“Madame, how came Prussia to venture upon this war?”
“The fame of Frederick the Great deceived us as to our strength.”
“How many times have I offered peace? Austria showed more wisdom after
Austerlitz.”
“To-day, I beg you to establish a claim upon our gratitude.”
“Have you not, yourself, destroyed my friendship for Prussia?”
“Your heart is noble; it unites with other fine qualities, the possession
of a great character.”
“Unfortunately, general considerations often stand in the way of special
wishes.”
“I do not understand questions of high politics; yet I do not feel that I
am foregoing any of my dignity as a woman if I assure you....”
He listens to her with growing interest. She notices “a kindly smile
trembling at the corners of his mouth, which seemed to guarantee
success,—when, at that moment, the king entered the room.”
The conversation has no political consequences, but the human appeal has
been very great. “It was just as well that the king put in an appearance
when he did,” the Emperor says to the tsar with a spice of coquetry.
“I might have made her promises.... An exquisite woman. Instead of
depriving her of a crown, one is tempted to lay one at her feet.” After
another talk with Queen Louise, Napoleon writes to Josephine: “She is a
bewitching woman, and is most amiable in her behaviour towards me. But
you have no cause for jealousy.... I should have to pay dearly for it
were I to play the gallant here.... She has been punished for her love
of domination; but she has displayed much character in the midst of her
misfortunes.... One has to concede that she said many sensible things.”
Even more amazing is his effect upon her, who had once called him an
infernal monster. She writes: “His head is shapely, his lineaments are
those of a thinker, his whole appearance reminds one of a Roman emperor.
When he smiles, his mouth assumes a kindly expression....”
This is Napoleon’s greatest victory. What other woman has, after a few
weeks’ acquaintance, been able to portray him more charmingly? And yet
she has reasons enough to detest him, for, in spite of the humility of
her attitude, he is as unyielding as iron. Soon, however, she arouses his
irritability. When, at last, everything has been signed, and the Emperor,
“in consideration of his friendship for the tsar,” has secured the
kingdom of Prussia against dissolution (though monstrous cantles have
been sliced off!), she cannot refrain from making renewed attempts to
soften him. Finally, he sees her into her carriage, and she seizes this
opportunity to ask him, for the last time, why so mighty a man should
have foregone the chance of earning her eternal gratitude. He throws
courtesy to the winds, and answers with ironical bitterness:
“What will you, Madame? I am to be pitied, for this is obviously the work
of my evil star!”
XVI
What is Paris saying?
“Even were I ten thousand miles away from my homeland, I could not leave
the field free for bad citizens to stir up my capital to strife!” He has
now been ten months absent—longer away than ever before or afterwards.
He tightens up the home government all the more rigorously since he fears
that his censorious Parisians are slipping out of his hands. This city,
renowned for its biting wit, is not only venting its feelings in songs
and jokes that are the delight of the boulevards; it is now assuming a
sceptical tone, and is more amused than impressed by his expeditions.
Yes, he is right, these Parisians need to be ruled by “an iron hand in
a velvet glove.” Now they are to experience both again, only the velvet
seems to have worn rather thin. Indeed, the whole tone of the capital has
become lax and disorderly. Do they want to return to Directory days, when
every one said and printed exactly what he pleased?
A new and more rigid censorship of newspapers and plays is introduced.
Historical drama must deal only with matters of the remote past; and even
Corneille, his ideal, is pruned of certain passages. Before every opera
he must be consulted, not merely as to the general question of acceptance
after it is written, but earlier, as to the choice of topic; religious
subjects are forbidden, and mythology is recommended. With lavish means,
on the imperial scale, a university is founded, modelled after the Jesuit
schools he detests; the professors are exempt from military service,
but to some extent celibacy is insisted on. Chateaubriand is attacked,
and his “Mercure de France” is suppressed, because in opposition salons
he has criticised the Emperor, and has quoted Tacitus the historian as
having taken vengeance on Nero the tyrant.
Madame de Staël’s new requests for permission to return to Paris are
rejected, “for she is able to make people think, people who had never
learned or had forgotten how to think.” To the arch-chancellor he writes:
“Summon Count R., and let him know that his wife’s boudoir is the talk of
Paris.” To Fouché: “You are not policing Paris properly. Malicious gossip
is ripe. Keep watch on the speeches that are being made at Citerni’s
restaurant and in the Café Foy.” That young people may learn who pleases
God, every child in France patters the following catechism: “We owe our
Emperor Napoleon I. love, respect, obedience, loyalty, military service,
... ardent prayers for his welfare, ... because God has showered gifts on
him in peace and war, and has made him God’s image on earth.”
He has moved a long way. When the heir of countless generations believes
such things of himself, others (or some of them) can believe them of
him. But it is only three years since the Emperor, on the day of his
coronation, had said that every fishwife would laugh in his face were he
to declare himself the son of God....
Is he no longer the same man? As of old, in personal matters he renounces
display. He will not have money lavished on his study. Here, apart
from the great writing table, there are only a small settee (on which
he lounges when he is dictating, unless he wanders about the room),
two tall bookcases, a couple of chandeliers, and the bust of Frederick
the Great; in another simply furnished study, he has a bust of Cæsar.
Looking through some bills, he says: “I was charged much less when I was
lieutenant. Why should I pay more than any one else?” When the private
theatre of the palace is to be done up, he remarks: “There must still be
a lot of upholstered benches and candelabras that were supplied at great
expense for my coronation. No doubt they are stored away somewhere.”
When Rémusat exceeds the Emperor’s wardrobe allowance of twenty thousand
francs, he is dismissed, and his successor is handed a long inventory of
requirements, a list personally drafted by the Emperor: “I think we can
make a few more savings even than this. See to it that the tailor does
his work properly. Lay the new clothes out for my inspection and approval
on the day of delivery, and then put them away at once in my drawers.”
In the case of uniform coats which are to be delivered every quarter, he
remarks: “This coat must last three years.... In addition, forty-eight
pairs of white breeches and waistcoats, at eighty francs a suit = frs.
3840. One pair of breeches and one waistcoat must be delivered every
week, and they must last three years.... Also twenty-four pairs of shoes,
to be delivered a pair every fortnight, must last two years = frs. 312.”
Shirts are the only things he orders in large quantities, to be delivered
a dozen every week, must last six years.
Here, in his intimate life, he is the same man as before; just as, when
he is campaigning, he is the old Bonaparte—a man of few enjoyments. But
upon the formalities of majesty, upon court ceremonial, upon all the
outworn display of the world whose power he has broken, he will squander,
not money alone, but, more precious, time, and, more precious still,
human dignity and his own freedom.
He no longer laughs sarcastically when those who dwell in the
aristocratic quarter frequent his court; he is genuinely pleased. His
mood is difficult to understand. The men of birth who had mortified him
in his cadet days by making fun of his poverty, now throng the court
of this same Corsican, and their shadows on the shining parquet floor
seem to mock the humility of their gestures. They are all back in the
Tuileries now, the Montmorencys, the Montesquieus, the Radziwills, the
Noailles, the Narbonnes, the Turennes, who for years had sworn the death
of the upstart. The princes of the Confederation of the Rhine clank
through the halls in their German uniforms; the Mecklenburger pays
his court to the empress; the heirs apparent of Baden and Bavaria are
privileged to hear the discussions at the Council of State. To the old
nobility this was a pastime; to the Emperor it was policy, for he wished
to make sure of the allegiance of their class.
But now there happens something which should never have happened.
Napoleon, the man who counts his coats as he counts his soldiers; the man
who in the army gives promotion only for good service, and will never
make an inefficient soldier a lieutenant merely because he is some one’s
son or nephew; the man who sits contentedly in a barn among his officers,
or by the camp-fire among his grenadiers; the man who has expunged the
privileges of birth from his legal code; the man who has contraposed the
new idea of individual ability to the old idea of hereditary dignity,
and has thus turned a whole continent upside down—this same Bonaparte,
in the autumn of the year 1807, founds a new nobility, “because it is a
part of human nature that a man should wish to hand down to his children,
not property alone, but also tokens of esteem.” Counts and princes, dukes
and majorats, were created, not, as before, in order to bestow a supreme
dignity upon the bravest marshals, the ablest senators and ministers, but
that the sons and grandsons of these new nobles, ne’er-do-wells, wealthy
Parisian idlers, and degenerates, might enjoy the privileges which the
men of a whole decade had fought and bled to abolish!
Even the Legion of Honour was now desecrated by its own creator, for
these appointed knights, every one of whom had done good service to his
country, were to be entitled to bequeath the semblance of this service as
well as their property; and the great dignitaries were to bequeath their
princely rank and appellation. Certainly, the bequest did not carry with
it any special civic privileges, but none the less the new institution
conflicted with the spirit of the Code Napoléon. “Liberty,” he wrote
with too much truth in a private letter at the time of the issue of this
decree, “liberty is only the need of the few whom nature has endowed with
exceptional talent; and there is no danger in restricting it. The crowd
loves equality. I do not injure the many when I distribute titles without
raising the old question of birth; they are bourgeois crowns, which any
one can win. Clever men impart their own movement to those whom they
rule. My movement is an upward one, and therefore the nation must move
upwards.... I know that these dukes whom I am endowing so richly that I
make them independent of me, will endeavour to elude me, and that they
are relying on what they call the caste spirit. But I can run quicker
than they, and shall soon overtake them.”
Rarely has a great error had so grand a foundation. Not many months
before, in his letters, he had positively cudgelled his brother for
having founded a nobility in Holland; and, speaking of his own intention
to do the same thing, had excused himself by saying that the Dutch were a
trading people, and that in the militarist French Empire matters were on
an altogether different footing. But in the very fact that he himself had
transformed France into a militarist State, lay the first danger; and the
second danger was the imperial crown, which, with inexorable logic, was
now diffusing its ancient symbolical power athwart his realm.
Before, when he had been Consul, he could with impunity bestow civic
crowns, gather honour and glory into a Legion, and transmit the
stupendous momentum of his flywheel to the strongest of the lesser
wheels in his country. But when he granted estates to the best among
his followers, he had to supply titles to go with their estates, titles
which were necessarily inheritable; and when to the second and third
best he now gave titles without lands, the recipients naturally begged
that the titles, too, should be hereditary. Thus in a generation,
several thousand, and in three generations, as many as twenty thousand,
would bear these new titles, not for services rendered, not for deeds
splendidly performed, but with the semblance of superiority, and, if not
with the political privileges attaching of old to birth and title, still
with the social privileges which in former days had aroused revolt in the
masses.
The treason and ingratitude which he is here laying up in store will in
due time open his eyes to his mistake. In truth, the death sentence he
passes on equality will prove to have been a more grievous blunder than
the execution of the duke of Enghien. Then he was destroying a scion of
the past; now he is creating forebears who will resuscitate that past.
The resolve issues from a moody mind; for this is a dark year in
Napoleon’s soul, although nothing seems to be going awry. “You do not
understand the nature of human motives,” he said at this period to an
honest democrat. “You democrats are unable to draw distinctions between
one another, whereas personal interest plays its part in what every one
does. Look at Masséna. He has won an abundance of fame; but what he wants
now is to become a prince, like Murat and Bernadotte. Soon he will get
himself killed in the forefront of the battle, thanks to his eagerness to
win this distinction. Ambition is what spurs the French!”
He grows colder in his manner, forbids his brothers to speak to him
uninvited, is less regular in the arrangement of his work, needlessly
extends sittings far into the night. Even at Fontainebleau, in the
interludes between hunting and festivities, he will have nothing but
tragedies staged; rises from his bed at midnight, and dictates to his
secretaries till morning; can only soothe the increasing irritability of
his nerves by spending hours in a hot bath. The cramps in his stomach
trouble him more frequently and grow more severe.
He has periods of gloom like those from which he suffered in youth,
speaks of the roaring of the sea and the moaning of the wind, has the
candles shaded when he is listening to the mournful songs of Italian
singers. None of his associates understand these moods; they can only
wonder, and they guess at political motives. They do not realise that
now, when the dream of his fancy is being fulfilled, he cannot but be
disillusioned by the fulfilment, which comes otherwise than he had
dreamed, and far too slowly. “You are just like all the rest of them,”
he says roughly to one of his ministers who congratulates him on the
treaty of Tilsit. “I shall not be master until I have signed the peace of
Constantinople!”
Worldwide power! Asia! These are the thoughts that continue to pulse in
his brain. If he, who is always studying the tragical figures of the
heroes of antiquity in search of his own image, could find the true
reflexion of his own soul, it would be in the verses at this time being
written by a German poet to describe the inner aspect of the Faustian
unrest which he, the Emperor, with ever more violent blows, is now
producing in the countries of Europe.
But these dark hours are followed by others in which his mind recovers
the wonted clarity of its calculations. Thus, to the tsar, the other
ruler of vast territories, he writes this imaginative programme:
“An army of fifty thousand Frenchmen and Russians, with perhaps a few
Austrians, could march to Constantinople, and thence hurl itself upon
Asia. Once it had reached the Euphrates, England would lie at the feet of
the Continent.... Within a month of our coming to an understanding, our
armies can be at the Bosphorus: the influence will make itself felt as
far as India.... Of course the arrangements could only be concluded in a
personal interview with Your Majesty. Everything can be signed and sealed
before the middle of March. By May 1st, our troops will be in Asia, yours
in Stockholm. England will collapse beneath the weight of the events with
which the atmosphere will be charged. It is true that Your Majesty and I
have proposed to enjoy peace within our far-flung empires.... But it is
always wise and politic to do what destiny commands.... That will make
this crowd of pygmies bow their heads, the pygmies who cannot see that
the prototype of the present age must be sought in the remote periods of
history, and not in the newspaper articles of the century that has just
closed.... In these few lines I am pouring out all my soul before Your
Majesty.”
All his soul? Part of it, since the jewels are cut for the delectation
of a muddle-headed idealist whose own dreams will be reflected with
rainbow tints from their sparkling facets. But the undertaking has
its elements of well-considered realism. At about this time he has an
interview with a general who has been in India. This expert declares the
scheme practicable, and the Emperor’s hesitations superfluous. Thereupon,
the latter repeatedly strokes his visitor’s face with both hands, and
“bubbles over with an almost childlike joy.”
Thus imaginative was Napoleon.
The present leads him once more to the shade of Charlemagne. The previous
year he had thought of visiting Rome to have himself crowned Emperor of
the West. The pope was to lose all temporal authority, and to content
himself with a few millions as revenue; but the cardinals had vetoed
the scheme. Thereupon he had rancorously exclaimed: “The whole of
Italy will be subject to my laws. I will not disturb the independence
of the Holy See, if Your Holiness will pay me the like consideration
in temporal matters. No doubt Your Holiness is sovereign in Rome, but
I am Emperor of Rome!” This threatening demeanour, this Carlovingian
defiance, is in sharp conflict with the constitutional law on which his
power is assumedly based. In Rome, as in India, he aims at the forcible
realisation of things which only the vision of his great forerunners
created.
More and more frequent become the signs which show that Napoleon’s
historical fantasies are tending to outsoar the limits which, were he
still an accurate calculator, he would regard as attainable—and terrible
will be the ultimate result.
In Rome, for the time being, he is still the stronger; but so much has
the habit of command grown upon him, so overweening has his belief in his
unconquerable sword become, that he has lost sight of the moral canons
which, ten years earlier, he (then a mere military commander with no
experience in political matters) had with clear insight defended against
the hectoring Directors, and had subsequently, though at considerable
risk to his popularity, incorporated in the Concordat. Now he writes to
Eugene that one of the cardinals has died leaving a history of the popes.
“If it represents an attempt to set forth all the harm the popes have
done to the Church and to Christendom, let it be published forthwith.”
Because the pope refused to exclude English ships from his ports, the
Emperor occupied Ancona, relying “upon the protection of God, who crowns
all my enterprises with his glory—If Your Holiness would like to give
my envoy his papers, you are at liberty to do so. I should even prefer
that you should receive the English, or the caliph of Constantinople.—In
conclusion I pray to God that he may keep you for many years more at the
head of our Holy Mother the Church. Your pious son, the Emperor of the
French and the king of Italy, Napoleon.”
The year before, simultaneously with these burlesque menaces, he had
sent warnings through Uncle Fesch that his own role resembled that of
Constantine, and had touched upon the old struggle of the Middle Ages
about investiture: “For the pope, I am Charlemagne, seeing that I have
joined the crowns of France and Lombardy, and that my dominions border
on the East.... On condition of good behaviour, I shall make no change
in the outward semblance of things, but if the pope thwarts me I shall
degrade him to the status of a Roman bishop, ... and shall introduce the
Concordat into Italy: for whatever can make people happy in France, can
make them happy in Italy as well; and what does not contribute to the
happiness of life in one land, cannot do so in the other.”
This is truly Lutheran terminology! The man who lets his imagination
riot when his temporal affairs are merged in historical mysticism,
becomes circumstantially clear when religious mysticism is a cloak for
worldly concerns. Napoleon’s reasoning inclined him towards Protestantism
throughout life, and it was only on grounds of policy that he resisted
the inclination to impose Lutheranism on France. Having determined to
make short work of it with the Head Shepherd (since the pope hesitated
to give England the go-by), he proposes to sweep away the hindrance that
severs the North Italian and the South Italian kingdoms, that he may at
length have all Italy for his own—the Italy of which he wrongfully calls
himself king.
Now he writes to Eugene, the viceroy, in the style of his military
decrees: “The present pope has too much power. Priests are not made to
rule. Why will he not render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and
refrain from troubling my States? Perhaps the time is not far distant
when I ... shall summon the Churches of France, Germany, Italy, and
Poland to a council, and settle matters without the pope.” He wants
to secure a majority among the cardinals by the appointment of French
cardinals, but the pope will not allow their number to be increased,
and proposes to make up for this refusal by agreeing to crown Napoleon
Emperor of the West. Now, however, what he had vainly asked for a
year earlier has ceased to charm his imagination. Since it has become
possible, he regards it as already achieved; and when the pope shows
himself pliable in money matters, Napoleon makes this an occasion for
further exactions. He threatens “to reunite this group of my crown lands
with the Empire at once, and to revoke the gift of Charlemagne.”
In a word, having a large appetite, he will make one mouthful of all the
Papal States. Thereupon the enraged pope breaks off the negotiations,
the Emperor has Rome occupied, and in April the Papal States become a
province.
Napoleon, who has ranged from Cairo to Vienna, and will range from Madrid
to Moscow, Napoleon, who has often been in Italy, hesitates to set
foot in Rome; caution or circumstance always keeps him away. He never
confirms by actual inspection the image he has carried in his mind from
boyhood upwards. Now for the second time his generals take possession of
what he had been wont to regard as the Eternal City. No member of his
entourage protests against the occupation. But his mother feels it to be
a mistake, and her distress affects her health. Whereas formerly she had
been content to say sceptically of her son’s great fortune: “if only it
lasts!” now, with a presage of destruction, she confides her misgivings
to her intimates:
“I foresee that he will bring disaster on himself and all his family. He
should be content with what he has. He tries to grasp too much, and will
lose all!”
XVII