the Emperor seem to become aware of the growth of a national sentiment
among the Germans, as among the Spaniards. Shortly before the Russian
campaign, he had said that hardly so much as a night watchman was needed
to keep the Germans quiet. “Since Germany has no America, nor yet a
sea, nor yet a great number of strongholds, nor even Englishmen as
there are in Spain, there is nothing to be afraid of, and would not be
though the Germans were as lazy, dirty, superstitious, and monk-ridden
as the Spaniards. How could there be anything to fear from such honest,
reasonable, cool-headed, and patient people, who have so little
inclination to violence that throughout the war not one of our soldiers
has been murdered in Germany?”
A wonderfully true picture of the Germans, and yet there is a slight
miscalculation. He has overlooked the romanticism by which these people
can be stirred, and without a knowledge of which they cannot be
understood. Of course the Italian, with his fiery imagination, cannot
grasp the nature of an imagination that works slowly and lacks ardour.
Napoleon, who knows how monarchical the Germans are in their sentiments,
believes that when he holds the princes in his hands he must be master of
the German people.
Besides, were the Germans a people? Was this realm, which ten years
earlier had been formally liquidated by the abdication of the last of its
emperors, really anything more than a “metaphysical concept”? Only for a
moment, only for two years, will the German peoples be united. Then, as
soon as the enemy’s power has been broken, they will fall asunder once
more. Not for half a century, and not until another Napoleon threatens
them, will they at length become a nation—though even then, only a
fragment. So atrophied was Napoleon’s own sense of nationality, that the
quarrels and jealousies of the German princes made him believe that the
Germans were disintegrated for all time; whereas, had he been able to
understand the forces that were at work, he would have realised that the
jealousies of the rival sovereign houses were the only obstacle to the
reunion of these kindred stocks.
But the sublime breathing of history sometimes determines the rhythm of
an epoch even in despite of the will of the genius that animates it. In
sweeping curves, during these years, the spirit of liberty returns to
her primal home in the hearts of the people. For, just as Bonaparte, in
the name of liberty, had defeated the princes and stirred the peoples
to revolt; so now, in the name of liberty, the peoples arose to defeat
him, the prince of princes. Doubtless this great movement of destiny
was complicated by numerous petty wishes, and blurred by minor circles.
It is not the force of legitimism which now, after twenty years, is at
last gathering strength to slay the spirit of revolt. Pallid, disunited,
decadent, and with never a great figure among them, are the princes in
the league they form against the one man who rules in virtue of his
self-made power.
But the fact that the peoples of Spain and Germany are eager to force
their princes into the fight, gives to the tragical collapse of the
usurper a semblance of poetical justice, and that is why we who look on
find it easier to bear the sight of the slaying of the lion by the spears
cast by such a legion of hunters.
IX
Letizia looks anxiously at her son. His face is clouded, though he keeps
his thoughts to himself. What can she do to help him? Intimates? Many of
them, she sees plainly enough, are betraying him. He needs his brothers,
that he may have the support of steadfast hearts, even though he thinks
them lacking in intelligence. She therefore puts her trust in her other
sons, writes to London and to Graz, smooths the path for reconciliation.
One day, after a decade of estrangement, comes a letter from the
ambitious Lucien, who says he is always at Napoleon’s service.
But the Emperor cannot believe that he, the mightiest of his family,
needs any assistance from the others. Though he has always regarded
Lucien as the most capable of his brothers, he proposes merely a formal
promotion. In imperial fashion, he answers through his mother: “Please
write to let him know in my name that his letter has awakened an echo
in my heart. I think of raising him to the throne of Tuscany. He loves
the fine arts. It will suit him to reign in Florence, and to revive the
glories of the Medicis.” There is no place for Lucien at the centre of
things! As for Louis, who also offers to devote his powers to the cause
of France (in so far as he can honourably do this), and who sends a copy
of his last volume of verse—the ex-king of Holland is met with a rebuff:
“The idea you seem to have formed about my position is quite erroneous.
I have more than a million men under arms, and two hundred million
francs in my war chest. Holland remains French.... Still, I am ready to
greet you in the spirit of one who brought you up as if he had been your
father.”
The Emperor reads this answer to his mother before sending it. She tries
to mitigate its harshness in a long covering letter; tells Louis how
pretty his children have grown; urges him to come to Paris in any case.
“The Emperor has forgotten to give me your poems. I will ask him for
them, and will let you know what I think of them when next I write.”
Next day, the old lady finds a savage article in the “Moniteur,” in
which she learns that the king of Naples will have to recall his envoys
from Vienna. When she asks what this signifies, her friends reluctantly
explain that Murat has been persuaded by Caroline to intrigue with the
Habsburgs, so that the pair are now playing double. Letizia writes
to upbraid her daughter. Joseph is out of humour, for he thinks that
Napoleon is not supporting him properly in the Spanish war. She does her
best to appease him through the instrumentality of his wife. Furthermore,
she tries to mollify Jerome, whom the Emperor had sent home in disgrace.
Finally, she gets to work on Hortense, who is doing all she can to hinder
Louis’ coming to Paris.
Now a woman well over sixty, she does her utmost to keep the peace
between her sons, daughters, sons-in-law, and daughters-in-law. But it
seems to her that the greatness for which the world envies her family has
brought in its train nothing but discord, jealousy, arrogance, ostracism,
and betrayal. Her thoughts fly back to her native island, where her
kindred always formed a united front against other clans. Moreover, her
eyes, though old, are clear-sighted; and she sees that the star of the
Buonaparti is paling.
The Emperor has little personal feeling about these matters. In his
present situation, he regards them from a purely political outlook.
No doubt he says to himself that Murat and Caroline are traitors; but
his main concern is, how he can make sure of the support of Murat’s
soldiers. He therefore writes in a conciliatory strain to Caroline; keeps
her husband informed about the impending campaign; and asks for troops,
which Murat ultimately agrees to send, for both he and Caroline think
that Napoleon may prove victorious after all, and are afraid of being
dethroned unless they keep in his good graces. At the same time, they
wish to have a secure footing in the other camp, and therefore conclude
secret treaties with England and with the ex-king of Sicily (whose
dominions they themselves have filched).
Napoleon even seeks to conciliate Bernadotte, though he cannot but regard
the crown prince of Sweden as a treacherous kinsman and an enemy of his
house. He offers Pomerania as the reward of alliance and the prize of
victory. But for Bernadotte, the bid is not high enough; this Frenchman
prefers to join the coalition against France. His ambition is to reign
there; France is worth more than Pomerania. Bernadotte enters into
especially close relationships with Prussia. In Berlin he meets Madame
de Staël, and these fellow-countrymen of the Emperor, united in their
detestation of him, foregather among the oppressed Prussians.
A third enemy, whom the Emperor approaches with blandishments during
these feverish weeks, is the captive pope. Pius VII. has been brought
to Fontainebleau, and Napoleon gets to work on him through the
instrumentality of prelates devoted to the imperial cause, adding
personal suggestion until the old man gives way. How great will be the
power of the Church (this is the Emperor’s theme) when Catholicism has
been re-established throughout Germany! By trifling concessions upon
matters of form, and by cunning devices, Napoleon is able to secure a
new Concordat. Thanks to this reconciliation with the Church, he is able
to recruit new Catholic soldiers in all the lands under his sway. When
the pope, a week after signing the Concordat, wants to revoke it, the
Emperor says with a smile: “Your Holiness, being infallible, cannot have
made a mistake in entering into this arrangement!”
During these weeks, a desire for peace suddenly spreads throughout
Europe. The pope wants peace on the Vistula, and Metternich wants it in
London. Count Bubna, with whom Napoleon had negotiated years before in
Schönbrunn, comes to Paris to advise peace, for Vienna can neither send
nor refuse the troops which the Emperor has demanded. In February, peace
can be had for the asking. Why does the man who needs peace most of all,
make impossible stipulations?
For ten years, one war after another has been practically forced upon
the Emperor as a consequence of his first victories. Now, when he is in
grievous peril, and when his isolation is increasing, the will-to-war
grows in him as in the early days of his career. When unconquered, he
would gladly have laid aside the sword; now, after his defeat, he craves
for new victories. But though his shield has been tarnished in Russia,
though he would fain win fresh glories for himself and for France, these
are but the pretexts of destiny. In very truth, he is stiff-necked, and
will prove himself to be so at three congresses during this year 1813.
The reason is that all the elements of his character are now rolling
inexorably forwards; the reason is that, “in accordance with the nature
of things,” he is advancing along a road on which he must march to the
bitter end.
Forward! Since the war must be, the allies are arming everywhere. England
makes treaties with Sweden and Prussia; to conciliate the latter, the
tsar renounces his claims to East Prussia; Prussia calls Germany to arms;
Austria makes a truce with Russia, tries to enter into an agreement with
Saxony and Bavaria and even King Jerome. Emperor Francis withdraws his
troops to Cracow, ostensibly to save them for the coming campaign.
“The first step towards desertion!” exclaims Napoleon, when this news
comes to hand. He must now withdraw his own forces from the Vistula to
the Oder. In Vienna, he once more offers Silesia. The offer is declined
with thanks, for the Austrian role is to be one of armed mediation.
While the whole world is thus preparing for the struggle, and when in
the middle of March the first signal is given in Paris by the Prussian
declaration of war, Talleyrand, in his open ambush, says with a smile:
“The hour has struck; the Emperor Napoleon must become king of France.”
A remarkable flash of insight, on the part of one who cannot but hope
that no step so sensible as this shall be taken—and who must, none the
less, at bottom, wish for it. Nevertheless matters have gone too far; not
the levying of troops alone, but the preparations in the minds of men.
Every one knows that the last great combat is imminent, that nothing can
avert it. The only one who could have called a halt, and will not do so,
is driven onward in his own despite, and he is weary. There are new signs
of this growing weariness.
First of all, there is the simplicity upon which he insists in his
environment. “I want my journeys to be very differently arranged. I shall
not take so many people with me; fewer cooks and less table furniture; no
meal to consist of more than three courses.... I shall not take any pages
with me; they are of no use whatever; only two bedmakers instead of four;
two tents instead of four; and so on.” At the same time, he orders plans
for a small palace, “a comfortable place rather than an imposing one
(the two things are incompatible); ... my room must open on the garden;
... or, preferably, I must have a north room and a south room, according
to the season; all arranged as in a well-to-do country gentleman’s
mansion.... It is to be a holiday seat, or a dwelling for a man in his
declining years.”
In 1805, when he was in the plenitude of his powers, he had said: “The
war need not take long. I am still good for six years, but then it will
be time to call a halt.” Now, when he takes the field once more, four
months after his return from Russia, his mien is quiet and careworn as
he steps into his travelling carriage in the courtyard at Saint-Cloud.
He leans back among the cushions, with his hand pressed to his forehead.
To Caulaincourt, his travelling companion, he acknowledges his distress
“at having so soon to leave my good Louise and my lovely boy. I envy the
poorest peasant in my dominions. By the time he grows old, he has already
paid his debt to his country, and can stay at home with his wife and
children. I am the only person whom an inexplicable fate leads back ever
and again into the field.”
No more pages, he is in his declining years, wants to stay at home with
wife and child—and this is only seven years after the programme just
quoted! Are these fourth-act moods, these shadows that fall across his
soul, merely the consequences of the Russian catastrophe? Are they not,
rather, the essential causes of new defeats? The moods of a man growing
prematurely old, one whose work is often interfered with by illness,
one who is being increasingly mastered by the natural inclinations of
a family man well on in the forties. He wants to spend at the domestic
fireside the evening of a life which is not equipped for seven or eight
decades like that of his mother or his brothers.
He is himself in the frame of mind with which he had reproached his
marshals at Danzig less than a year ago, when he had declared they would
rather have an easy life of it in their country seats than go campaigning
with him. Is not such a longing natural in a man who has been working
himself to death for twenty years, and who has chosen the bee for his
escutcheon?
But those on whom the Parcæ bestow the ecstasies of youth, must pay for
it by the oncoming of age. He has had such wonderful successes that he
must not expect to garner also the joys of content in achievement. He has
conjured up the gods; now they have come!
X
At the first review in Mainz, there are only one hundred and eighty
thousand men instead of the three hundred thousand he had hoped to
assemble there. The army is very short of cavalry; the equipment is
inadequate, for it has been far too hastily got together; the best guns
have been lost in Russia, or are tied up in Spain; the general staff has
been decimated; the ambulance service is defective. He sees all that is
amiss, but even this imperfect army reminds him of old times and old
happiness. He recalls the April days in Cannes and Nice, seventeen years
before, when he had taken over the command of half-starved and ragged
soldiers, that he might lead them through the mountains to victory. With
these memories surging up in his mind, he gathers his energies, and
utters the darkly challenging words: “I shall conduct this war as General
Bonaparte.”
Such is the signal, a mingling of impetus and self-restraint, with which
he launches himself into the first battle. At Lützen, he exposes himself
more than he has done for years. During the first day’s fighting, he does
not sleep at all; on the second day, when everything is going well, he
has his bearskin spread on the ground in the middle of Marmont’s corps;
and when, an hour later, they wake him to let him know that all is going
on well, he leaps to his feet with the ironical remark: “You see, the
best things come to one while one is asleep.”
But hardly has the general won this victory than the emperor-politician
resumes the ascendant. He sends letters in all directions; forces the
vacillating king of Saxony to a decision, talks to the princes of the
Confederation of the Rhine about providence and the fortune of war, that
he may keep them up to the scratch; sends his ministers to the Russian
outposts; abruptly and informally offers the tsar Poland in exchange
for Prussia, and suggests other territorial rearrangements, until
Alexander weakens; and he writes to Emperor Francis in terms of unusual
self-commendation: “Although I personally led all the movements of my
army, and was several times within range of grape-shot, I have not had
even a graze.” The words and the actions are those of one who feels weak,
and would fain appear strong. Henceforth the warnings of fate thicken.
True, he gains another victory at Bautzen, but does not take any
prisoners. On the second day of the battle, he is riding under fire,
accompanied by Caulaincourt and his friend Duroc—the latter having for
a decade been his inseparable companion in the field. Men are being
shot down in his immediate neighbourhood. He gallops to an adjoining
elevation; adjutants follow him. Dust and smoke; a tree close at hand is
smashed to splinters. He thunders past. On the hillock, a young officer
comes up to him and stammers: “Marshal Duroc has been killed.”
“Impossible! He was at my side a moment ago!”
“The cannon ball which struck the tree, brought down the marshal as well.”
The Emperor slowly rides back into camp. He says:
“When will fate have a little discrimination? What will be the end of
it all? Caulaincourt, my eagles are again victorious, but my star is
setting.”
Duroc has not been killed outright, but he is dying. Terrible is the
aspect of this shattered comrade. Greeting and farewell, both men in
tears. Duroc murmurs: “I told thee at Dresden what would happen; the
inner voice.... Give me some opium.”
This tone, the sudden use of “thee,” the last request of a man who has no
fear of death. The Emperor walks unsteadily as he leaves the cottage.
From a farmyard, he contemplates for a while the spot where his friend
had fallen, and then makes his way to the place where the guard is
encamped, with his own tent in the middle. That evening, wearing his
grey field-coat, he sits gloomily on a campstool, apart from his suite;
he listens to the sounds of the camp, where the guardsmen are cooking
supper and calling to one another; in the distance, the men of a yager
corps are singing a song. Bivouac fires are glowing in the half-darkness
of the May night; two burning villages flame like torches in the sky. An
officer draws near, and hesitates to give his report. Before the words
are spoken, the Emperor understands that Duroc is dead.
Next day, he orders the purchase of land where a memorial is to be
erected, and he pens the inscription: “Here died, gloriously, in the arms
of his friend the Emperor, struck down on the field of battle by a cannon
ball, General Duroc, Grand Marshal of the Emperor Napoleon.”
General Bonaparte used to have no time for such feelings. He concealed
his heart-ache, and stormed onward, even when he lost his wife’s love.
Now it behoved him to push forward into Silesia, to follow up the
Russians into Poland, to take advantage of the misgivings of the allies;
and, by delivering blows in rapid succession, to fetter the vacillating
Austrian to his side. In later years, he said frankly that his failure to
do these things had been the greatest mistake in his life. Once more, the
deliberations of the emperor are impeding the activities of the general.
His private letters from France are full of reports concerning the
clamour for peace. “What especially determined my course of action was
Austria’s preparation for war, and the desire to gain time. This led me
to interrupt the course of my victories.” In Silesia, at the beginning of
June, he agrees to a six weeks’ truce, thus giving his adversaries time
to attain complete unity at the congresses of Reichenbach and Prague.
Is he deceived as to the frame of mind of the wavering German princes?
He knows them all. “The Saxons are just as German as the others, and
would gladly follow Prussia’s example. The king is faithful to me, but
I do not trust his troops.... Austria’s impudence is indescribable.
While uttering honeyed words, she tries to snatch from me Dalmatia and
Istria.... There never was anything so false as the court of Vienna. If,
to-day, I were to grant Austria’s demands, she would ask to-morrow for
Italy and Germany.” Now, when he sees that the Habsburg ruler is about
to go over to the enemy, he realises too late that his marriage has
been a mistake, for he has gained nothing by it, and has lost much. His
own patrician family feeling had made him believe that there must be an
imperial family feeling. The old tone of contempt for hereditary monarchs
is at length heard once more. To his intimates, he again and again says
frankly what he thinks of the kings who are kings by birth:
“Among those who are born to sit on the throne, the ties of nature count
for nothing. The interests of his daughter and his grandson will not move
Emperor Francis an inch from the calculations of his cabinet. These men
have no blood in their veins, nothing but frozen politics! What pygmies
they are, the kings by the grace of God—and the grace of Napoleon! My
leniency has been my blunder. In Tilsit I could have crushed them, but I
was too generous. History should have taught me that houses so degenerate
deserve neither loyalty nor faith! Now, England is filling their coffers
with gold. But I shall prove myself a better statesman than these born
kings who never leave their golden cages!”
In this atmosphere of intrigue, when he has to rub shoulders with princes
who dare not fight either for him or against him, traitors are his best
confidants.
The Emperor therefore summons Fouché, to whom he says: “Your friends
Bernadotte and Metternich are my worst enemies. Your Bernadotte can do
us an immense amount of harm, for he is able to give my enemies the key
to our policy, and he can explain to them the tactics of our armies....
His head has been turned because legitimate princes flatter him!” There
we have it once more, the word whose mystical power explains half of
Napoleon’s perpetual unrest. He can never refrain from a tremor when he
speaks of the legitimate rulers, whom he regards with mingled contempt
and envy. Whether he is mimicking them, or whether he is railing at them,
he, who is an upstart, is always pondering this problem of birth.
Instead of listening to the call of the nations, which soon rises clear
above the babble of the princes, he can only look on with malicious
delight at the manœuvres of the chessplayers in the cabinets. He watches
how England doles out subsidies to Prussia; how Alexander and Francis
hold converse about the weakness of their ally, the king of Prussia; how
Frederick William, in his dread of revolution, disbands the enthusiastic
Landsturm, refuses to give high office to Scharnhorst the boldest and to
Stein the ablest of his advisers, dismisses and banishes Schleiermacher
for a speech voicing the popular sentiment. The Emperor sends Fouché on a
secret mission (in plain words, as a spy) to the congress of Prague.
In Spain, meanwhile, though Napoleon in the north has been strengthening
his position by two victories, Joseph has been utterly crushed by
Wellington at Vittoria. The king of Spain has run away. When the princes
learn in Prague that the south of France now lies open to an English
invasion, their inclination to defiance is promptly strengthened. The
Emperor, who had left the best of his generals to fight for Joseph in
Spain, is beside himself with wrath. “He alone is to blame!” writes
Napoleon to Paris. “The English reports show how utterly stupid was his
command. Never was anything so absurd! Of course he is no soldier, but he
is responsible.... Make the king understand that he is not to see any one
till I come back.... Otherwise his house in Paris will become a centre of
intrigue, and I shall have to put him under arrest, for my patience is at
an end. I will no longer have my affairs imperilled out of consideration
for idiots who are neither soldiers nor statesmen!”