assumed, for a leading element in it is a bewildering naturalness, which
grows with the years and with his successes. His unsophisticated and
frank realism, the sterling simplicity of his character, shows itself
in a hundred gestures and words, and in the freshness with which he
repeatedly makes fun of his own ardency. He expresses this in a profound
saying: “A truly great man will rise superior to the events which he
himself has brought about.” The greatest successes, whose fateful origin
and consequences he fully grasps, he sums up to his intimates in a
schoolboy’s laugh. Many have reported this, for between the boisterous
gaiety of a soldier and the most delicate curl of the lip are many
shades of good humour; he possesses all.
On the eve of his coronation he exclaims: “Is the result not truly
delightful, to be named brother by the kings?” Or he sends his
ambassador to St. Petersburg with the words: “Our brother in Russia is
fond of luxury and festivity. Very well, then, give him his fill of
them!” Sometimes his simplicity of manner infringes etiquette, and the
legitimists blanch: “When I was an insignificant lieutenant,” he begins
once at table with the kings in Dresden. General consternation! Every one
gazes into his plate. Napoleon clears his throat: “When I had the honour
of serving as lieutenant in the second artillery regiment at Valence....”
Or he is sitting with the tsar in Tilsit, and, since he is ever eager to
learn, he asks off-handedly across the table: “How much does your tax
on sugar bring in yearly?” We are told that this question places all
present in a state of grave embarrassment. Why? Because, as a big man of
business, he calls money by its name; whereas the kings never mention it
by name, though they are glad enough to reap the harvest!
Since he was not vain, he knew when he had made mistakes. His whole life
long he was in the habit of saying that next day he might lose a battle;
he frequently consulted his friends and his experts, and was inspired
with the feeling of God-given necessity. How well Napoleon could bear to
be told the truth, we can learn from Marmont—who, when he praises, is one
of the most trustworthy of witnesses, for he wrote his memoirs long after
the Emperor had publicly stigmatised him as a traitor. “Napoleon had a
strong sense of justice, and would readily forgive an improper word or
other sign of anger in one who had good grounds for complaint, provided
of course he was alone with the offender.... He made kindly allowance for
others’ weaknesses and could never resist the appeal of well-grounded
sorrow. One who chose time and place, could say anything to him. He was
always willing to listen to the truth. Though it did not invariably
influence him, there was no danger in uttering it.”
He saw through the wiles of flatterers, and they gained nothing from him.
Byzantine bombast, devoid of political value, infuriated him. “How could
you depict the French eagle tearing the English leopard to pieces, at a
time when I cannot safely send even a fishing-smack out to sea? Break up
your moulds instantly, and never show me anything of the kind again!”
On the other hand, those who fearlessly speak the truth to him, impress
him. He praises Chateaubriand, who has attacked him. In the days when
he was Consul he was wont, after a sitting of the Council of State, to
invite to dinner the man who had most vigorously opposed his wishes. In
the Russian campaign, a captive general tells him some home truths about
the burning of Moscow. Napoleon dismisses the prisoner in a rage; but
presently has him recalled, and shakes the Russian’s hand, saying: “You
are a brave man!” Méhul plays a trick on the Emperor, producing his new
opera as the work of an Italian composer, and thus earning approbation.
Paisiello also plays a trick by introducing into one of his own
compositions an aria by Cimarosa, a composer whose work Bonaparte cannot
endure. The Consul applauds; and when afterwards told of the deception,
he only laughs.
Madame de Staël has been a worry to him for fifteen years, voicing
Europe’s call for freedom. He suppresses her books, banishes her from
Paris, continues to take measures against her even when he is in Russia,
speaks of her as the dangerous driving-wheel which sets the salons in
motion; but he pays this enemy the high compliment of dreading her, and
acknowledges as much in many of his private letters.
In the Bavarian muster rolls, he comes across the name of a former
regimental comrade, a declared royalist. He makes this man his military
attaché. They have not met for fourteen years. Now, during the
campaign, they meet, and the old companion introduces himself. The
Emperor rides with him out of the press, dismounts, and sits down on a
convenient stone; the other wishes to hold his horse. “Let be,” says
Napoleon; “that’s not your business,” and beckons a chasseur to take the
bridle-rein. The Emperor promptly becomes reminiscent: “Do you remember
how, at the lieutenants’ mess in Besançon, you flung your table napkin
down and shouted: ‘I will not sit beside an officer who belongs to the
Jacobin Club!’ That is ancient history, and is of no consequence now.” He
beckons his attendant staff and points to his interlocutor, saying: “Look
at this fellow. Ability of the old school. He and I worked at equations
together.” Then, coming down to practical matters: “Have you plenty of
ammunition? What is your artillery like? How soon will you be ready?”
Unique, perhaps, in Napoleon’s life, is the scene at Erfurt in the year
of 1813, when von Müller, the Weimar chancellor, braves his anger. Two
privy councillors have written letters in cipher. These have been seized
at the outposts. The writers have been arrested. Müller has been sent
for. The Emperor has stormed at him, threatening to burn Jena, to shoot
the culprits. Müller breaks in impetuously: “No, Sire, you will not
commit this abomination! You will not tarnish your record for all time by
shedding innocent blood!” In his excitement, the German presses so close
that the Emperor anticipates a personal attack, and lays his hand on his
sword-hilt. Müller is dragged back by a companion. A pause. “You are a
bold man, but I see that you are a good friend. Berthier shall look into
the matter once more.” The privy councillors are pardoned.
This scene, creditable to both participants, is another proof of
Napoleon’s invulnerable dignity. It is invulnerable, unless the arrow is
poisoned. A sense of honour is the vulnerable point of self-confidence.
“If the French people expects certain advantages from me,” said Bonaparte
when First Consul, “it must put up with my weaknesses, and the chief
of these is that I cannot endure an affront.” It was he who said:
“I am a man whom people may kill, but will not affront.” Bourrienne
tells us that from Bonaparte’s earliest days he had no faith in law
or morality, but always believed in honour. This compensated for his
fundamental amoralism. The power exercised over him by his conception
of honour distinguishes him absolutely from the condottieri of the
Renaissance, with whom he ought never to have been compared. When he
is Consul, betwixt night and morning he breaks off his intimacy with
this very Bourrienne, who has been his private secretary for so long,
because Bourrienne is involved in an unsavoury financial scandal. Years
afterwards, he refuses to admit Bourrienne to the Legion of Honour,
saying: “One who worships the golden calf may have money, but not
honour.” When a bill signed by King Jerome goes to protest, Napoleon
writes: “Sell your diamonds, your silver plate, your furniture, your
horses—anything to pay your debts. Honour comes first!”
He was so sensitive on this point that after his coronation he summoned
to his presence a notary who had long before advised Josephine against
marrying a person of doubtful character; Napoleon wished to rehabilitate
himself in this man’s mind. In exile at St. Helena, he remembered how his
German teacher in Brienne had always treated him with contempt: “I should
very much like to know whether Herr Bauer ever learned how I made good!”
He is a stickler for morality, just as he is for honour. “Nothing can
be worse in a ruler than immorality. He makes it fashionable, and it
poisons society.” Napoleon does not say this merely because he has been
warned by the example of the Bourbons and the Directors. He has an inborn
sense of decency, which is part of his dignity. No one has ever recorded
having heard Napoleon, the soldier, tell an obscene story. Nor did he
ever listen to one complacently. When he becomes First Consul, he forbids
Josephine to have anything more to do with friends of hers who are
leading gay lives. Years afterwards, when the empress allows Tallien to
visit her, Napoleon writes to reprimand his wife, saying: “I can see no
excuses for Tallien. I know that some poor devil has married her with her
eight bastards, and I despise her even more than I did before. She was an
amiable cocotte; now she is nothing more than a common woman.”
Talleyrand, who has had a liaison for many years, is told that he must
marry his inamorata or quit Napoleon’s service within twenty-four hours.
Berthier is made a prince, but the same condition is imposed on him,
Napoleon saying: “This passion of yours has lasted too long, and is
becoming ridiculous. You are a man of fifty, but may live to be eighty,
and these thirty years are left you for marriage.” The revolution had
encouraged nudity in mythological representations, but Napoleon wants
nakedness to be draped. When, in one of the squares there is set up a
fountain where there is a group of naiads with water spouting from their
breasts, he has “these wet-nurses” removed as improper, and decrees that
“the naiads were virgins.” His own women friends must not make themselves
conspicuous. He lavishes money on them; but if they are actresses, he
does not allow his liaison to be used as a reason for promotion. On the
other hand, like any bourgeois he boasts of sharing his wife’s bedroom,
saying: “It has a remarkable influence upon conjugal life, strengthens
the man’s influence, guarantees his faithfulness, promotes intimacy and
good morals; a couple will never become estranged if they spend the whole
night together. As long as Josephine and I kept this custom, she was
familiar with all my thoughts.”
One of the most sublime forms of his egotism is gratitude. This is
not ordinary kindness, but the pride of a man who feels he is unique,
and overwhelms with benefits any one who has ventured to be useful to
him, lest he should possibly remain in the other’s debt. That was the
consideration which really underlay his frequently declared policy, that
he would never make use of any party, lest he should incur obligations.
We must not look upon these things in a romantic light. But it is an
actual fact that he was not content to promote only the friends of his
youth, his fellow-students at the military academy. As soon as he rose
to power, he found for the priest who had been headmaster at Brienne a
sinecure at Malmaison as librarian—without any books! The sometime school
porter became lodge keeper at his country house. A young lady of noble
birth to whom, in his lieutenant days, he had once paid court for a whole
evening, and who sixteen years later applied for help to the Emperor,
received what she wanted, together with a post for her brother, and a
friendly letter. He remembered many of his former associates in his will.
Years after his brief intimacy with “Giorgina,” when he hears that she is
in difficulties (though she has made no application to him), he provides
her with a competency.
Hitherto we have been talking about money, or money’s worth. But the
nature of his gratitude is different when he loves, as in the case of
Josephine. When we consider his relationships with her, we realise the
truth of Marmont’s tribute, which is all the more remarkable as coming
from an enemy: “He had a grateful, kind, indeed affectionate, heart.” At
the time of the coronation, he says to Roederer: “What right have I to
put away a good wife merely because I have become a greater man than I
was when we married?... Before all, I am a just man.” A little later, he
writes to Josephine: “As far as I am concerned, I deem ingratitude the
greatest weakness any one can have.”
III
Napoleon’s self-confidence, his self-esteem, his egotism, lies at the
root of his wavering between revolution and legitimacy. Relying entirely
upon himself, scorning all whose pride rests upon the accident of birth,
he has nevertheless to take the egotism of others into account in so
far as this egotism becomes embodied in achievement. And yet he is
constitutionally incapable of suffering others to be on an equal footing
with himself. For his own sake he has to choose the most capable to
fill administrative and other positions, and yet he has to please the
masses: he must stand for equality of all, and at the same time bear the
individual in mind. These contradictions give rise to a tragical conflict.
Both the weapons he has chosen for his battle of life, namely, the spirit
and the sword, he conceives of in a revolutionary sense. “Why is the
French army the most dreaded in the world? Because the officers became
émigrés; non-commissioned officers replaced them, and became generals.
One can lead a people’s army with non-commissioned officers, for they
have risen from the people.” For years, Napoleon refused to confer the
grand cross of the Legion of Honour upon Metternich and Schwarzenberg. It
was only after their gallant behaviour during the fire at Schwarzenberg’s
mansion, that the Emperor relented, and conferred the decoration. The
orders which his brother, the king of Holland, distributed with so lavish
a hand, Napoleon would not allow to be worn in Paris. He sends his
brother the following memorandum for kings:
“How can one give this indelible mark of appreciation to a man one does
not know, to a person who may before long prove to be a rogue? Learn
to know those who gather round your throne! The wish to distribute
decorations should not be gratified suddenly, as one can gratify a
desire to go out for a day’s shooting. Noteworthy achievements must
come first.... You have as yet done nothing to deserve the honour of
decorating others with your effigy....”
His egotism makes him emphasise the advantage of the lack of any ancestry
to an original or unusual person. When flatterers suggest that one of
his Italian forebears should be canonised, he calls the suggestion an
idiocy. Metternich lays before Napoleon an ancestral tree manufactured
in Vienna from records of the Buonaparte family in Tuscany. The Emperor
says: “Take these papers away!” In the official gazette, Napoleon has
the following notice inserted: “To all questions as to when the house
of Bonaparte began, the answer is simple: on the Eighteenth Brumaire.
How can one show so little tact and good breeding for all one owes the
Emperor as to stress the question of his ancestry?” Once he is so angry
because some one has contradicted him in this matter of his genealogy
that he exclaims: “I shall not suffer any one to insult me by treating me
as if I were a king!”
Then come transitions in which the cleavage begins to show itself. “I
shall be the Brutus of the kings and the Cæsar of the republic:” which
saying is certainly ambiguous. “I know of no aristocracy but the rabble
which I have allowed to escape; and of no rabble but the aristocracy
which I have created:” here there is hardly any ambiguity. “Tacitus is
praised because he made the tyrants fear the people—and that was a very
bad thing for the people:” which is open to but one interpretation.
No one, in the presence of such a man, can be satisfied with the facile
assertion that Napoleon only pretended to believe in the principles of
freedom until he attained to power, and then promptly betrayed them. On
the contrary, we have here to do with a spiritual struggle. This is the
one problem with which the self-confident man had to wrestle; a problem
he never solved.
“I am the man of the people: its pulse beats in unison with my own....
The aristocracy remains always aloof, and never forgives.” Such
utterances show us the original trend of his character. Inasmuch as he
overcomes this trend, never becomes an ideologue, but gets the better
of his inborn sympathies, he is a statesman of genius. Of course it is
ridiculous when he, who only rewards merit, decorates his baby son’s
cradle with the grand cordon of the Legion of Honour; or again, when he
has the deposed king of Spain, who addressed him as “cousin,” informed
through the intermediation of Talleyrand that the Emperor must be
addressed as “Sire.” These weaknesses are grotesque, and yet they are
superficial; he himself recognises them and spurns them if the mood is
upon him. When he is hesitating whether he shall send Eugene, or perhaps
better still Talleyrand (a man sprung from the old noblesse), to prepare
the ground for the “imperial diet” at Erfurt, he suddenly, in virile
fashion, ceases to bother about the question: “After all, what does it
matter to me whether I am criticised? I will show them that I do not
care.”
A more serious problem, both for him and for us, is when the origin and
the laws of the right of succession to the throne come up for discussion.
“It is false to call me a usurper; I have simply taken the unoccupied
place which Louis could not keep for himself. Had I been Louis I should
have hindered the revolution in spite of the amazing progress which has
accrued to thought because of the change.... My strength is in my good
luck; I am as new as the Empire.” Yet, in spite of this somewhat confused
reasoning, he ventures a step farther, and writes to Brother Louis: “I
hold myself responsible for everything that has happened since Clovis’
days down to the days of the Committee of Public Safety; and I shall
consider everything that is deliberately said against the governments as
an attack on myself.”
Thus we see that his egotism reaches so paradoxical an intensity in
the championship of legitimacy, and that he sails so near the serious
acceptance of rule by divine right (which is otherwise only used by
him as a political formula), that he makes himself responsible for the
actions of those very kings whose dethronement has opened the way to his
rise!
All his life he restlessly hovered round this question of status. At
Kaunitz Castle, during the night after Austerlitz, while at every minute
Austrian and Russian colours, captive generals, and dispatches from the
beaten commanders, are being brought to him, he thrusts everything aside
because the courier from Paris has entered the room. Then he does the
same with all the tidings from the capital, in order to read a letter
full of gossip from a lady, who tells how the Fronde of the Faubourg
has sworn never to put in an appearance at court. He is furious: “Ah! so
these people fancy that they are stronger than I? Very well, gentlemen of
the old aristocracy, we shall see! We shall see!” This is on the evening
after the battle of Austerlitz!
Here we see such hatred as that which a man gradually comes to feel for
a woman who stubbornly resists his wooing. He must win over the spirit
of tradition, cost what it may. One evening, not very long before the
scene just described, he takes Roederer from the drawing-room into the
billiard-room, begins knocking the balls about, and then says, apropos of
nothing in particular:
“Your Senate has no feelings for the aristocratic, no esprit de corps in
favour of the imperial system.”
“Sire, it is devoted to your person.”
“That is not what I want. It must be devoted to my mantle, no matter
who wears it. The mantle ought to be enough to guarantee the safety of
the wearer. This is the aristocratic spirit, which is lacking to you
ideologues!”
The whole problem of hereditary succession is implicit in these
considerations; it logically develops therefrom, leading to the second
marriage, and thus to the tragical issue. There are only two things which
Napoleon cannot create unaided: children and ancestors. He therefore asks
the world of legitimate rulers to enter into an alliance with him, which
will settle his difficulty as far as offspring is concerned, and will
also provide his children with an ancestry. He is not really a man of the
people, but a nobleman; and who can complain because he regards himself
as such?
“I am in a peculiar position. The genealogists want to trace my pedigree
back to the deluge, while there are some who describe me as sprung from
the lower middle class. Truth lies between. The Bonapartes are a good
Corsican family, not celebrated, but certainly better than these coxcombs
who believe themselves entitled to humiliate us.”
This is the tone of the sixteen-year-old lad, scion of the lesser
territorial nobility, whom a handful of counts made fun of at the
military academy and slighted at the boarding school in Paris. They are
the very words which the young man had used in his letters and literary
sketches when the noblesse of monarchical France had mortified him.
Nothing can expunge the memory of his early mortifications. It may well
be that, but for these never-to-be-forgotten affronts suffered at the
hands of a few silly young marquises, his whole outlook upon the question
of legitimacy would have been different; his court life, his marriage,
his destiny, would have been different; and therewith the course of
European history would have been other than it was.
His egotism finds expression in the struggle with France, just as it
does in the struggle with the noblesse. He does not wholly belong to
the high nobility, and therefore throughout life he remains critical
of the pretensions of birth. In the same way, though formally he was a
Frenchman, he was not French by blood, and he was therefore irritably
critical of the French, just as he was irritably critical of the
noblesse. He conquered both, but never felt perfectly secure in either of
his conquests.
But he had more success with France than with the legitimists. Because he
is not really a Frenchman, France never becomes his legitimate spouse;
she remains his beloved mistress. He knows this; he wooes, gives himself,
renounces; and from the perpetual uncertainty of his relationship to
France, he derives the keenest joys of his life. “I have only one
passion, only one mistress: France. I lie by her side. She has never been
untrue to me; she pours out her blood for me, and lavishes her treasures
upon me. If I need half a million men, she gives them!” When he chides
his mistress, he does it as a jealous lover; he rules her “with an iron
hand in a velvet glove”; he gratifies all her caprices; and he knows
better than any one else how to allure her by the glamour of fame and
fantasy. That is why she beams on him when he comes home victorious;
that is why she gives him her children.
Yet lover and mistress remain critical of one another. Mutual jealousy
persists. Neither of them ever forgets the wish to master the other.
Hear his exclamation in the tone of a despotic lover: “I swear that I
do everything for the sake of France alone! If I do not give her more
liberty, it is because she does not need more!” He is standing in the
middle of his drawing-room, scrutinising his guests sharply as he speaks
to them with raised voice. Among intimates, he will often use harsher
words: “Always the same old Gauls! The same frivolity, the same vanity!
When, if ever, will these be replaced by a proper pride?”
The French, likewise, remain sceptical. Must they not, in confidential
talks, say of this Italian the very thing that he once wrote to his
brother Louis? “Since you ascended the throne, you have forgotten that
you are a Frenchman, and have strained every nerve to persuade yourself
that you are a Dutchman. The foreign environment tickles your fancy,
but it is still foreign.” Roederer writes of Napoleon: “He is making a
mistake. They are by no means so enthusiastic about him as they were
about Lafayette (who did nothing practical for them). At bottom, they
merely admire and respect him because he is useful to them.”
Such a liaison cannot fail to end tragically. The mistress discards her
lover when he is no longer useful to her.