is already on the way to Paris. What else could the Holy Father do?
The man of might had summoned him, and the Emperor must be kept in a
good humour. Besides, he who is to be crowned is an Italian. As one of
the cardinals had put it, in the decisive conclave: “After all, we have
this satisfaction, that we are taking vengeance on the Gauls by setting
an Italian family to rule over these barbarians.” Napoleon is still
regarded as a foreigner in France! But why does he not go to Rome for his
coronation? Why is he not content to be anointed in Rome, as Charlemagne
had been, and all the emperors of the west since Charlemagne’s day? What
does he want a pope for at all?
In this matter, once more, he is trying to harmonise the new with the
old. At first he is silent about details, and merely asks the pope “to
give the highest religious consecration to the anointing and crowning of
the first Emperor of the French.” For weeks, letters have been exchanged
between Rome and Paris, but the exact nature of the ceremony still
remains obscure. Pius VII. is in an uneasy frame of mind as he draws
near to Paris, and his spirit is by no means one of benediction. Never
before has a pope been summoned in this way, much as a great physician is
summoned. When the Emperor meets the pope at the gate of the city, the
Holy Father does not fail to note that Napoleon neither kneels to receive
a blessing nor kisses hands in token of fealty. Paris is a town where
people’s faith is unstable and where popes are held in little honour. The
visitor is chilled.
But Josephine is different. All devotion, she confides to him that she
and her husband were not married in church, and that therefore from the
pope’s point of view they are not married at all. She is eager to grasp
the opportunity of consolidating her union, which seems to her frail in
view of her barrenness. Taking the hint, Pius insists upon a religious
celebration of the marriage before he will crown her as empress. In the
palace chapel, two days before the festival, Uncle Fesch, clad in purple,
solemnises the union of the pair who eight years before had needed the
intervention neither of priests nor civilian officials before coming
together. There are no witnesses, not one who could laugh over this
comedy in which cheating is still the order of the day—for even the
Corsican uncle is not aware what is about to happen.
On December 2, 1804, in Notre Dame, an abundance of precious stones
reflects the light of a myriad candles, so that the place looks more like
a banqueting hall than a church. Everything has been prepared for weeks
beforehand. A skilful museum director has even produced a colourable
imitation of Charlemagne’s sceptre. Ancient parchments from the days of
the Roi Soleil had been consulted, to ensure that the crowning of this
revolutionist should vie in every respect with that of the legitimate
monarchs of France. Ségur had studied the etiquette of the occasion with
the utmost care; Isabey had rehearsed the whole affair with an array of
dolls; the old palace, Paris, France, were in a fever.
The Emperor is in a pleasant humour. Early in the morning he makes sure
that Josephine’s crown is a good fit. The great procession drives to the
cathedral. Napoleon, robed in an antique imperial mantle, strides to the
high altar leading the empress by the hand. Josephine’s charm helps to
divest the great moment of a certain sense of embarrassment. Surrounded
by attendant cardinals, the pope is seated, waiting. The organ peals
forth.
Then, when the appointed instant has come, and all are expecting this man
who has never bowed the knee to any one, to kneel before the Holy Father,
Napoleon, to the amazement of the congregation, seizes the crown, turns
his back on the pope and the altar, and, standing upright as always,
crowns himself in the sight of France. Then he crowns his kneeling wife.
None but the pope had known his intentions. Informed at the eleventh
hour, Pius had lacked courage to threaten immediate departure. Now, all
he could do was to anoint and bless the two sinners. Moreover, the crown
on the Emperor’s head is not a Christian crown at all, but a small
pagan circlet of golden laurel leaves. All who describe the occasion
agree in saying that the Emperor was pale but handsome. He resembled
Emperor Augustus; and from now onwards, as if by some mystical power, his
features grew more and more like those of the first emperor of Rome.
Thus, in this symbolical hour, Napoleon reduces to mockery the
legitimate formalities he is affecting to copy. Furthermore, he makes a
laughing-stock of the pope, who will not forget the slight. In an instant
the cloud of Bourbon reminiscence has been scattered; the flavour of
imitation and parody has vanished; and on the steps of a temple there
stands a soldier, a Roman imperator, whom a dozen years before this day
no one had ever heard of, who since then has performed no miracles but
only done deeds, and has now crowned himself with the golden laurels of
these deeds. But his mantle is broidered with golden bees, the emblem of
activity.
Several incidents show that he has not, throughout this day of his
coronation, wholly surrendered to the mood of a man who has made his own
destiny.
When he was seated on the throne, crown on head, with the pope in front
of him, he said in a low aside to his brother: “Joseph, if only Father
could see this!” The remark, poignant at such an hour in the mouth of a
man who was never wont to speak of his father, is fundamentally natural.
The perfect simplicity, the unsophisticated innocence, of his course of
action, lead his mind back to his origin. Memories of family feuds on
the island, of the pride and ambition of the Corsican clans, direct his
thoughts towards the stock from which he has sprung.
Semblance never holds his attention, which always reaches out to the core
of reality. Thus he is not bewildered even in this amazing hour. When
he wants to whisper something to his uncle, who stands just in front of
him during Mass, he gives the cardinal a gentle dig in the back with his
sceptre. As soon as all is over, and, alone with Josephine, he goes in
to dinner, he says with a sigh of relief: “Thank God we’re through with
it! A day on the battle-field would have pleased me better!” At their
little dinner he tells her to keep on her crown, as if he and she were
poet and actress, for, he says, she is charming, his little Creole woman
as empress. Thus, in the most natural way in the world, he unmasks the
whole masquerade, and we are at ease once more as we see the son of the
revolution laughing his own empire to scorn.
[Illustration: Bonaparte as First Consul. Pencil sketch by J. D. A.
Ingres. Germain Bapst Collection.
(Photograph in the Kircheisen Collection.)]
The freedom of spirit shown by the foregoing petty details is splendidly
illuminated by an admission he made the same evening, when, to a
confidant, he summed up the whole matter with sceptical emotion: “No,
Decrès, I have come into the world too late. There is nothing great left
for me to do. I do not deny that I have had a fine career, but what a
difference between me and the heroes of antiquity. Look at Alexander, for
instance. After he has conquered Asia, he declares himself to be the son
of Jupiter, and the whole East believes him, save only his mother and
Aristotle and a handful of Athenian pedants. But if I, nowadays, were to
declare myself the son of the Father Eternal, every fishwife would laugh
in my face. There is nothing great left for me to do.”
This was said a few hours after he had crowned himself emperor; said
quite simply and quite truthfully. Is it not plain why the East has
always allured him, and will continue to allure him? By nature he is
endowed with immense powers, and is overburdened by their incredible
weight. Nothing can be adequate to his aspirations, now that he has
learned how readily people obey the man who can command obedience by
his skill and by his deeds. He is strong in his own strength; what does
Voltaire’s enlightenment, what does Rousseau, matter to him? How can
he wish to establish democracy, to install popular government, when he
knows the weakness of the popular instincts, and all the corruptness of
the leaders of the people? To expand his sway, to spread his name widely
and ever more widely, to leave more record of himself in the book of
universal history than that half page of which he spoke a few years ago,
to sacrifice life itself to the little golden circlet on his head, to do
these things without enjoyment and without leisure and without pause—this
is all that life now offers.
When, during these days, the sketch for an imperial seal is laid before
him, and he sees a lion couchant, he draws his pen across the picture,
and writes in the margin: “An eagle volant.”
X
But with a sinister energy the dangerous fluid of divine right radiates
from the golden circlet, and slowly spreads its waves through the brain
of the wearer, the chosen man. Vainly he endeavours to master and
transform the millennial force that has been stored up in this crown, or
to make light of it; it masters him, and from time to time forces him to
quit the realm of his self-control. When, a year after his coronation as
emperor, he crowns himself in Milan with the iron crown of the Lombards
(for the border States, like France itself, are to become monarchies),
his voice reverberates through the cathedral as he thunders the
traditional formula of the Carlovingian kings: “God gave it to me, woe
to him who touches it!” Of course, it is only the statesman who speaks,
for sound political reasons saying something he does not believe. But,
though he is well aware of the contradiction, he will not always be able
to solve it with the same vigour as in Notre Dame.
In the first place, the new position makes it necessary to impose new
fetters on the mind. The Ministry of Police is revived; and France is
parcelled out into four great sectors, in which the most trusty members
of the Council of State, each with an army of spies, keep watch upon
the mood of the country, for he wants to collect “moral statistics.”
Fouché is reappointed Minister of Police, and, since Napoleon’s ties with
Talleyrand become increasingly close, the Emperor is by degrees enmeshed
in the nets of the two great intriguers—though he is aware that they are
playing a double game between himself and the Bourbons, and, by a second
relay of spies, fruitlessly endeavours to keep watch and ward over his
watchers.
Sinister figures, these two ex-clerics, whom he hates, who hate him, but
whom he will never be able to shake off.
Fouché is a man of humble origin, pale, with a cold manner, taciturn,
parchmenty. Though orders flash on his breast and a lace ruffle waves
there, were it not for his piercing eyes he would look like a mummy in
court dress.
Talleyrand is in all respects the man of noble birth. Lame though he be,
the prettiest women pay court to him. His charm is that of a rolling
sphere, whose living summit is everywhere and nowhere. The assertion
that he betrayed his master only for the sake of France, is belied by
his immeasurable avarice and venality. For the nonce, he continues to
serve the Emperor; but, from the first, the two men have mistrusted one
another. Once, indeed, Talleyrand made a sacrifice for Napoleon. Late
in the evening, when the two were on a journey together, the Emperor
summoned the minister to his bedside for a talk about public affairs.
Suddenly Napoleon fell asleep, and Talleyrand sat on guard till morning,
not stirring, lest he should wake his master. That is his version of
the affair. But the man’s whole nature is so remote from any idea of
sacrifice or sympathy, that we may suppose rather that his motive was the
hope that Napoleon might reveal some important secret by talking in his
sleep.
A dozen times every year, the name of Madame de Staël crops up. Afraid
of her and her works, he keeps her away from Paris with an obstinacy
which arouses wonder. Yet she says of him: “His look grows infinitely
tender when he speaks to women.” Throughout Europe, the champions of the
freedom of the spirit fall away from him; Byron, who had greatly admired
him; Beethoven, who cancels the original dedication of the _Eroica_ to
Napoleon. With painfully mixed feelings the Emperor must have read the
tribute of the mad tsar Paul, who had already acclaimed the First Consul
as the suppressor of the revolution.
Since Marengo, he has been doing his utmost to maintain peace on the
Continent, and for four years he has been successful. His hope is that
the re-establishment of monarchy will appease the united princes, will
assuage the anger they still cherish against France. The death of two
men comes to thwart his plans. Tsar Paul is murdered, and this enemy of
England is succeeded by a youthful son, an idealist, trained by French
apostles of the enlightenment, a man with democratic leanings, gentle,
muddle-headed, animated by the wish to be a better sovereign. Alexander,
therefore, quickly comes to an understanding with England, where, after
Fox’s brief predominance and death, a transient attempt at peace with
France has been followed by a revival of the old jealous enmity. England
fails to evacuate Malta as had been arranged, imposes new conditions, and
is the first to break the peace. Once more there arises the menace of a
European coalition under English leadership, a coalition that will aim at
a Bourbon restoration, for talent enthroned in France sets so dangerous
an example to all other countries.
Thus, a year after the coronation, the war with England is resumed, and
will not end until Napoleon’s star sets. There is no campaigning, at
first; simply a state of war, in which this great military commander
cannot force a decision, and which, therefore, he cannot bring to a
close. England has two notable advantages over her continental rivals,
and over France in particular. It is an island realm; and it spreads
athwart the world. Napoleon’s historical sense, growing ever more alert,
shows England to him as a new empire of Alexander, extending like
Alexander’s from homeland isles and peninsulas to Asia and to Africa,
invincible so long as it remains a united whole. The dream of our new
oriental splits upon this rock.
On this rock, too, are wrecked the mathematician’s calculations. The
day after Aboukir, he had said that a decade would be needed for the
rebuilding of France’s fleet. Half that time has elapsed, and England’s
naval predominance has steadily grown. During the brief peace, the
soldiers of the unsuccessful Egyptian campaign are brought back to France
in English bottoms; England is confirmed in the possession of the Cape
and other overseas colonies; and France has more urgent claims on her
energies than the building of the new fleet.
Fundamentally, what was a ship to the Emperor? He was competent to
design a big gun, to cast it, to place every screw; and to repair every
wheel and every shaft of an ammunition wagon. He knew when every horse
in a cavalry squadron would have to be re-shod, and how much it would
cost; and he knew exactly how many loaves a field bakery could turn
out a day. This far-reaching knowledge was one of the secrets of his
predominance; made his subordinates zealous in their terror of his
incessant control, whether in peace time or in war time; aroused respect
for the all-embracing intelligence of the chief; and ensured the exact
carrying-out of his military ideas.
But one who would know a ship, must grow up in a ship, just as one who
would know ordnance must have passed his youth among big guns. Even
though his admirals were astonished to find how quickly he made himself
at home in naval matters, how shrewd were his questions, and how sensible
were his orders, still their commendation of Napoleon was no more than
the praise of a kindly expert who, tacitly, is criticising a talented
amateur. Napoleon knew this well enough. Since he lacked a great admiral
quite as much as a great fleet, and had never been willing to entrust
the conduct of a campaign to any subordinate, he invented a new kind of
war which was to enable him, after all, to get the better of England.
The European ports from Hamburg to Taranto were to be closed to English
ships, and thus the nation of traders was to be vanquished in a trade
war. At the same time, he revived his plans of invasion; for, could he
but set foot on the island, he would be the military commander, and in
his own element.
Just as he had done before the Egyptian campaign, so now in Boulogne, he
studies the possibilities of embarkation and disembarkation. On land, his
fantasy has found satisfaction and his mathematical powers have gained
conquests in ardent imaginings; and yet, all the time, his battles have
been realities, have realised these imaginings. But here, at sea, he is
an amateur, not an expert; is, for the first time, the onlooker instead
of the man of action. In none other of his private letters do we find
sentences akin to those which he writes from the coast to Josephine after
a stormy night in which a gunboat has broken away from her moorings:
“A wonderful sight! The minute-guns were firing; watch-fires were
lighted along the coast. A raging, foaming sea; uncertainty and anxiety
throughout the night. But a kindly spirit brooded over the ocean and the
night. No lives were lost, and I lay down to sleep with the feeling that
I had been witnessing a romantic and epic vision—so that I could almost
believe that I had been looking on quite alone.”
A wonderful sight; but, alas, only a sight! The Ossianic note is sounded
again, for the first time after fifteen years. Napoleon waxes romantic.
How moving and how significant are the closing words of this artist, who
suddenly feels that he has been robbed of the human material with which
he works, and who is even a little alarmed (we cannot help but read this
through the lines) at the unwonted sensation of being quite alone.
The unfamiliar element leads him astray. When a storm is threatening,
he orders a naval review. Admiral Bruix does not carry out the order.
The Emperor finds that no preparations are being made, and sends for the
admiral. A terrible scene.
“Why did you not obey my orders?”
“Your Majesty can see that for yourself. You would not needlessly risk
brave men’s lives in such weather!”
The Emperor, surrounded by his rigid officers, turns pale with wrath, and
says: “Sir, I have given you an order. The consequences are no concern
of yours. Do what you are told!”
“Sire, I cannot obey.”
An ominous pause. Napoleon strides towards Bruix, riding-switch in hand,
threateningly, though the switch is not raised. The admiral draws back a
step, and lays his hand on his sword-hilt. A petrified group.
“You will leave Boulogne within twenty-four hours, and betake yourself to
Holland. Rear-Admiral Magon, carry out my orders.”
A naval review is held in a raging storm. A number of chaloupes are
capsized, and their crews struggle in the water. The Emperor, to save
himself, jumps into the first boat; all who can, follow his example. Two
hundred bodies are washed ashore next day.
This incident, unique in Napoleon’s career, a blunder, an act of cruelty,
a direct disobedience on the part of a subordinate, is a warning symptom.
But there is a third indication.
A year before, an American inventor had come to Paris, and had offered
the French admiralty two new inventions: one of them a ship to be
propelled by steam power instead of by the wind; the other, a submarine
boat which was to sink ships by the discharge of a kind of torpedo.
“The man is a charlatan,” was Napoleon’s comment on Fulton, after an
experiment in which the inventor’s “plunging boat” had secured a partial
success; and he brushed the whole matter aside. If the American had
brought him models of a machine gun and a field telegraph, he would have
opened his purse.
Napoleon failed to conquer England because this was the one matter in
which he was not confident of victory. Failure was inevitable because
here, and here only, his self-confidence was at fault; because his belief
in his own powers was weakened by his want of expert knowledge and by the
inaccessibility of the foe. By land! Yes, if he could only get at this
island by land! The thought brings back to his mind the scheme of five
years ago, when he had planned an attack on India by way of Herat. But
for such a scheme, quiet and time are needed.
His first aim is to keep the peace, to bring about which he has worked
with his best powers for years. Immediately after the coronation,
he writes in this sense to six monarchs, addressing each in a style
appropriate to his correspondent’s character, thinking out the effect of
every detail, and considering even the exact working of his signature.
Note, for instance, how he writes to the shah:
“My reputation reaches so far, that you cannot fail to know who I am and
what I have done; how I have made France supreme among the nations of
the West; and how great an interest I take in the rulers of the East....
Orientals are full of courage and spirit, but their ignorance of certain
arts and their neglect of military discipline put them at a disadvantage
in war when they are faced by soldiers from the North.... Write me your
wishes, and we will renew friendly and commercial relationships....
Written in my Imperial Palace of the Tuileries ... in the first year of
my reign. Napoleon.” But, in the heading, the document sets forth a title
which never existed, a title which Napoleon obviously uses to show the
ruler of Persia that the writer is the general who made himself famous
in the Egyptian campaign. The document purports to come from “Bonaparte,
Emperor of the French.”
On his table, as he signs the letter to the shah, lies a letter to George
III., though England and France are at war. It is penned with wonderful
art, and is both moving and politic: “Does not all the blood that is
being shed without apparent advantage to any one, touch the consciences
of the governments? I am not ashamed to take the first step. It seems to
me I have shown the world that I have no dread of war and its caprices.
My heart, indeed, longs for peace; but war has never dimmed my fame.
I implore Your Majesty not to deprive yourself of the good fortune of
restoring peace to the world! Do not leave this precious task to your
children. Never was there a more favourable opportunity of stilling
angry passions. If this chance be missed, what will be the outcome of the
war? During the last ten years, Your Majesty has won more territory and
more treasure than all Europe possesses. What further could you expect
from the war?”
How could the writer fail to smile at the realisation that the last
argument could with equal force be turned against himself? The appeal
is fruitless, for neither England nor the rulers on the mainland will
tolerate the new power of France or its upstart emperor. A fourth
coalition of the princes against the republic is imminent.
During the years of peace, he has been tolerably well content. His
intimates at Malmaison have often described him as cheerful. Now he
must take up arms once more, and resign himself to the knowledge that
“it lies in the nature of things to continue this struggle between the
past and the future, for the enduring coalition of our enemies makes it
essential to attack them if we are to escape annihilation.” There is
the simple truth, spoken without exaggeration and without bitterness.
If he did not create this nature of things, at any rate he stabilised
it. Even though the first wars of France in the revolutionary epoch were
purely defensive, the subsequent campaigns became offensive, and were
transformed into wars of conquest by the impetus of the people’s army and
the outstanding genius of its commander.