Benjamin Constant, a friend of Madame de Staël. This old-time democrat,
who had recently been thundering in the press against the brigand of Elba
and comparing him to Attila and to Genghis Khan, is needed now that the
Emperor proposes to govern through Chambers. Napoleon, therefore, invites
Constant to an audience. The Emperor has not seen him for fifteen years.
The interview, recorded by Constant, occupies four pages of print. We
are shown, without periphrases, the last transformation of Napoleon,
the statesman who was ever ready to adapt his course to the demands of
practical politics.
“The nation again wishes for tribunes and assemblies. It has always
wanted them, for it threw itself at my feet when I climbed to power....
I assumed less power than was actually conceded me. To-day, all is
otherwise. The preference for constitutions, for elections, for speeches,
is again to the fore. This is, however, the desire of a minority. The
majority desires myself, alone.... I am not only the soldiers’ Emperor;
I am also the Emperor of the workers and peasants.... Thus, in spite of
all, the people comes back to me. I treat the people severely, I never
flatter the people; and yet the people cries: ‘Long live the Emperor!’
This is because there are common bonds between us....
“It is otherwise with nobility. The nobles thronged my ante-rooms
begging and receiving the posts they coveted.... But no common bond has
ever existed between us. The horse submitted to the rider, it had been
well trained; all the same, I felt it tremble beneath me.... Yes, I
endeavoured to set up a world monarchy, and for this I needed unfettered
power. Who, in my place, would not have wished to do likewise? Did not
the world itself encourage me? Princes and subjects hastened to come
beneath my sceptre’s sway.... But if France is to be the whole of my
dominions, then a constitution is better....
“Tell me your ideas. Freedom of speech, free elections, responsible
ministers, freedom of the press?... I am agreeable to all this.
Especially the freedom of the press. To try and crush this any longer
would be absurd.... I am the man of the people. If the people really
wants freedom, I must give it.... I am no longer a conqueror; I can no
longer be a conqueror. I know what is possible and what is impossible. My
sole mission now is to set France on her feet once more and to give her
a constitution adapted to the temperament of her people....
“I do not hate freedom, although I gave it a wide berth when I met it
on my way. I understand liberty; I was nourished on this idea. The
labours of fifteen years have been destroyed; if I wished to begin all
over again, I should need twenty years and should have to sacrifice two
million men.... I want peace; I can get it only through victory. I will
not fill you with false hopes; I foresee a terrible war. In order to win
through, I must have the support of the people. The people will ask for
freedom in exchange for its support. Very well, the people shall have
freedom.... My situation is a new one for me. I am getting older. At
forty-five one is no longer the man one was at thirty. The repose of a
constitutional king would suit me excellently. And I am sure that this
state of things would meet with the approval of my son.”
Such were the basic ideas of Emperor Napoleon on his return from Elba;
he was to become king of France. That his ideas are genuine and his
intentions pure, is proved by the realism of his motives. We have not to
do with a man who pretends to a change of heart; this is no hero who,
in commune with his maker upon an island, has become a saint. Here we
have the man himself, wishful to rule as circumstances permit; a man
who has ever been mindful of public opinion. He recognises that he has
to do with a new epoch. If he himself did not inaugurate such an epoch,
at least, through his fall, he made its realisation possible. Napoleon
feels that a land which has experienced the dictatorship of genius, can
no longer revert to the dictatorship of inheritance. If the spirit of
the revolution has become petrified into a single huge figure, a new
structure must arise from its ruins, and the stone blocks that are used
in the building must be so placed as to secure wider levels and a less
tapering pinnacle. In very truth, the son of the revolution, even when
he becomes a tyrant, cannot be succeeded by a king who reigns by God’s
grace. He can only be succeeded by democracy.
For this reason, the Emperor deals more severely with the émigrés than
he was wont; he confiscates estates; he disbands the royal guard; and
does at the end of his career what he should have done at the start,
namely, he abolishes feudal titles, thus ridding himself of the old
nobility whose false compliments had cost him so dear. By these decrees
he recreates the revolutionary spirit, and makes it stronger than it has
been since his coronation, eleven years earlier. He issues the following
declaration to the civil authorities:
“I have returned to-day for the same reason which brought me back from
Egypt: because things are not going well with the fatherland.... I do not
want to carry on any more wars. We have to forget that we were masters of
the world.... In those days, I pursued the aim of creating a great United
States of Europe, and I was compelled to neglect many points of home
policy which would have secured the freedom of the citizens of France.
Now I shall work for no other object than for France’s consolidation and
tranquillity, for the protection of property, for the free interchange
of ideas: the prince must be the first servitor of the State.” Among
the hearers are many who, but a year ago, amid the thunder crashes of
the catastrophe, had listened to other words uttered by these self-same
lips: “I am the State.” Nevertheless they pin their faith to his new
constitution, whose elaboration is entrusted to Constant.
When the constitution is placed before them, they are alarmed.
“Additional Act?” Are we once more to be cheated? The democrats pour
forth a hail of criticism. Simultaneously, news comes from Vienna: the
powers declare war on Napoleon; no harm shall come to France. A signal!
For twenty years, so the saying runs through the land, we have desired
peace. At last we have got it. Is it once more to come to an end? “I
cannot hide the fact from you any longer,” says a councillor of State to
the Emperor; “the women are your declared enemies, and these opponents
are always dangerous in France.” No one wants any more levies to be made.
Instead of two hundred and fifty thousand men, only sixty thousand answer
his call.
This decision of the powers is an expression of the mood of the princes,
and not of the peoples they govern, for these, just like the French
people, are eager for repose. The sentence of outlawry is not so much a
political move as an insistence on a point of honour, and the expression
of Emperor Francis’ desire to exact moral vengeance. But it gnaws at
the foundation of Napoleon’s power. When he had first come back, France
had been in his favour. Since, however, all the other States of Europe
are against him, France will make no more sacrifices on his behalf. The
funds, which had risen when he reached Paris, fall.
The Emperor is alarmed. An intimate, from whom he has asked news of
the recruiting campaign, says to him: “Your Majesty will not be left
unsupported.” To which the Emperor replies in low tones: “I was almost
afraid I should be!”
His friends find him less active than of yore; he is fatter, his features
are lax, he needs many hot baths, and lies in them a long time; he takes
a great deal of sleep. “He seemed full of cares,” writes one of his
circle. “The self-confidence of his speeches, his authoritative tone, had
vanished.”
Only four weeks ago, at his first advent, he appeared rejuvenated and
lively. Why this relapse?
First and foremost, his wife’s behaviour has shaken him. A semi-anonymous
letter from Vienna, addressed to Lavalette, has fallen into his hands.
Herein are described Marie Louise’s scorn for the Emperor, her love for
Neipperg; and a number of shameful details are added. The Emperor is
surprised holding this letter, in his dimly lighted study, crouched over
the fire, silent.
When Méneval, who was to have accompanied Marie Louise on her return
journey to Paris, comes back from Vienna, he finds the Emperor, in
the very midst of these eventful weeks, lying on a sofa, sunk deep in
reverie. For many hours that day, and for half the next, the secretary
has to give his master a precise account of everything that is happening
over there, of all he has observed. The Emperor spoke as though
“overwhelmed by a calm sorrowfulness, and seemed so resigned that I was
deeply moved. He was no longer confident of victory, and I felt that his
belief in his good luck, which had sustained him during the march to
Paris, had forsaken him.” Méneval has to describe every trait and gesture
of the little son. The Emperor, an ageing man, paces to and fro in the
garden on this day in May, alone; he has to rely on a stranger’s word to
know what his boy is like, whether the child is growing up to resemble
his father or his grandfather.
These things weigh him down. Tragically, the conflicts within him are
renewed. Now that he wishes to be a democrat in response to the spirit of
the time, now that his will-to-peace is great, the menace from without
frustrates his attempts to establish democracy or maintain peace. If no
one in Europe were to lift a finger in order to replace Louis on the
throne, Napoleon might content himself with ruling within the boundaries
of France, might introduce the freedoms he had promised. But the powers,
which have no more lands to reclaim (since they have received back all
that was ever taken from them, and now possess what they had had before
the revolution), come forward as they had in ’92, because the wind
blowing from this stormy corner of Europe threatens their inherited calm,
and because none of the monarchs can sleep sound o’ nights so long as
their Bourbon cousin is standing on the English shore of the Channel
looking plaintively across the waters towards France, the land of his
fathers.
[Illustration: Napoleon as Emperor in 1814. Painting by Horace Vernet.
Tate Gallery, London.
(From the “Corpus Imaginum” of the Photographic Society, Charlottenburg.)]
Never had Napoleon taken up arms more reluctantly than he did when this
war was forced upon him by the Vienna decree. Never had the rapidity and
clear-sightedness of a dictator or the sympathy of public opinion been
more necessary to him than in this terrible crisis. Just now, when every
one wants peace, he is obliged to arm for war; just now, when he is to
bestow liberties on the people, his actions are hampered at every turn.
The struggle of the legitimists with this interloper (the upshot of which
had been his own legitimisation), the struggle which had placed him on
the throne, is resumed when, too late, he is cured of his longing to pose
as legitimate monarch. Though he is reaching out towards liberty once
more, he is now to sustain his final defeat.
Thus the great renewal gets no further than the Additional Act to the
Constitutions of the Empire, which, as earlier with his great decrees, he
leaves to the approval of the “sovereign people.”
Nevertheless, the sixty-seven articles evolved out of Constant’s head
contain all the newer democratic elements; they are a great advance upon
English constitutional law, and remain as a model for the whole of the
subsequent century. No one henceforward can be imprisoned or banished
without due form of law; religious belief and the press are to be free.
The legislative body is changed into a Lower House, the Senate becomes an
Upper House without the former privileges, all deliberations are open to
the public, both Houses may initiate legislation and reject the budget,
the ministers are to be responsible to parliament, the interpretation of
the law devolves upon the Chambers.
A number of new laws, each a dagger in the dictator’s heart! Yet he
yields in everything save two points which he carries, after a lively
debate against Constant: the hereditariness of the peerage, into which
“after one or two successful battles,” the nobility would again pour;
and his right to confiscation, for “without this right I should be
defenceless against the party factions. I am not an angel, but a man who
cannot allow himself to be attacked without meting out punishment.”
These two concessions to him create as bad an impression as the words
“Additional Act” had done. Since he will allow no discussion on the
matter, but only consents to the empty form of a plebiscite, as he
had done in the days when he wished to become consul for life and
subsequently emperor, the democrats begin to grumble, and no one is aware
how greatly the nation is to be congratulated on this latest work of its
leader. Instead of the four million votes he had received of yore, his
constitution receives only just over one and a half million votes, for
most of the citizens abstain.
A few venture to protest. Honest Carnot says: “Your Additional Act has
not pleased the people; it will not meet with acceptance. Promise me
that you will amend it. I must tell you the truth, for your and our
salvation hangs upon your tolerance.” His tone is upright, but wholly
unprecedented. Since the days when Bonaparte was a lieutenant no one had
ever spoken thus to him. He makes a gesture of annoyance, and Carnot
continues: “This word alarms you, Sire? Yes, you must show tolerance in
the face of the national will.”
“The foe is at our gates,” answers the veteran soldier. “First of all,
help to chase him away. Then I shall have time to occupy myself with your
liberal panaceas.” Even though he profoundly recognises the demands of
the new age, he finds it impossible to deliberate with representatives of
the people.
Napoleon knows only how to command!
XVIII
On a bright spring morning, the plain is lively as on days of high
festival. The Parisians are flocking in crowds to the Champ de Mai.
The whole town has come forth to this revival of the Carlovingian folk
assembly. The old troops are there, and the new. The platforms are gaily
decorated with tricolours. Six hundred deputies and several hundred
peers are waiting for the Emperor, who is to take the oath to the new
constitution before starting on his campaign. It is the first time for
two or three years that the people of the gay city have had a chance of
glutting their lust for merrymaking. Under the king, all had been sober
and staid.
Now the procession is coming forth from the town; from afar can be heard
the fanfare of the trumpets, and every one is expecting the hero of the
occasion, the warrior Napoleon, to be dressed as beseems the posture of
affairs, seeing that within a few days he will be fighting for throne and
country at the head of his troops. Rumour has run through Paris saying
that he still wears his old green coat, in which people love best to see
him.
But what is the pageant which unfolds itself?
First comes the guard of honour, followed by the eagles and the colours;
then heralds and pages, clad in many-coloured costumes, as if in an
allegorical picture; then the Emperor’s coronation coach, drawn by eight
horses. In it is seated a man picturesquely attired in white silk, almost
overshadowed by a hat decked with huge ostrich plumes, and burdened by
his vast coronation mantle; a solitary man, glittering with gold. Is this
the Emperor?
The masses are dumbfounded, for they wanted to fraternise with their
ruler returned from exile; they are stupefied by the spectacle of a
Cæsar whose chill splendours seem to repel the cordiality they would
fain exhibit. Painful indeed is the forlorn aspect of this middle-aged
man, whose wife has not returned to him and whose son is far away, as he
drives among the gaping crowds in his stately chariot.
When, after High Mass, the spokesman of the new Chambers confronts the
Emperor, this citizen speaks in tones which ring athwart the plain:
“Trusting your pledges, the deputies will sagaciously revise our laws,
and harmonise them with the constitution”—the implication being that the
representatives of the people are not yet satisfied, but want more than
this Additional Act. Then the spokesman of the Chambers and the citizens
expresses his hopes of victory, and wishes success to the eagles.
The Emperor has to hide his vexation. He announces the new constitution,
and swears to observe it faithfully. Then the soldiers must acclaim
the oath. But they can hardly recognise their master in this pompously
attired ruler. They want the old green coat; their hero should be wearing
the tricolour cockade, not gold and plumes. Their cheers lack enthusiasm.
An eyewitness writes: “These were not the cheers of Austerlitz and
Wagram. The Emperor could not fail to notice it.”
A week later, when he opened both Houses with a speech from the throne,
he was careful to avoid everything which had put people out of humour
at the Champ de Mai. The Lower House promises to devote its energies to
the defence of the nation; but goes on to say: “Even the will of the
victorious ruler would not induce the nation to transcend the bounds of
defence.” The peers in the Upper House utter a like warning in their
address, saying: “The French government will never be led away by the
seductions of victory.” Napoleon stands there constrained to silence, but
trembling with wrath. He would like to sweep them all away, but dares not
even give them the lie.
Among the new peers is Lucien. He has come to join his brother after
all. A glance and a hand-clasp have reconciled the brothers. For the
first time in his life he is styled prince and imperial highness. He is
the Emperor’s companion, delivers speeches, even gives lectures in the
Institute, and receives large sums of money. Louis is ill, and does not
come. Jerome is ready and willing. Hortense must replace the missing lady
of the house, and her sons have once more become important to the man
without a son. Napoleon appears on the balcony with his nephews, to show
the crowd, to show France, that the Emperor still has heirs. Unseen, the
spirit of irony contemplates this tragical conclusion to the history of
his dynastic delusion.
Once he drives with Hortense to Malmaison, but goes alone into the room
where Josephine died, to come forth from it in silence.
Next day he sets out for the war, hoping it will be his last war. It is.
Carnot, to whom at this late hour he divulges his plan, strongly advises
him to wait until the army has been reinforced. Neither the Russians
nor the Austrians can arrive before the end of July. The English and
the Prussians will not venture to attack until their allies have joined
them. During these six weeks, Napoleon could double his forces, transform
France into an armed camp, fortify Paris on the side whence the onslaught
will come. The Emperor shakes his head:
“I know all that. But it is essential that I should win a brilliant
victory without waiting so long!”
He knows what is at stake. It is his way to assume the offensive. But the
master of figures would have done well to wait awhile, and collect his
forces. “I must win a brilliant victory soon!” Is not that the thought
of a beaten champion? Perhaps it is; but the gloomy vaticinations of the
ruined Cæsar are fortified by the memories of General Bonaparte. Not
since his youth has he ventured to do what he now proposes, to advance
with a small army, without reserves, mobile, swift. Such, then, is his
plan. He will not give his four opponents time to get together. The two
that appear to be ready must be separately attacked and defeated. That is
the picture which hovers before his mind. What Napoleon, the Emperor, now
begins at Charleroi, when his prospective opponents are the Prussians and
the English, Bonaparte, the unknown general, had begun at Millesimo, when
his prospective opponents were the Austrians and the Piedmontese. His
last battle is the parallel of his first.
But during these twenty years, all the commanders of Europe have learned
the tactics of the new master of the art of war; and he, during these
twenty years, has worn out his machinery. Moreover, swift though his
movements are in the days before Waterloo, he no longer possesses the
old tempo. As in his recent campaigns, so now, anxious considerations
hamper the boldness of his attack. Having taken Charleroi, he fails next
day to make a mass onslaught on Blücher, sends Ney with half the army
along the Brussels road against the English, only to learn with alarm
in the afternoon that he is faced by the whole of the Prussian army. He
sends to recall the marshal, writing: “The fate of France is in your
hands.” Ney, instead of continuing his advance, must envelop the Prussian
enemy. Too late! Ney has become involved in the fight with Wellington at
Quatre Bras, can spare only one army corps, and sends it to a place where
it can be of no use. This makes it impossible for him to gain a victory
over the English, and he is driven back.
Napoleon, this same day, fighting with only half his army at Ligny,
secures a victory.
The last victory! Blücher falls from his wounded horse, and is reported
killed. Gneisenau retains composure, prevents the retreat from
degenerating into a rout, and sends to let his ally know that they can
form a junction at Wavre the next day. With an inertia which we should
wonder at did we not know that Napoleon is ailing and prematurely old,
the Emperor makes no move on the day after his victory. Too late he
sends Grouchy with thirty thousand men to follow up the Prussians, not
believing that they can reorganise their forces speedily, or that after
the heavy losses they have sustained they will be able to effect a
junction with the English. Yesterday, he had dealt with the Prussians
singly; to-morrow he will be able to defeat the English, now cut off from
their allies. His seventy thousand men will suffice. He fails to allow
for Gneisenau’s imperturbability and for Blücher’s impetuosity.
For the first time, he underrates an opponent. At Friedland,
Aspern-Essling, and Laon, he was not beaten. Nor was he beaten in Russia.
At Leipzig, and at Arcis-sur-Aube, he was defeated; but it was because
he had only a small army with which to meet the onslaughts of vastly
superior forces; those of three great powers in one case, and those of
four in the other. Never, yet, had any isolated commander been able to
say: “I have defeated Napoleon.”
Now he thinks too much of his victory, and too little of his opponent.
For the first time he fails to focus his lens accurately, with the result
that one point escapes his reckoning. But it is not that he makes a
wanton and ill-considered onslaught. Nor is the trouble on this occasion
that family feeling makes him entrust leadership to inefficient hands.
If he had kept Grouchy’s force with him, his enemy would have scarcely
outnumbered him. But the course of the decisive battle shows that this
error in calculation was not the main cause of the French defeat.
The final cause, as any one can recognise who studies all the elements in
Napoleon’s fate, was the man’s advancing years.
His activity was undermined by his ailments, and that is why, on the
morning of the battle of Waterloo, he failed to attack promptly. In the
middle of June, the sun is above the horizon by four. If the Prussians
were able to march upon the roads that had been softened by the recent
heavy rains, the French veterans could have done the same—for the
Emperor’s soldiers on this occasion were almost all of them tried men.
But he waits till noon, that he may place his guns better when the ground
becomes less sodden! At Jena, in October, in a Scotch mist, he had headed
his troops, shouted to encourage them, attacking so early in the morning
as to arouse many of his foes from their slumbers. To-day he waits till
noon.
The loss of this half-day is to destroy him. He rides to an elevation
bearing the fatal name of La Belle Alliance; he arranges his troops
in three lines, rides along the front, shouts to his men in metallic
phrases; he is going to break through the enemy and enter Brussels; he
already has the proclamation to the Belgians in his pocket. He has only
wasted half a day!