he is appointed dictator for ten years only, he plainly foresees that
he will be monarch. But he is already alarmed by the dangers of the
position. When he looks round in search of an heir, his only hope is in
his brothers. The best return they can make for the gifts he showers on
them is that they should raise up heirs to his name, heirs who will at
least have the advantage of Bonapartist blood. That is why Napoleon is so
furious with Lucien, not because he has taken a wife with a bad name, but
because he has taken a wife with no name. Lucien must get a divorce, and
thus win freedom to marry a woman of royal blood.
Lucien refuses, quite as much owing to spite for his all-powerful brother
as owing to affection for his wife. He is, indeed, fond of her; but he is
so ambitious that he would sacrifice anything in the world for the sake
of supreme power. After a stormy scene between the pair, Bonaparte comes
into Josephine’s room, and his voice is shaken with emotion as he says:
“It is all over! I have given Lucien his dismissal.”
Similar considerations explain the long-lasting quarrel with Louis, to
whom Josephine looks for the salvation of her own line. He cannot endure
Josephine’s daughter Hortense, who reciprocates the dislike and loves
another man. Josephine, however, forces her to marry Louis, and the son
of this ill-assorted union becomes Napoleon’s darling, and is looked
upon as likely to be the heir. Thereupon, his sisters begin to intrigue,
spreading abroad the report that Napoleon is really the father. Through
these disputes, the unity of the family is shattered, at the very time
when Europe envies it for its good fortune. Letizia sides with the young
people who have been forced into a marriage; and also espouses the cause
of the ostracised Lucien, whom she follows to Rome. There she can live
happily, far from the glowing star that has sprung from her womb. There
she can live as an Italian, a wealthy and respected associate of Rome’s
leading families, and treated by the pope with all the honours due to a
woman of royal blood.
What if Bonaparte were to divorce Josephine? His sisters, who hate “the
old woman,” do what they can, and trot attractive beauties up and down
in full view. As Josephine grows older, Napoleon’s relations with her
become more tranquil, but he needs her friendship. He has ceased to be
fastidious and has transient love affairs with one pretty actress after
another, or makes this or that companion of his sisters the mistress of a
few evenings or a night or two.
Georges, who, like all the rest, is afraid of him, describes him as “an
amiable and considerate man,” who plays hide and seek with her, helps her
to undress, and bends to her “childish caprices.” Since her Christian
name is Josephine, he refuses to call her by it, and invents for her an
Italian name. She is Giorgina. He asks her to tell him her own story,
listens attentively, and nods approvingly—for he has taken care to learn
all about her, and is pleased that she tells him the truth.
Sometimes the Consul’s servants catch sight of him in the evening, as, in
his stockinged feet, he steals up a secret winding staircase to visit the
lovely Duchatel. She is gentle, slender, and blonde—the type he prefers.
Duchatel is one of Josephine’s ladies-in-waiting. He likes to play cards
with her sometimes, talking to her in an undertone about matters of love,
while the uneasy Josephine, at another card table, strains her ears to
catch what he is saying. The lady-in-waiting retires. Napoleon follows,
to find her in the place of assignation. His wife, beside herself,
pursues them, rattles the door-handle. Napoleon comes to the door in a
rage. Next day he threatens her with divorce, but he is softened by her
tears.
These amours are but occasional. He is always up to the eyes in work.
Besides, he has made up his mind to avoid what has proved disastrous to
so many kings. He will not squander his resources on inamoratas, and he
will not allow them to interfere in matters of State. As regards affairs
of love, he is prematurely old. It is with a sense of shock that we find
this man of thirty writing in a letter to a friend: “My old heart, which
now knows human beings for what they are....”
Josephine is racked with anxiety about his conduct, just as formerly he
was racked with anxiety about hers. She relies on dresses, hats, the arts
of the toilet; spends more than the late queen of France; and has still
so little reticence that, though she is the first lady in the land, she
cannot refrain from telling her maid when the Consul has spent the night
with her. He forgives her much. Sometimes she sits at the weary man’s
bedside, reading to him in her lovely alto voice. He thanks her with his
eyes. He is conservatively inclined, this man of the revolution. Rarely
does he part with a general, dismiss an official. How, then, shall he
divorce this woman whom he loves, despite her faults?
In the pleasant gardens at Malmaison, where during his year’s absence in
Egypt she lived with her light-of-love, Hippolyte, he runs races with
Bourrienne, Rapp, and a few men of letters, while Eugene and Hortense
look on. When he trips and falls, he joins merrily in the others’
laughter. Then he gets into his carriage for the drive to Paris, saying:
“Now I can put my head in the collar once more.”
VI
“Bonaparte very seldom writes with his own hand. He dictates everything,
while walking up and down his study; dictates to a young man of twenty
named Méneval, the only one who has the entry to this study and the three
other rooms of the private suite. No use approaching Méneval; nothing to
hope in that quarter; indeed, no one would dare to try. But the First
Consul himself jots down the memoranda that relate to his most important
plans. This ... very special map, he locks up with his own hand, and
always carries the key about with him. If he leaves his study, Méneval
has to put the map away in a cupboard screwed to the floor. Of course the
map might be stolen, but it would instantly be missed. Suspicion would at
once fall upon Méneval and the underling, who cleans the study and lights
the fire, so the underling would have to make a bolt for it.... All the
secret memoranda concerning his military operations must be in it, and
since the only way of overthrowing his power would be to destroy his
plans, the theft of this map would bring everything to naught.”
Who writes the foregoing? A Bourbon spy? Or is it a traitor among the
Consul’s intimates?
Neither the one nor the other. The young man of twenty named Méneval
writes it; and it is dictated to him by his chief, the First Consul,
who is walking up and down the study. Acting on Bonaparte’s orders, the
Minister for Justice is sending a provocative agent to Munich, where the
man is to get in touch with English agents of the Bourbons. The letter
is to be part of the outfit. Many other details are given. We are told
more about the royalist menial who cleans the study and lights the fire;
what this fellow will get if he brings off the coup successfully; where
he will spend the night during his escape. The commander is drafting the
plan of a little campaign directed against himself.
He has good reason to be on his guard. Uneasy winter weeks are these,
during which he collates the data sent in by a hundred spies in London,
Vendée, and Paris itself. “Has the time come to strike?” his agents are
continually asking. “Wait,” he replies, and quietly goes on gathering
information. At length he has all the proofs in his hands. His deadly
enemies of the extreme right and the extreme left, the royalists and the
Jacobins, have joined forces for the destruction of their great enemy.
Pichegru, the friend of the Bourbons, and Moreau, the champion of the
republicans who are opposed to the dictatorship, are working together.
Both the generals are his rivals. Now is the time to strike.
When the plot became public property, alarm spread across Europe. The
legitimate rulers were amazed at Napoleon’s perspicacity, but put their
trust in his enemies, whose number must be greater than the “Moniteur”
was willing to admit. The English ambassador compromised! The great
Moreau in jail!—Bonaparte hesitates a long time before arresting Moreau,
having high esteem for the man who had shared his laurels. On the day
of the arrest, the Consul sends repeatedly for news. Is his memory at
work? Less than four years ago, he himself had a scare that night in
Talleyrand’s house when he believed his own arrest to be imminent! The
trial is distressing; Moreau’s complicity is clearly proved; but Napoleon
thinks it better to pardon the victor of Hohenlinden on condition
of withdrawal to the United States. Pichegru is found strangled in
prison. Thirteen of the conspirators are executed. A man named Querelle,
personally involved in the conspiracy, reveals that one of the Bourbon
princes has been privy to the plot.
The Consul lends an eager ear. A Bourbon prince! Talleyrand draws
attention to the fact that for a long time the duke of Enghien has been
living close to the Rhine frontier—presumably in order to watch through
a telescope what is going on in France. Would a man spend his time thus
inertly in Baden, simply in order to make love to a cardinal’s niece? The
duke of Enghien is a scion of the house of Condé; he is a Bourbon, and is
in English pay. Most likely he is the Bourbon prince incriminated in the
affair. At any rate, he is in touch with the agents who swarm in South
Germany. An example must be made of this suspect of the blood royal. That
will put an end to the reiterated attempts on the part of the exiled
Bourbons to disturb the peace of France and to trouble the sleep of its
master!
In a lengthy despatch, the Consul orders an attack on the little Badenese
town of Ettenheim, just across the Rhine. The number of boats and the
soldiers’ rations are prescribed with as much care as if the expedition
were the siege of Mantua. Three hundred dragoons make a raid into Baden
and carry off the duke. Four days later, he is brought in secret to the
fortress of Vincennes.
Two of Napoleon’s confidants warn the dictator that no compromising
documents have been found among the duke of Enghien’s belongings. But
Talleyrand, who has ever an eye to his own future, advises court martial
and the severest measures, knowing that the moral reprobation thus
aroused will, in the end, prove disastrous to Napoleon. Brother Joseph is
alarmed at the same thought. He reminds Napoleon of the veneration they
had shared for the great Condé during their cadet days; of the verses
they had recited about the hero of the seventeenth century. Was the only
remaining descendant of that famous man to be slaughtered?
“I have made up my mind to pardon him,” answers the Consul. “But that is
not sufficient. I feel that I am strong enough to have him fighting on my
side.”
Joseph returns home, able to reassure Madame de Staël and his other
quests.
The duke, who was two years younger than Napoleon, and who would probably
have won renown but for the peculiar political circumstances which had
brought Napoleon fame and power, was tried by court martial the same
evening. With a brave and knightly bearing, he faced the twelve staff
officers who formed the court, while a member of the Council of State,
acting as prosecutor, asked the questions that had been drafted by
Napoleon.
“Did you never have any dealings with English agents?”—“No.”—“Was it
not your intention, if Pichegru’s conspiracy had been successful, to
cross the Rhine and invade Alsace?”—“No.”—“Have you been in receipt
of an English pension?”—“Yes.”—“Did you wish to enter the English
service?”—“Yes, in order to free my country.”—“This means that you
placed yourself at England’s disposal in order to take up arms against
France?”—“How can a Condé return to his homeland except under arms?”
A death sentence follows, and next day at dawn the duke of Enghien is
shot.
In one respect the treatment of the duke of Enghien was definitely
illegal. The French had no right to kidnap him in foreign territory and
to bring him across the frontier. Once he was on French soil, there was
legal warrant for condemning him to death as a person who (according
to his own admission) desired by force of arms to overthrow the extant
form of State. With the primary reservation regarding the French raid
into Baden, of course absolutely indefensible, the condemnation was
technically just.
Nevertheless, as Talleyrand subsequently said of the affair, it was worse
than a crime—it was a blunder. In time of revolution, hundreds are put
to death who are more innocent than was this prince. Even though he may
not have been privy to the plot, he would have hailed with delight the
assassination of the usurper, and would, sword in hand (to quote his
own words), have joined in the march on Paris to take vengeance on any
of the regicides who remained alive. There would have been very little
said about the court martialling and shooting of this young officer, had
he not been a Bourbon, had he not been a symbol of that prince-ridden
Europe whose system had been ended on French soil by the revolution. The
shooting of the duke of Enghien was a challenge to a dozen thrones, and
to the many millions of Europeans who believed in rule by divine right.
It gave the signal for a rallying of forces against the dictator who
had had neither part nor lot in the reign of terror, and who during his
seven years as military commander and as statesman had never committed an
outrage.
The day after the execution, a few tongue-tied and crestfallen guests
were seated at his board. Josephine was doing her best to hide her fears,
and Napoleon had been taciturn despite his tumultuous thoughts. Then,
suddenly, he broke out: “At any rate, they will know now what we can
do. Henceforward, I hope, they will leave us in peace.” After dinner,
he walked up and down the room, explaining to the silent listeners his
reasons and what he thought of it all. Continuing to pace the room, he
went on to speak movingly of genius, of statesmanship, and above all of
Frederick the Great, for whom he had so profound an admiration:
“Ought a statesman to indulge in feelings? Is he not an isolated
individual, always alone though always in company? Policy is his
telescope, which must neither reduce things in size nor magnify them.
Even while he is attentively watching the course of events, he must be
pulling the strings which move them. Often enough, ill-matched horses
are harnessed to his chariot. Do you think he can allow himself to heed
some of those feelings which may in other respects be of great importance
to the welfare of society?... How often he will have to do things which
seem quite out of keeping with the whole!... Try to get outside the
limitations of your own epoch, enlarge your imagination instead of being
content merely to blame, and you will see that those great personalities
you had regarded as violent and cruel, are nothing but statesmen! They
know themselves better than others know them; they are the best judges
of their own conduct; if they have true ability, they will even know how
to control their passions, for they will be competent to calculate the
precise effect of these.”
Suddenly breaking off this monologue, which discloses some of the
deepest recesses of his soul, he sends for the documents bearing on the
conspiracy and has them read over to him.
“You see,” he says, “we have incontrovertible proof that the conspirators
wanted to spread disorder in France, and hoped, through killing me, to
slay the revolution! It was my business to defend the revolution, to
avenge it! The duke was a conspirator just like another, and had to be
treated in the same way as the others.... The madmen seek to kill me,
though they would gain nothing by it, for a gang of fanatical Jacobins
would take my place.... These Bourbons! If they ever do regain power,
I will wager that their first concern will be with etiquette. If they
were prepared to share in the rough and tumble of the battle-field,
with its blood and its grime!... But how can they expect to win back a
kingdom with a letter dated from London and signed Louis? All the same,
letters like that will incriminate incautious recipients.... I have shed
blood; I had to. Perhaps I shall shed more in the future. But always
without passion, quite simply, because blood-letting is indicated. I am a
statesman: I am the French revolution, and shall know how to protect it!”
Abruptly he dismisses his guests.
Such is his mood; such are his motives, his views, the undercurrents of
his feelings. But his notable inferences are not yet disclosed.
VII
A week after the court-martialling of the duke of Enghien a committee
of the Senate comes to see the Consul, with a very remarkable twofold
request: for the establishment of a State tribunal and the foundation
of a monarchy. This is a cautious improvisation, to test the current of
popular opinion. Can anything be more logical, or simpler? To scare the
terrorists, to safeguard the head of the State, two things are requisite,
a State tribunal and an heir!
As with all the decisions of his life, so also this premature resolve
to become an emperor is an outgrowth of circumstances. In none of the
decisive moments of his career, do we find evidence that he had a
definite scheme of life, which he systematically endeavoured to realise.
When he first invaded Italy, it was not in search of the crown of Milan,
and still less in search of the crown of France. But, as he winged his
soaring flight, the natural sequence was that wider and ever wider vistas
of land and sea should unfold themselves before his eyes. What happened,
was a fulfilment of his own guiding principle: “He will not go far who
knows from the first whither he is going.” Improvisation, which, in
amazing fashion, characterises so much of his activity, merely deprives
him of the nebular glory of the mystical hero. As far as details are
concerned, it leaves him free to make exact preparations, while restoring
to him, as a whole, a liberty and a guilelessness which strengthen his
genius.
Was the desire to become emperor a mistake? What urged him towards the
adoption of such a role?
First of all, the imaginative side of his nature, which for the second
time is blinding the cold reason of the calculator. Thus was it in
Egypt, and thus was it to be for a third time in Russia. His ideal
drives him to take this step. He had grown to manhood amid dreams of the
antique world; classical imagery had filled his mind; his dictatorial
nature necessarily craved for the forms of Roman imperialism. A poetical
temperament which makes him look upon the successive occurrences in his
life as phases in the unrolling of a saga, and makes him feel, on the
very evening after a battle has been won, that the battle has already
passed into the realm of history; this engine, driven by the power of
fantasy; this eye that looks upward and beyond to see how posterity will
crown his deeds with fame—they need a symbol which no one has to-day, but
which shone over Europe two thousand years ago.
Yet the mathematician in him also needs this symbol; the statesman needs
it, that he may safeguard his country without perpetual wars. Lastly, and
perhaps most passionately of all, the man with strong family attachments
needs it; the man who feels he has won nothing, if what he has won be no
more than an adventurer’s prize that will perish with the winner.
“The name of king is outworn. It carries with it a trail of obsolete
ideas, and would make me nothing more than the heir of dead men’s
glories. I do not wish to be dependent upon any predecessor. The title
of emperor is greater than that of king. Its significance is not wholly
explicable, and therefore it stimulates the imagination.” Here, in two or
three sentences, are compendiously disclosed the impetuous and the hot,
the cunning and the cold, motives of his soul.
Does he see the dangers, or does he overlook them? What are his
antitoxins? “What is a throne? A piece of wood covered with satin!” When
he has become emperor he will ask the question and answer it thus, more
than once. But with this satin-covered piece of wood, as he knows, he
can influence grown men, just as he could influence them with the toys
of the Legion of Honour. Indeed, the glamour of the throne is stronger,
and therefore he will take the establishment of his throne more seriously
than he took the foundation of the Legion of Honour. It is an instrument
of policy, a means for the management of men. In the real world, where no
one can call familiar spirits to his aid, the private person, the poet
or the philosopher, can raise his head heavenward without bearing the
burden of a crown; but the statesman needs the insignia of power, for the
dull populace cannot believe in the reality of power unless he who wields
power wears the insignia.
Are we to suppose that he, who can calculate all eventualities, does not
see the danger that lurks in the symbol of the crown? Does he not know
that for thousands of years people have regarded the monarch as akin to
God? If he is aware of this, how without disaster will he be able to
harmonise the illusion with his political cynicism? If the crown is the
gift of his genius, how can he bequeath it without bequeathing the genius?
Nevertheless, all his endeavours, like those of the emperors of ancient
Rome, are now concentrated upon the bequest of power. He, whose own
genius has taught him that genius is always aboriginal and primary; he
who with his own eyes has seen hereditary power perish amid blood and
grime, and whose inmost heart said aye to the act of regicide; he, who
to-day reproaches the Bourbons, not with their origin, but with the
cowardice that keeps them trembling in their mouseholes; he, Napoleon
Bonaparte, who feels himself to be the one man of a millennium; he, a
principle of whose rule it is to grant honour and wealth only to merit
and courage and talent; he, who is the symbol of revolt incorporated in
human flesh—believes that in the place he has fought and won for himself
through the storms of eight years, he will be able to perpetuate his
blood for the sole reason that it is his own!
He knows Plutarch and the story of the Cæsars. He has studied the history
of the great kings of France and England and Prussia, and has learned to
look with contempt upon their decadence. And yet he is ready and eager
to restore the hereditary principle for the succession to this, the
highest office in the State! Here, and here only, he wishes to combine
the newest of the new with the old, so that, as he says later in a
phrase both profound and tragical: “I might achieve that harmony which
I regarded as essential for the tranquillity of the world, a solitary
man, driven forward by the impetus of my own personality. That is why I
dropped sheet-anchors everywhere.”
But side by side with these heroic words, which sufficed to class him
with the heroes of Plutarch, were housed the simplest feelings of
domestic life. For, when his confidant Roederer urged him to seek a new
wife, who would bear him a son, Napoleon answered in great excitement:
“Hitherto I have always ruled justly. It might be to my interest to seek
a divorce. But what right have I to put away a good wife merely because
I have become a greater man than I was when we married? She would have
followed me into exile or imprisonment. Now I am to divorce her? I am
not strong enough to do that. A human heart beats in my bosom; my mother
was not a tigress.” After Josephine’s death, he would be free to choose
a new partner. But, as things are, what will be the best way of solving
this problem of the succession? “My brothers, like myself, were born in
petty circumstances, but they did not force themselves upwards unaided as
I did. The man who is to rule France must either be born to greatness, or
he must be one of those whose inborn strength enables them to distinguish
themselves from the herd.”
In this last idea is implicit the disastrous error which in due time is
to lead him to inevitable destruction.