creature, I must try to gain my end by a half-promise, which I need not
regard as binding.” He writes: “There are moments in life when high
position is a heavy burden. That is borne in on me at this moment.... If
only you would! None but you can overcome the obstacles which separate
us. My friend Duroc will do what he can to make it easy for you. Oh,
come, come! All your wishes shall be fulfilled! Your country will be even
dearer to me, if you have compassion on my heart. N.”
Now we should recognise his wonted style, even without the capital N.
Nevertheless, how amazingly the loneliness of the man of might breathes
from these lines. The third love-letter is intelligently composed, and
therefore achieves its purpose—but it discloses to us the tragical mask
of destiny, the destiny of one who wishes to walk along the course he
has planned for himself, and who is sacrificing his human happiness to
this heroical monomania. He roams through the splendid palace, arms
locked behind. For weeks his mood has been one of yearning, but always he
has been alone. For months he has hardly been near a woman. Now, having
fallen passionately in love, storm-tost, he dismisses his secretaries,
will not discuss matters with his generals, refuses to admit deputations,
will not go out riding. The whole mechanism he has constructed is
stationary. The palace, the army, Paris, Europe—let them wait. He, more a
slave than any other, refuses to-day to obey the nature of things; a man
of thirty-seven whose wife, well past forty, no longer stirs his passion.
Profoundly moved by a girl, twice rebuffed, he must devise lures from his
other realms, must tempt her with the freedom of her country, in order
that, after nearly a decade of quiescent feeling, he may spread upon the
shoulders of a young woman the mantle of his yearning for tranquillity.
She, alarmed at the assault of this virile will, sits the same afternoon
among her friends and relatives who are urging the sacrifice upon her,
for Poland’s sake. In this mood, she at length goes to see him. The three
evening hours she spends with him are spent in tears. By gentle arts he
restores her to calm, and to her astonishment she finds that this dreaded
man of iron is a tender wooer.
“Marie, sweet Marie, my first thought is yours!” she reads next morning.
“I shall see you at dinner. I pledge you my word. Please wear the nosegay
that I send; it will be a secret messenger of our feelings amid the
crowd; thus we shall understand one another. If I lay my hand on my
heart, you will know that it is wholly yours; for answer, press your
flowers to your bosom. Love me, my charming Marie; do not take your hand
away from the flowers.”
Not until three days later does she become his. Then she comes to
see him every evening. But, as well as this, she must be present at
every reception, for otherwise he stays away. What is she to him? The
second creature in the world who asks nothing from him; his mother
was the first. Never has he known another woman who did not expect his
magician’s hand to shower on her the treasures of the universe: jewels,
palaces, crowns, money. This woman wants nothing from him, and gives him
everything. Countess Walewska is the quiet and loving companion whom
Napoleon’s stormy soul has sought. It will be long before he will be
willing to part from her. “She is an angel. It may justly be said that
her spirit is as lovely as her features.”
Josephine wants to come? Now? He smiles. Since the Cairo days, Bonaparte
has never had a mistress while campaigning, whereas his generals have
had plenty of love-affairs. There can be no doubt that the story of this
intrigue, distorted of course, will quickly be carried to Paris, and in
a veiled form will find a way to Josephine’s ears. She is waiting there,
waiting to be summoned to his side. Now, in the most graceful way in the
world, he deceived the wife who had deceived him for years. The weather,
the roads, the public insecurity, made it impossible. “How gladly should
I be spending the long winter nights at your side.... If you are always
weeping, then you lack courage and character. I cannot endure cowardly
people. An empress must have courage!”
Now he betrays her. “I laughed when you wrote to me that you had taken
a husband in order to be with him. In my simplicity, I had believed
that woman was made for man; man for country, family, fame. Forgive my
ignorance. One can always learn something from lovely women.... Besides,
I could not think of any lady with whom I was exchanging letters. If
there really were one, I can assure you she would have to be as beautiful
as a newly opened rose. Does that apply to the lady of whom you speak?”
See how this ambiguous trifling amuses him. His heart is so light
sometimes. He can play the gallant as if there had never been a
revolution in the world. When, after a few weeks, he resumes a
campaigner’s life, his farewell to his Polish inamorata is an au revoir.
Now Russia is open to him for the first time, a land like the desert.
Endless steppes, covered with snow or mud; no bread, and hardly any
roads. After a few skirmishes, the tsar slowly retreats. Can we follow
him? Whither is he enticing us? Who will feed the army? There is nothing
in this land to be seized, nothing such as there is in prosperous
Germany, no storehouses. Had not a few hundred Polish Jews, shrewd
speculators, seen the chance of striking good bargains, the regiments
would have perished, at this early date, in the year 1807. When the
Emperor, whose carriage has perforce been left behind, is riding towards
Pultusk, he hears murmurs from the ranks. This is a sound he has almost
forgotten; he heard it for the first and last time eight years ago at
Acre. His generals report suicides among the men. Thousands of starving
soldiers desert, to become marauders. The Emperor is dumbfounded at
the news, but what can he do? “I know my Frenchmen,” he says. “It is
difficult to march them on distant expeditions. France is too beautiful.”
It is not surprising, therefore, that when he compels the Russians to
fight, for the first time he should fail to conquer in the open field.
He is not actually beaten at Eylau, but both the contending armies
sustain terrible losses, and the issue is indecisive. A first warning not
to campaign against Russia! Report after the battle: the soldiers are
rifling the potato clamps for food, and the horses are tearing straw from
the roofs. The whole countryside is filled with invalided soldiers, and
none of the colonels know how many men are left in their commands. The
Emperor speaks:
“We shall stay here a couple of days more, and then withdraw a few
miles. Post guards on all the bridges over the Vistula; no one must be
allowed to cross, except the amputated. Don’t bother about stragglers; no
punishments.” But these signs of the disintegration of his army trouble
him more than in former days. A cramp of the stomach, from which he has
already suffered at times, becomes more frequent, and he says: “I bear
within me the germs of an early death, and shall die of the same trouble
as my father.” Cancer is the family heritage: his grandfather, his
father, his uncle, Lucien, and Caroline, all perished of this disease.
He writes to his brother: “We are living here amid snow and mud, without
wine, bread, or brandy.” But this is a private missive. From Osterode,
where he is housed in a barn among the soldiers, and eats whatever they
can shark up for him (a comrade among his men, as he had been years
before in Italy), his bulletins to Paris speak of a great victory, and of
a Russian rout. The casualties are stated at a third of the true figures.
The French army is in fine case, and can stay where it is for a year if
thought best.
For the second time he must learn that his nerves are not made for
waiting. Here, as in Egypt, this commander finds that there is something
uncanny about standing still. Only once more in the whole course of his
fifteen years as a conqueror will there be another such pause of two or
three months in a place far from Paris. Both these epochs of tedious
consideration, cautious negotiation, are filled out in the interludes of
work by giving free rein to his pent-up emotions. They are filled out
with idylls.
Finckenstein, a fortified Prussian castle, is now the scene of his
activities, while he is awaiting the thaw on the roads and in the hearts
of his adversaries. There are huge fireplaces, which are a delight to
him, “for I love to look into the fire at night when I can’t sleep.” The
place is roomy enough to house the envoys and couriers. For ten weeks,
the world is ruled from here. In the great bedroom upstairs, he has had
his iron camp-bed set up beside the huge four-poster.
No one knows that the Polish countess occupies the next room—or hardly
any one except Constant, his valet, and Rustam, the Mameluke. She rarely
goes out, and then only after dark. The time is passed in embroidery,
reading, and waiting, until the door opens, and he enters, to devote
himself to her for a time. He has his meals with her alone. In these
two rooms are the commander’s headquarters, and here the Emperor has
enshrined his idyll. There are no dynastic wishes to trouble him as in
Paris, no jealousies, and no bargainings for jewels; there is no wish to
shine; nothing but the desire to remain hidden from the world, a wordless
wish in the eyes of this sweet girl of eighteen who has learned to love
him.
“I know,” he says to her, “you would rather live without me. Yes, yes,
don’t protest; I know it! But you are good and gentle; your heart is
pure. You don’t want to rob me of the few hours of happiness which you
can give me every day? To think that people regard me as the happiest of
men!”
A dispatch comes to tell him that his nephew and heir, the son of King
Louis, is dead. How the news affects him is shown by his moving words
to Josephine; but he cannot tell his wife all the thoughts that now
enter his mind at Finckenstein. That little cocotte in Cairo, what he
had really hoped from her was a son. How if this beautiful woman, this
noblewoman whom he loves, were to give him an heir? Would he then make
her his empress? Why not? He looks at Walewska, but keeps his own counsel.
What is Paris saying?
With ear attent, he listens to the rumours that reach him across the
Polish steppe. The funds are falling. Malicious jests are current on the
boulevards. “Where are our brave lads?” ask the Parisians. Caution is
needed! What begins as a gentle shower, may turn into a raging storm; and
the man who knows how to control the thunder is far away. He offers the
beaten Prussians a separate peace, and even proposes a conference, but
Queen Louise holds firmly to the alliance with the tsar. Austria, too, is
deaf to his voice.
Despite all, here and now, with enemies to right and to left of him, and
without any firm standing-ground, he begins to dream once more of the
conquests of Alexander. Messengers bearing heavily sealed letters ride
forth from the courtyard of Finckenstein; strangers bringing dispatches
arrive from remote lands and make their way to him across distant
mountains. To this northern headquarters comes a Persian envoy, and the
messenger of the King of Kings reverently bows his head to greet the
sublime Emperor of the West. Next day, Napoleon and the Persian emissary
come to an understanding. The Emperor will force the tsar to give back
Georgia to the shah. In return, the shah will spur on the Afghans and
the tribes of Kandahar to attack the English in India; he will equip an
army for the invasion of Hindustan. If the Emperor wishes to send an army
against India, his men shall have free passage across Persia.
Hardly has the Persian departed, when a gorgeously attired Turk rides
in past the astonished sentries, bringing golden gifts and a dispatch.
A bespectacled oriental expert translates it. Standing in front of
the fire, the Emperor, having reduced the eastern bombast to sober
proportions, dictates a letter to the sultan: “I regret very much that
you ask for no more than five hundred men instead of several thousand....
State your demands clearly, and whatever you want shall be instantly
done. Get into communication with the shah of Persia, for he, too, is an
enemy of the Russians.... I offered your envoy the artillerymen and other
soldiers you need, but he would not accept them, being afraid of hurting
Mohammedan susceptibilities. I am so powerful, and I am so desirous for
your victory (I wish this because of my friendship for you, and not on
political grounds alone), that I can deny you nothing.”
The same day, he writes to Brother Louis, who has been sending urgent
appeals from his new kingdom, a letter which may be regarded as a
sort of general instruction for kings, and which occupies five pages
of print. He also sends orders to Joseph, as to the latter’s conduct
in Naples. To Jerome, who in Breslau is commanding a corps of pretty
actresses instead of his soldiers, Napoleon writes to ask why his
brother never sends complete reports, and why he has left six hundred men
in Schweidnitz, four hundred in Brieg. “Let me know your exact plans,
down to the smallest details, so that I can form an accurate picture
of your situation.” He likewise sends a missive to all the bishops in
France. They are to institute a public thanksgiving for the Emperor’s
victories; but he aims, also, at exercising personal influence on each
of his episcopal correspondents, for he has learned that the dispute
between himself and the pope is making the ecclesiastics more and more
uneasy in their consciences. Meanwhile he sends a dozen orders to Fouché:
concerning Madame de Staël, and the extent of her influence; concerning
the salons of the aristocratic quarter; and so on. He enquires about
the two leading Parisian theatres; their condition, their finances, and
their repertoire. “What has become of my librarian?” he asks in another
letter. “Is he dead, or enjoying himself in the country? That would
be a fine way of fulfilling his duties! I ordered him to send me all
newly published books, and to let me have the publishers’ announcement
lists, but I have not had a word from him.” Draft for a new historical
university, where young people may learn about modern happenings as
well as the story of ancient days. To the Minister for Home Affairs:
“Literature needs encouragement. Let me hear your proposals for livening
up the various forms of belles lettres.” Enquiries as to the building of
a new Stock Exchange and of the Madeleine. How can six millions be best
applied for the encouragement of manufactures, and what will be the best
way of raising the money? Two millions are to be spent in renovating his
palaces. Arrangements must be made for the Paris newspapers to publish
articles ostensibly based on information from Bucharest and Tiflis, and
describing Russia’s desperate situation.
He smiles, glancing at his demure little friend. “You marvel at my
manifold activities? I have to keep watch on all my posts. Before, I was
only an acorn. Now I am an oak, the ruler of nations. All eyes are fixed
on me because I am in so outstanding a position. A man must play his
part, and cannot always be natural. But, for you, I will become the acorn
once more.” Simple words, tranquilly uttered. One more evening with her,
and then he must take the field again, for May has come, and the idyll
ends with the leaving of winter quarters and the extinction of the fires
at Finckenstein. He will see her again. They are both sure of this. But
were he to forget her, he could read the posy in the ring she gives him:
“If you cease to love me, forget not that I love you.”
XV
On the Memel, where it flows past Tilsit, a huge raft is anchored in
mid-stream. The tree trunks and the planks are covered with carpets,
and in the centre a tent gleams in the June sunlight, with the colours
of France and of Russia flying above it. On the western and the eastern
banks are ranged the guards of the two emperors. Boats set out from
either shore. Napoleon and the tsar enter the peace-tent simultaneously.
The soldiers, who were shooting one another only ten days back, cheer
lustily, and those in front, who can see, pass the word to the thousands
in the rear. The foes of yesterday have embraced, their masters have made
friends.
Immediately after the great victory of Friedland, Napoleon, as was his
way, had offered his hand to the vanquished. At the opening parleys,
since the appropriate response had not been made by the sultan, he had
given a hint that the tsar might well hope, some day, to establish the
cross once more on the dome of St. Sophia. The words were carefully
chosen, for he knew that the man to whom they would be reported next
day, a romanticist and a mystic, would be amenable to their influence.
Alexander had been prompt to take the proffered hand of friendship. Now
the enemies of Austerlitz and Friedland stood face to face in amicable
converse. Napoleon coldly scrutinised his only serious rival on the
Continent, a young man with feminine lineaments, compact, delicately
moulded, rosy; hearing and eyesight rather weak. In an instant he felt
assured that the tsar was a man whom he could win over.
By the end of a fortnight, the sometime adversaries have not merely
entered into an alliance, but have made friends. How has this come about?
“He is an amiable and pleasant fellow, a hero of romance,” says Napoleon
of him at this time. Inasmuch as the Emperor is bored by novels, and has
no use for heroes of romance in the practical world of his calculations,
there is an undercurrent of criticism in these pretty phrases. But he
adds: “A handsome young man, more intelligent than is usually supposed.”
At a later date, Napoleon utters profound truths regarding Alexander:
“The tsar is an attractive figure, well formed to exercise a victorious
charm on those with whom he comes in contact. Had I been inclined to
surrender to superficial impressions, I should have become devoted to him
instantly. But there is something peculiar about him, which I can best
express by saying that in all he is and does there seems to be something
lacking. The strangest point about the matter is that it is impossible
to foresee precisely what will be lacking in any given instance, for
the defect is infinitely variable.” Thus, the man whose friendship is
all-important to him seems to him utterly feminine. His final judgment
takes the form of an overwhelming compliment: “Were Alexander a woman, I
think I should fall passionately in love with him.”
It is not surprising that such a man should in a trice be mastered
by the seductions of the man of power; nor is it remarkable that
subsequently the tsar should forsake the Emperor, for the surrender
and the abandonment are both feminine. No one has ever given a better
description of Alexander than Metternich: “A mingling of masculine merits
with feminine defects; favourite ideas, imperfectly thought out, initiate
sudden impulses. As a result, sudden embarrassments. He gives his word
too quickly, and then finds it very difficult to keep; not strong enough
for ambition in the grand style, and not weak enough for mere vanity; the
man of the world rather than ruler. There is a sort of periodicity in his
enthusiasms and disenchantments, a periodicity of five-year terms during
which an idea waxes and wanes. At the close of each cycle, a new one
opens. To begin with, he is a liberal. Then he is filled with hatred for
the Frenchman; then he passes under the Frenchman’s influence.”
Five years hence, the new period will come to an end, and the friends of
to-day will be at war again.
Maybe Napoleon already foresees this in the splendid tent, where for
two hours the emperors discuss the affairs of the world; certainly he
foresees it during the long dinners and during the rides and drives
together. Napoleon’s handling of Alexander is masterly. At first, the
Emperor assumes the role of the cavalier, who cannot sufficiently extol
the heroism of the Russians; then he conveys the implication that ere
long he must surround himself with a bodyguard of his ministers, lest
he should be carried away by the tsar’s charm. At table, in order to
dazzle Alexander, he talks of his good luck—a thing to which the man
of destiny rarely alludes. He tells an anecdote, for which this is the
only warrant, of an incident that had happened in Egypt. He had fallen
asleep beneath an ancient wall, which had suddenly crumbled to pieces
without injuring him. Awaking, he found in his hand something which at
first he believed to be a stone, but which, on examination, he saw to be
a wonderfully beautiful cameo of Augustus. Could any playwright invent
a more marvellous scene than this one invented by the Emperor, in an
after-dinner hour, to stir the imagination of the mystical idealist, his
companion?
Enthralled, the tsar listens to the man of wonders. If he could only know
all that Napoleon knows! “I feel that I am not really emperor as you are,
for I am dependent on my generals.” He asks a hundred questions about the
art of war. Naïvely, when the two men are out walking together, the tsar
asks: “What sort of position is this? How would you defend it, and how
would you attack it?”—“I explained matters to him; and I told him that,
if I were ever again at war with Austria, he should lead an army corps of
thirty thousand men under my orders, so that he could learn the art of
war.”
Was ever woman in such humour wooed? Soon an offensive and defensive
alliance is concluded.
“The lands between the Elbe and the Memel” (this is a secret note to
the treaty), “are to form the barrier between the two great empires,
a barrier to render harmless all the pin-pricks which, in disputes
between nations, are apt to precede the firing of the guns.” In this
treaty, each party to the alliance gives only in order to take; and
in a couple of words the tsar sacrifices Prussia, the Emperor Poland,
although each of the two rulers has pledged a woman to maintain the
integrity of her country. Almost grotesque is the calm with which, seated
in a small room in an out-of-the-way and little known town hard by the
shores of the Baltic, the two men pore over the map and cut pieces out
of countries like Hotspur and Owen Glendower in the play. The Emperor
gives Coburg, Mecklenburg, and Oldenburg, whose rulers have ties with the
tsar, receiving the Ionian islands and Cattaro in return. Only when the
tsar asks for the Bosphorus, does the Emperor demur. “Constantinople?
That carries world dominion with it!” In the thorny thicket of these
negotiations, we have stumbled upon the decisive word that slumbers
beneath the treaties and notes. It is plain that when two men are
dividing the world between them, they will in the long run come to blows.
The king of Prussia joins their company; and, since he lacks dignity and
intelligence, he is ignored by both the emperors. Napoleon privately
considers him a dullard, possessing neither talent nor character, and
adversely criticises everything connected with him; even his dress, which
is the uniform of a hussar, headgear and all complete. Since the king is
anxious about the very existence of Prussia, he leaves no stone unturned
to secure the safety of his State, and summons the queen to Tilsit. The
Emperor, curious to see his beautiful foe, intimates that he would be
pleased to receive the lady there. He uses the neutral zone as a pretext
for not setting out to meet her; but he has a charming residence prepared
for her reception. Then, with a brilliant suite, though himself dressed
in the simplest attire, he rides forth to visit her, and is received by
the queen, who stands at the head of the flight of steps to welcome him.
She is clad in white silk, adorned with ancient jewels, beautiful and
bitter. With seemingly innocent words, Louise breaks down the unbearable
constraint:
“Sire, I hope you will excuse these narrow steps.”
“What would one not excuse to reach such a goal,” he answers. But when he
continues to speak in this complimentary tone, she says with dignity:
“Sire, have we come here to speak of trifles?”
Then she pleads as spouse and mother, and appeals to his “magnanimous
heart.”
“You will be glad to be back in Berlin?”
“Not in all circumstances. It depends upon you whether we return home
without sorrow in our hearts.”
“Madame, I should be only too pleased....”