them. Forty
thousand families promptly come back. At the same time, he negotiates
with the Jacobins, although these, “with their metaphysics, are enough
to ruin twenty governments.” He feels sure of the support of those who
follow the middle courses of democracy, for the democratic masses feel
safe under his rule, now that Paris is no longer a sort of civilian camp,
and now that (a benevolent despot) he is doing all in his power to bring
better times.
Consider these instructions issued to various authorities:
“If the cold should be sharp, as it was in 1789, you must have fires
kept alight in the churches and market-places, so that as many people
as possible can warm themselves.”—“The winter is very severe, meat is
dear, we must provide work in Paris. Get on with the cutting of the
Ourcq canal, with the construction of the Quai Desaix, with the paving
of the back streets.”—“The law directs that all beggars shall be laid
by the heels. Were we to do nothing more than this, our conduct would
be barbarous and absurd. Arrest them, certainly, that you may give
them work and food. We must have several homes of refuge in every
department.”—“There are a great many out-of-work shoemakers, hatters,
tailors, and saddlers. See to it that five hundred pairs of shoes are
made every day.” He writes to the Minister for War saying that special
orders for supplies for the artillery are to be issued. To the Minister
for Home Affairs: “We must provide work, especially this month before
the holidays. Issue an order that in May and June two thousand of the
Saint Antoine workmen are to supply chairs, chests of drawers, armchairs,
etc.... Send me your proposals to-morrow, so that a beginning may be made
promptly.”
He reads a by-law that no one wearing a workman’s blouse is to walk
through the Tuileries garden. Instantly he has the regulation cancelled,
and gives express permission for such people to go through. He learns of
a proposal to close the public reading-rooms: “I won’t allow anything of
the kind. I have not forgotten my own experience, how useful it was to
know of a well-warmed room where I could read the newspapers and recent
pamphlets. I will not allow others who are as poor as I was then to be
robbed of these comforts.” In the Théâtre Français, the stalls are to be
very cheap on Sundays, “so that the people may enjoy the performance.”
There are to be no gambling hells in France: “They bring families to
ruin, and I should set a bad example were I to tolerate them.”
By his new education law, he establishes public elementary schools,
middle schools, lycées, and technical colleges, throughout the country.
There are to be six thousand free scholarships, and a third of these
are to be reserved for the sons of specially deserving persons. Within
three years, there are 4,500 elementary schools, 750 middle schools,
and 45 lycées. He honours the Institute by choosing a third of his
first senators from among its members. The Ministry for Home Affairs
is instructed to draw up lists “of the ten best painters, sculptors,
composers, musicians, architects, and other artists whose talents make
them worthy of support.” He orders great frescoes to be painted, which
shall depict striking incidents in his battles. He gives his reasons for
this State regulation of art, saying: “People complain that we have no
literature. That is the fault of the Minister for Home Affairs!”
But if he tranquillises persons of all occupations by bringing them
prosperity, what opening will be left, in this nation of the ambitious,
for the pursuit of fame? If there is to be no war and no court life,
where will the French find an outlet for their vanity? He answers this
question by founding the Legion of Honour.
The Legion will form a group of stalwart supporters, for those who
have taken a solemn oath to resist any attempt at the restoration of
the feudalist regime will not be so likely to side against Bonaparte.
Besides, it is not to be merely an officers’ club, inasmuch as the aim
is to provide distinctions for all who do good service. He therefore
appoints a natural philosopher to the office of arch-chancellor; and
when, in the Council of State, a warning reference is made to the kinship
between these orders of distinction and the abuses which have been swept
away, he answers with perfect seriousness:
“I doubt if there has ever been a republic without such distinctions.
You declare that they are toys for children. Well, grown men are led by
toys. I would not say that from a rostrum, but in a council of sages
and statesmen I can speak my mind. I do not think that the French
love liberty and equality; they have not been changed by ten years of
revolution; they are what the Gauls were, fierce and fickle. They are
accessible to only one sentiment, the love of honour. That is why we must
have distinctions.... Soldiers must be allured by fame and pay.... Here
is a new kind of money assessed at a different valuation from current
coin. Its source is inexhaustible. With no other kind of money, is it
possible to reward actions which are so sublime that they cannot be
valued in current coin.” In these notable words, we hear the rippling of
the three fountains of his soul: contempt for mankind, understanding of
the masses, and the critical aloofness of the foreigner who has chosen a
new fatherland.
IV
On Christmas Eve, 1800, the Consul was driving to the opera. Josephine
and her daughter were following in another carriage. In a narrow street
an empty cart partially blocked the way, and caused a halt. The cart was
pushed aside, and the coachman whipped up his horses. The instant after
the carriage had passed, an infernal machine hidden in the cart exploded.
About twenty persons were killed, but no one in either Napoleon’s or
Josephine’s carriage was hurt. On reaching the opera, Napoleon went
straight to his box. When his wife arrived, he said calmly: “Josephine,
those rascals wanted to blow me up; send for a copy of the music.”
Outwardly unmoved, he listened to the performance of Haydn’s recent work,
_Creation_.
Ordinarily, good music made him forget all his schemes; but this evening
his brain was busily at work, pondering the causes and foreseeing
the consequences of the attempt on his life. It mattered little who
“the rascals” were, revolutionaries of the left or revolutionaries of
the right. He knew well enough that he had plenty of enemies on both
sides. The question was, whether it would suit him best to assume that
his would-be assassins belonged to the right or to the left. His mind
was soon made up on this point. Had the attempt been successful, the
consequences for France would have been immeasurably great. Well, the
consequences of the unsuccessful attempt should be no less momentous. It
was a lucky chance, and he would make it solve the problem of personal
power.
Next morning, when people came to offer congratulations on his escape,
and when all were agreed in the opinion that the outrage must have been
planned by the royalists, with assumed heat Napoleon declared they were
absolutely mistaken. “This was the work of Septembrists, intellectuals,
the non-commissioned officers of the revolution—persons with a bolder
imagination and more culture than the masses, but in close touch with
them, and always ready to spur on the workers!” When, in the Council of
State, a proposal was made to institute special proceedings, Bonaparte
objected on the ground that the method would be too slow. His speech was
impassioned:
“Either we must do nothing at all, and, like Augustus, forgive the
sinners; or else we must act promptly, take far-reaching steps which will
guarantee social order once for all.... No ordinary criminal procedure
will suffice; this is a matter for statesmanship.... Blood must flow.
As many of the guilty must be shot as there perished innocent persons
in the streets. Two hundred of these raging wolves must be seized and
transported. They are always watching and waiting for their prey. All our
troubles are due to these metaphysicians!”
Old Tronchet shakes his head. The attempt had been the work of émigrés
and Englishmen.
“Are you proposing that I should transport noblemen or priests?” asked
Napoleon angrily. “Vendée is quiet, and I do not want to banish the
servants of the most widely spread religion in the world. I shall have
to dismiss all the members of the Council of State, for, with two or
three exceptions, every one of you believes in this fable of a royalist
plot.... Do you think me a child? Am I to say that the country is in
danger? Has France ever been in better case since the revolution, the
army more victorious, the country more peaceful? A pretty thing that men
who have never been among the true friends of liberty, should now display
so much concern for liberty! Do not think to excuse yourselves by saying:
‘I defended the patriots in the Council of State.’ That might go down in
a drawing-room, but it will not go down here, among the most enlightened
men in France!” He abruptly closes the sitting. Do the councillors
understand his drift?
These alarums and excursions are not the outcome of any sense of personal
danger, for if that were his motive, if his own alarmed will-to-live were
at work, he would seek out the real offenders as object for vengeance.
The whole scene was statecraft. Whom can we frighten here at home? Whom
can we pacify across the frontier? That is what the Consul is asking
himself. Those are the considerations that guide his actions. Of course,
there is a personal motive as well. He thinks that his own safety can
best be guarded by draconian measures. “I did not sleep well o’ nights,”
he said at a later date, “until I had had these leaders of the great
towns sent across the seas. I was not afraid of the sort of conspirator
who gets up at nine o’clock in the morning and puts on a clean shirt!”
At the same time, he is infuriated by an anonymous pamphlet, “Cæsar,
Cromwell, and Bonaparte,” in which the writer advocates the establishment
of a hereditary monarchy. Who is daring to disclose his own secret
thoughts, even though the indiscreet pamphleteer is a sympathiser? When
one of his confidants says that the only thing wrong with the pamphlet
is that the disclosure is premature, Bonaparte lets the observation
pass. But these two attempts, the attack on his body and the attack on
his mind, have terrible consequences as far as freedom is concerned.
The Tribunate and the Chambers are purged of a fifth of their numbers,
Constant, Chénier, and other noted democrats being excluded; sixty-one
out of seventy-three newspapers are suppressed; pamphlets and plays
are subjected to a censorship. When the Council of State reminds him
of the freedom of the press, he answers: “Do you think that, in such a
situation, we can allow public meetings?... And is not every journalist
an orator? Do not the subscribers to his newspaper really form a club?
Calumny is like an oil spot, which always leaves traces.... In England
it is different; there the Government is old-established; here it is
new. People would write worse things about me day by day; saying, for
instance, that I am so afraid of being poisoned that I dare not eat!...
The only way of keeping the political parties in check is to deprive them
of their battle-ground.”
Sound reasoning, appropriate measures. But the spirit of free thought
stands weeping at the door; her fascinated gaze is fixed upon power
enthroned.
V
The man who was certainly in part responsible for the before-mentioned
pamphlet, perhaps its author, the man who had thus inflicted a grave
injury upon the First Consul, was the very man who had been his main
buttress on the Eighteenth Brumaire, and who had saved the situation that
day—Brother Lucien. The most gifted of Napoleon’s four brothers, six
years younger than the Consul, scaling the heights of ambition at an even
earlier age than his great brother, though helped in his upward progress
by that brother’s prestige, Lucien coveted the highest for himself. To
stand in the shadow of Napoleon’s great name, to be under his protection,
and even to be the object of his love—these were more galling to Lucien
than Napoleon’s disfavour in later days. He never forgot the incidents of
the coup d’état. He had been the king-maker. How, then, could he obey the
man whom he had raised to the throne?
[Illustration: Bonaparte as First Consul. Painting by Girodet. Musée
Nationale, Versailles.
(Photograph in the Kircheisen Collection.)]
Needs must, however. Shortly after Brumaire, he becomes Minister for
Home Affairs, a mere instrument of the master brain. Is it not natural
that he should critically examine all that comes to him from the chief,
wondering whether he can make a better job? Hostile to Josephine, he is
hostile to her confidants. This brings him into conflict with Fouché,
who is always ready to blame the Minister for Home Affairs for anything
untoward, like the publication of the pamphlet.
By temperament, Lucien was as unscrupulous and amoral as his brother.
Though very like his brother, he lacked the boldly calculating brain, and
may even be said to have had semi-criminal traits beneath his smiling
exterior. A Napoleon, like the other, but one degree more adventurer and
several degrees less statesman. At twenty-five years of age, Lucien was
powerful and yet embittered, his audacious spirit urging him to more
and yet more hazardous adventures. His first wife was an innkeeper’s
daughter; he sold monopolies; speculated in grain; lived beyond his
means, instead of setting to work; bought the finest house in Paris,
furnished it sumptuously, rebuilt it, and refurnished it; gave splendid
banquets, indulged in amateur theatricals, wrote verses. All these
extravagances were undertaken in the half-conscious desire to eclipse his
brother.
Between two such men, in such a relationship, how can a breach be
avoided! Lucien taunts the Consul, saying that he, Lucien, had won the
victory on the Nineteenth Brumaire. In the first flush of his wrath,
Napoleon has it in mind to banish Lucien; but, in the end, he is content
to deprive the young man of ministerial office. This will put a term to
the monetary scandals attaching to Lucien’s abuse of his position. Lucien
goes to Madrid as envoy. His ability in this new post enables him to work
successfully against England, and also to divert the flow of a good many
millions into his own pockets. Being now a widower, he soon returns, and
marries his lady love, a beauty whose reputation is of the same sort as
Josephine’s in earlier days. The First Consul is furious, for he has
been working to promote a marriage that would have brought political
advantages.
Joseph, too, man of the world and good fellow, is inclining to join the
ranks of the sceptics, now that, with his brother’s aid, he has risen
to wealth and power; he frequents Madame de Staël’s circle, and speaks
critically of the Consul. He is no longer content with the position of
envoy in Rome, refuses the presidency of the Italian Republic and the
chancellorship of the Senate; cannot forget that he is the eldest; looks
upon himself as head of the family.
Louis still vacillates, the poet in his temperament taking charge from
time to time. For years he is in love with one of Josephine’s relatives,
and has no affection for Hortense, whom he is forced to marry. Years
afterwards he will sing the love of his heart.
Jerome, the youngest, good-natured and frivolous, is brought up by his
brother with paternal strictness. “I send you Citizen Jerome Bonaparte,
who is to serve as a midshipman. As you know, he must be kept under
strict discipline. See to it that he fulfils all his duties.”
His sisters, again; he has loaded them with money and honours, but they
give him little thanks, and are incessant in their demands for more.
There is Elise! She and Lucien, her favourite brother, vie with one
another in escapades that are the talk of Paris. At amateur theatricals,
they disport themselves in pink tights, and the Consul thunders:
“Disgraceful behaviour! While I am wearing myself out trying to make
people moral and respectable once more, my brother and my sister appear
before the footlights almost naked!” But as soon as his back is turned,
they laugh merrily, and follow their own bent.
Caroline, who has married General Murat, is already involving her husband
and Bernadotte in intrigues against the Consul. The public learns nothing
of these matters, but they come to Napoleon’s ears, and he says angrily
that Murat deserves to be shot.
Pauline loses her husband in a colonial campaign. She does not regret
the loss. By her second marriage, she becomes Princess Borghese in Rome.
Her innocence is no more than a cynical pose, but her brother remains
fonder of her than of any of the others. Even when the looseness of her
life imperils his reputation, and he thinks it necessary to remonstrate,
he words his remonstrances cautiously.
Uncle Fesch, at first a priest, and then an army contractor, now enters
political life and resumes the clerical habit. Napoleon secures his
appointment as archbishop and then as cardinal. All the Bonapartes
exploit the man of power, that they may win money and position, lead a
splendid life, and enjoy themselves, whereas in his life of superhuman
toil there is little scope for pleasure.
Only his mother continues to hold aloof. Although she is not better
pleased with Josephine now than formerly, although she is still the
woman of Corsica and continues to talk an island dialect, he invites
her, immediately after the coup d’état, to come and live with him in the
Tuileries. She refuses, prefers to stay with Joseph. At the first great
parade he holds in the courtyard of the palace, when she appears on the
balcony among the highest State officials, she is very simply dressed,
all in black, and yet looks prouder than Josephine, hard by, decked
out in peacock array. Letizia mistrusts all this splendour, being now
inured to the vicissitudes of life. When any one tries to flatter her by
speaking of her son’s greatness and power, she sagely answers, in her
Italian French: “Pourvou que cela doure.”
What is the source of these family dramas, some of which will end in
farce, others in tragedy?
In Napoleon’s heart, had he been nothing more than a parvenu of the
familiar type, he would, when pressed by his nearest and dearest for a
share in his good fortune, graciously or ungraciously, but infallibly,
have kept this dozen or so of men and women far from his circle of
influence, for he would have been fain to conceal an origin which
conflicted with his affectation of French nationalism. He is dictator
of France, and yet every time his mother opens her mouth she reminds
all the nationalists of his foreign birth. Here is the sister of a man
who ranks with kings, and she plays the maddest pranks before the eyes
of the monarchs of Europe, who naturally delight in pointing the finger
of scorn at the ill-breeding of the upstart’s relatives. His brothers
wallow in the practice of corrupt methods which it was a primary aim of
the revolution to abolish. All this occurs in Paris, where irony has ever
been the fundamental tone of criticism!
Yet he does not merely tolerate these embarrassing kinsfolk; he is
continually showering honours on them, promoting them to high office,
making them his representatives abroad.
Herein we see the working of his Italian blood, and, above all, of his
island upbringing. Every Corsican family, patriarchal by tradition,
is clannish to the core, while filled with sentiments of hatred and
vengefulness towards the rival houses of the puny isle. Such traditions
are older than those of many of the royal families, and as a result
of them the urge towards the gratification of pride and towards the
vindication of honour is more powerful than the desire for wealth. With
this inborn clannishness is associated and intertwined the intense
longing of a conqueror to preserve for the heirs of his body all that he
has snatched for himself by the strength of his genius and through the
favour of fortune. Nevertheless, destiny (tragical in its working, being
conditioned by his innermost sentiments, and therefore inexorable) has
made this man childless. The wife, into whose arms he has been driven by
all the passion of love, the wife who has borne two healthy children in
previous marriage, remains barren in her second union; and the infirmity
of barrenness, but for which the history of Europe would have taken a
different turn, is obviously a consequence of her devotion to the art of
love, of the facile amorousness with which she won Bonaparte’s affection
and held him for a time in thrall. For, when she first met him, she was
little over thirty; and, as for him, in subsequent relationships with
other women, he was able to procreate three sons. He urgently needs a
legitimate heir. Even an heiress would serve his turn. There can be no
doubt that Josephine’s failure to satisfy him in this crucial instance
had a decisive effect on his plans.
In view of the plenitude of his powers, how could it be otherwise? During
the first years of his rise, Roederer propounds the great theme: “The
royalists are saying: ‘Who will be Bonaparte’s successor!’ If you die
to-morrow, what will happen to us? You must nominate your successor.”
“What you suggest would not be a strong policy.”
“France would be more at ease if she knew who was to succeed you.”
“I have no children.”
“You could adopt one.”
“That would not meet the difficulties of the moment. I can see no other
way out than that the Senate should appoint my successor. Only three of
the senators and myself should know his name. But who is it to be?”
“They had better choose a lad of twelve.”
“Why do you want him to be a child?”
“A boy who can grow up in your school; one whom you can train and love.”
At length the Consul, driven into a corner, exclaims: “My natural heir is
the French people.”