world, dispute began about him. It has been continued for a hundred
and twenty-eight years. Whatever else he succeeded in doing--whatever
else he failed to do--he at least did succeed in dividing the
civilized world into two parties; he made himself the subject of a
controversy which has not ceased to the present hour. The reason, no
doubt, is that we do not as yet understand human history and the part
which the individual plays in the progress of events. Nearly all men
begin with a prejudice in judging all other men, and nearly all men
end as they begin. So it has been in the case of Bonaparte. After a
while we shall see things more clearly; after a while we shall be able
to interpret _men_--but not yet.
The writings relative to this man constitute a cycle. The books on him
and his times make a library, the perusal and study of which might
absorb a large section of an active life. The name of such productions
is legion. Most of them will fortunately perish. The controversial
aspect of the life of the Emperor must at last subside. Nine out of
ten of the books about him will go down to the nether oblivion. Then
the judicial aspect will arise--if it has not already arisen--and will
occupy the attention of those who are still curious to study the
career of him who shares with the son of Philip and the matchless
Julius the triune honor of being the greatest warriors known to human
history. If a fourth should be added to the group it would be
Hannibal, and if a fifth, Charlemagne.
Here at the date of a century from those days in which the star of
Napoleon emerged from the mists and clouds and began to climb the sky
the interest in his life revives. In America this revival is
attributable in part to general and in part to special causes. The
general causes are to be found in the fact that society _de la fin de
siècle_ is in such a state of profound disturbance, and the existing
order feels so insecure, that that order--as it always does--begins to
cast about in the shadows to find, if it may, some Big Man with a
Sword; him when found we will make our Imperator, and by sharing some
of our estates with certain of his military subalterns we will make
sure of the rest--and after us the deluge. The special cause--at least
in America--is the tremendous and growing tradition of General Grant.
Albeit, General Grant hated the Bonapartes, from the Great One to the
Little One; yet his own luminous setting has left a glow in which the
nation sees men as trees walking--and among these the greatest
simulacrum is Napoleon Bonaparte.
Of this man, who began as the son of a Corsican peasant-mother working
in a mulberry orchard, and who, after fifty-one years, eight months,
and twenty days, ended in a cyclone on the rock called St. Helena,
having meanwhile for nearly a third of his life bestridden western
Europe like a colossus,--a new biography claiming to be the ultimate
summation of the Emperor's life and character has appeared. Professor
William Milligan Sloane, of Princeton University, has entered the
lists which may be said to have opened with Walter Scott and finished
with the McClure Syndicate, passing meanwhile by way of such
personages as De Staël, Las Cases, Victor Hugo, and Lanfrey, and such
drudges as Bourrienne and Méneval, to lodge at last with the
miscellaneous hacks who get three dollars a column for their
boiler-plate philosophy in American newspapers! Heavens, what a
scrimmage!
It were difficult to say when the _final_ biography of a man has been
produced. Hard, hard is it to decide when anything in this world is
final. The never-ending progress of events shapes and readjusts not
only the present materials of history, but also by reaction the
materials of the past. Much that is supposed to be complete is seen to
be unfinished; the done becomes undone, and the peroration of an epoch
has to be rewritten for an exordium.
This is as true of the individual lives of men as it is of great
events. If the ages have to be reconstructed, so also must the men of
the ages. If only a mummy now turn over in his porphyry sarcophagus, a
papyrus is generally found under him; and the finder, with the papyrus
in his hand, may go forth fully warranted to revise every event from
the first cataclysm of the Devonian age to the last earthquake in
Java, and every man from Moses to Cagliostro.
On the whole I incline to the opinion that Professor Sloane has
brought the Emperor Napoleon to a kind of final interpretation; I will
not say to a full stop, but to something very much resembling a
period. In the first place, I offer on the "Life of Napoleon
Bonaparte," the eulogium that the work has, in a great degree,
_naturalized_ the Corsican as he was never naturalized before--thus
bringing him out of cloudland and mere impossible fog to the plain
level of human action and purpose.
This is much. In accomplishing thus much Professor Sloane has
vindicated his claim to be regarded as a great biographer. It has been
the bane of nearly all biographical writing that the subjects of it
have been completely mythologized. Thus far in the history of mankind
biography might be defined as the art of myth-making. I scarcely know
what exceptions to cite to this universal vice except only and always
Boswell's "Life of Samuel Johnson." As for American biographies thus
far produced, there is scarcely a single example of a work which is
not to be classified as a recorded myth. The trouble in all this
business has been that the myth-makers, living in a certain
atmosphere, have imagined that they are obliged to make their
characters conform to the established antecedents of greatness. These
established antecedents of greatness have for the most part been
created out of superstitions, credulities, blank idealism, and mere
dogmatic bosh. No living, active men have ever conformed, or could
conform, to the standards which the logicians, the philosophers, and
the priests have fixed up for them; and if any of them should conform
to such a standard, their place under classification would be with
automata, not with living men.
Nevertheless, our biographers have been so weak and servile as to make
their characters according to this pattern. One character is labelled
Washington, another is labelled Franklin, another is labelled Adams,
and still another, Lincoln.
All this, I think, Professor Sloane has studiously avoided. As a
literary doctor he has done much to destroy the mythical disease. He
has written an elaborate work in which the man Napoleon moves and
acts, neither as an angel nor as a devil, but as a man, moved upon and
moving by the common human passions, though inflamed, in his case, to
a white heat in the furnace of his ambition.
All this was to have been expected in view of the plan of Professor
Sloane as expressed in his preface:
"Until within a very recent period," says he, "it seemed that no
man could discuss him [Napoleon] or his time without manifesting
such strong personal feeling as to vitiate his judgment and
conclusions. This was partly due to the lack of perspective, but
in the main to ignorance of the facts essential to a sober
treatment of the theme. In this respect the last quarter of a
century has seen a gradual but radical change, for a band of
dispassionate scientific scholars have during that time been
occupied in the preparation of material for his life without
reference to the advocacy of one theory or another concerning his
character. European archives, long carefully guarded, have been
thrown open; the diplomatic correspondence of the most important
periods has been published; family papers have been examined, and
numbers of valuable memoirs have been printed. It has therefore
been possible to check one account by another, to cancel
misrepresentations, to eliminate passion--in short, to establish
something like correct outline and accurate detail, at least in
regard to what the man actually did. Those hidden secrets of any
human mind which we call motives must ever remain to other minds
largely a matter of opinion, but a very fair indication of them
can be found when once the actual conduct of the actor has been
determined."
From this point of view Professor Sloane has proceeded with his
tremendous work. His studies at home and abroad have been ample. We
may remark, in passing, upon the physical vigor of the author as shown
in his portrait. From such a face and figure we can but expect energy,
persistency, accomplishment. I do not pretend to disclose the reasons
of Professor Sloane for indulging in this prodigious Napoleonic dream
and for delineating it in what is likely to be regarded as the best
product of his intellectual career. We can only take what he has
produced and give it such cursory notice as our space will permit.
The first volume of the work extends from a survey of the conditions
under which Napoleon was born and reared to the conclusion of his
twenty-eighth year. The first events depicted are those historical
movements in which the Bonapartes, within the narrow limits of their
island, were involved in the seventh decade of the eighteenth century;
and the last event recorded in this volume is the fall of Venice, at
the end of May, 1797. I incline to regard this as the most
interesting, though not the most important, of the four great volumes
of Professor Sloane's work. In the nature of the case the ascendant of
a man is the more inspiring part. In it he appears as an orb whose
full majesty, not yet revealed, solicits the imagination and kindles
by sympathy the ambitions that in some measure are common to us all.
Here in volume I is portrayed the youth of the man Napoleon Bonaparte.
In this he is revealed in the full charm of that electrical audacity
which had as yet lost none of its sharpness and burning flash. Nor had
Napoleon, as a _man_, as yet become sufficiently involved with the
general maze of history, sufficiently immersed in the storm-cloud of
that tempestuous epoch, to be lost from view. This volume shows the
man emerging from boyhood into the full career of a military
conqueror. It shows him in his magical transformation from the
character of an adventurer into the character of a leader of armies
and a dictator of events. It also shows Napoleon with the still fluid
heart of boyhood passing through the lava floods of his first loves,
in particular his love for Josephine, into the age of cynicism and
calculation.
This first volume brings sufficiently to memory the progress of the
youthful Napoleon. Here we see him at his mother's knee; then in the
time of his school days; then in Paris and Valence; then as a neophyte
author, quite absurd in his dreams; then on garrison duty, and then
swept away with the tides of the oncoming revolution. In the smoke of
the South his slender figure is seen here and there until he emerges
at Toulon. In his character of Jacobin he becomes a general in the
army at a time of life when most men are happy to be lieutenants. Then
for the first time he touches the revolutionary society of Paris. He
meets Josephine; Barras delivers her to the coming man. They are
wedded, and from that date the stage widens, the wars in Italy break
out, and the young general begins to whirl his sword at Mantua,
Arcole, and Rivoli--from which he was wont to date his military birth,
saying on that occasion, "Make my life begin at Rivoli;" and finally
at Montebello and Venice, where, in the late spring of 1797, he is
joined by Josephine. There from the French capital they seemed to
stand afar as the cynosure of all revolutionary eyes, expecting a
greater light.
In the second volume Professor Sloane begins with the rescue of the
Directory. Hard after we have the great episode of the Treaty of Campo
Formio, and then the expedition to Egypt. The story of that expedition
is known through all the world; so also the return, and the overthrow
of the Directory.
From that day Bonaparte became the embodiment of the revolution. He
became a statesman and a strategist. He found himself in the
geographical and historical storm-centre of Europe. Then came the
epoch of great wars. Marengo marks the close of the old century, and
the treaty of Lunéville the beginning of the new. Napoleon undertakes
the pacification of Europe, and reorganizes France. He steps
cautiously towards the restoration of monarchy. There is a
life-consulate, transforming itself quickly into an empire. The old
royalism is extinguished, and the new military imperialism is
glorified in its stead. The third coalition of Europe succeeds the
second. Trafalgar strews the sea with the wrecks of France, and
Austerlitz strews the land with the wrecks of Russia and Austria. The
sea is virtually abandoned by the man of destiny, but over the land he
rises as War-lord and Emperor.
The second conflict breaks out with Prussia and ends with the ruin of
that power at Jena and Auerstadt. The year 1806 sees the parvenu
emperor, now thirty-seven years of age, the master of all the better
parts of Europe. Here ends the second volume of his life, according to
Professor Sloane's division, and the third begins with the devastation
and humiliation of the Prussian kingdom.
In this volume the author views Napoleon for the first time as the
arbitrary diplomatist of the West. It is evident that from this time
the emperor's vision widens to a more remote horizon than he had ever
scanned before. The Berlin decree was issued. The battle of Eylau was
fought, and then was achieved the victory of Friedland. Nor may we
pass without noticing the acme which Napoleon, according to the
judgment of many, now reached on that memorable field. Here it is that
art has caught and transmitted him. For it is in the trodden
wheat-field of Friedland that Meissonier's pencil has delineated
Napoleon with his marshals around him, in one of the greatest pictures
of the world.
By this epoch ambition in the emperor had swallowed up all other
passions. He goes on from conquering to conquest. The dream of a
French Empire, coextensive with the borders of Europe, seizes the
Napoleonic imagination. The emperor's armies strike left and right.
They are seen first on one horizon, then on another. The Corsican on
his white horse is now upon the Pyrenees, now on the Germanic
frontier, and now in Poland. He faces Alexander of Russia, and laughs
at him! His gray coat and three-cornered hat become the best known
symbols of military genius in modern times.
Kingdoms and principalities are transformed. Already the mythical
Roman empire has passed away. Austria is threatened with extinction.
The Corsican is seen first in one and then in another of the ancient
capitals of Europe. Aspern follows Eckmühl, and Essling and Wagram
follow Aspern. The treaty of Schönbrunn promises peace to the nations,
but the hope is broken to the lips. In this crisis Josephine goes down
in the shadows, and the daughter of Austria is led to the imperial
chamber--this from the necessity of establishing a dynasty. The
relations between France and Russia are strained to breaking. The
fatal year 1812 comes, and there is a congress of kings. Alexander
gives his ultimatum, and the invasion of Russia is begun. There is an
indescribable struggle on the Moskwa, and then the flames of Moscow
are seen across the deserts of Russian snow.
The fourth and last volume begins with the return of the allied armies
from Russia. Then follows the universal revolt of the nations.
Insurrection breaks out on every horizon, and treachery, as might have
been expected, is added to the combinations that are rapidly formed
against the imperial Corsican. The borders of France are broken in.
There is a narrowing rim of fire bursting into battle flame here and
there; and then the catastrophe of the capture of Paris. There is an
ambiguous abdication and an equivocal exile of a few months' duration
to Elba. It was much like the establishment of a live lion on
Governor's Island!
The lion got away. Then came an instantaneous upheaval of old
revolutionary France, which had now become imperial France. The
Emperor was welcomed home as a returning god. The country was drained
to the last drop of its resources, and everything was staked on the
final strategy of the Hundred Days and the hazard of the
ever-memorable battle.
"There was a sound of revelry by night,"
and then the imperial eagle was seen stretched upon the plain, pierced
through with the shafts of banded nations. He was caged and
transported to that far rock which in his school-essay at Autun he had
described thus: "St. Helena is a _small_ island!" He found it so. For
nearly six years his captivity continued until his stormy career ended
in a May hurricane that might well have shaken the desolate
foundations of his ocean-girt prison. Then the historical tide rolled
on without him. France was transformed into the old image, but her
soul was still imperial. At last the bones of her great dead were
recovered, to be placed at rest in that red-black sarcophagus over
which the world looks down and wonders.
Such is the fiery but fruitful chaos through which the life-line of
Napoleon is drawn with a master hand by Professor William Milligan
Sloane. My judgment is that, on the whole, he has produced the
greatest biographical work which has yet appeared in American
literature. I think that in the main his accomplishment has been equal
to his ambition. It is not an unworthy thing that an _American_
professor, at the seat of an _American_ university, turning his
energies to this great task, has succeeded in making a well-nigh final
record of the life and work of that unequalled organizer, that sublime
dissembler, that cruel reformer, that heartless philanthropist, who,
for half a lifetime, converted old Europe into a mire of murder and
desolation, for the ultimate good of man.
Only one thing may be said in adverse criticism of Professor Sloane's
book, and that is, that his style is too mathematical and too little
imaginative for the subject which he has in hand. His rather cold
precision, however, we concede to him; for it is, no doubt, the
natural method of his expression. We do our part to acknowledge and
welcome the remarkable work which he has produced, and to commend it
to all readers as the best existing and best probable account of the
personal and historical career of Napoleon Bonaparte.
* * * * *
[Transcriber's Notes: Every effort has been made to replicate this
text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant
spellings and other inconsistencies.
The transcriber made these changes to the text to correct obvious
errors:
1. p. 6 over-capatalized --> over-capitalized
2. p. 18 successfull --> successful
3. p. 23 benovelent --> benevolent
4. p. 60 ecocomists --> economists
5. p. 68 A macron diacritical mark, a straight line above
a letter, is found on the first letter o, in the
word Sosoku. This letter is indicated here by the
coding [=x] for a macron above any letter x.
Thus, for example, the word Sosoku appears as
S[=o]soku in the text.
6. p. 76 staightforward --> straightforward
7. p. 94 abnormalties --> abnormalities
8. p. 124 desparing --> despairing
9. p. 144 stategy --> strategy
End of Transcriber's Notes]