to be won in the future. If one may venture to predict anything, he may
venture to predict that the Emperor of the French will not live to be a
very old man. He has already led many lives--fast, hard, exhausting
lives, "that murder the youth in a man ere ever his heart has its will."
Exile, conspiracy, imprisonment, hard thinking, hard working, wild and
reckless dissipation, prolonged to the very outer verge of middle life,
the brain, the nerves, the muscles, the whole physical and mental
constitution always strained to the utmost--these are not the ways that
secure a long life. Louis Napoleon is already an "_abgelebter mann_"--an
outworn, used-up, played-out man. The friends and familiars with whom he
started in life are nearly all gone. Long since laid in earth is the
stout form of the wild Marquis of Waterford, who was a wonder to our
fathers (his successor to the title ran away with somebody's wife the
other day; and I thought Time had turned back by thirty years when I
read of the _escapade_, with the name, once so famous, of the principal
performer), and who rode by Louis Napoleon's side at the celebrated,
forgotten Eglintoun Tournament, and was, like Louis Napoleon, one of the
Knights Challengers in that piece of splendid foolery. Dead, lang syne,
is Eglintoun himself, the chivalrous Earl of the generous instincts and
the florid, rotund eloquence, reminding one of Bulwer Lytton diluted. I
do not know whether the Queen of Beauty of that grand joust is yet
living and looking on the earth; but if she be, she must be an embodied
sermon on the perishableness of earthly charms. De Morny is dead, the
devoted half-brother, son of Louis Napoleon's mother, the chaste
Hortense, and the Count de Flahault--De Morny, the brilliant, genial,
witty, reckless gambler in politics and finance, the man than whom
nobody ever, perhaps, was more faithful to friendship and false to
morality, more good-natured and unprincipled. I have seen tears in men's
eyes when De Morny died--in the eyes of men who owned all the time,
smiling through their tears like Andromache, that the lost patron and
friend was the most consummate of _roues_ and blacklegs. Walewski is
dead--Walewski of romantic origin, born of the sudden episode of love
between the great Napoleon and the Polish lady--Walewski, who, like
Prince Napoleon-Jerome, carried his pedigree stamped upon his
face--Walewski, the lover of Rachel, and, to do him justice, the steady
friend of Poland. Old Mocquard is gone, the faithful scribe and
confidant: he is dead, and the dramas he would persist in writing are
dead with him, nay, died even before him. I do not know whether the
faithful, devoted woman who worked for Louis Napoleon, and believed in
him when nobody else did; the woman to whose inspirings, exertions, and
ready money he owes, in great measure, the fact that he is now Emperor
of the French--I do not know whether this woman is alive or dead. I
think she is dead. Anyhow, I suppose the dignity of history, as the
phrase is, can hardly take account of her. She helped to make an
Emperor, and the Emperor, in return, made her a Countess; but then he
had to marry--and so we take leave of the woman who made the Emperor,
and do our homage to the woman who married him. All those are gone; and
St. Arnaud, of the stormy youth, and Pelissier, the bland,
sweet-tempered chevalier, who, getting into a dispute (on his way to be
governor of Algeria) with the principal official of a Spanish port,
invited that dignitary to salute a portion of the Pelissier person which
assuredly the foes of France were never allowed to see--all these are
gone, and many more, and only a very few, fast fading, of the old
friends and followers remain. Life to Louis Napoleon must now, indeed,
be nearly all retrospect. His career, his Imperial reign may be judged
even now as fairly and securely as as if his body had just been laid
beside that of his uncle, under the dome of the Invalides.
Recent events seem specially to invite and authorize that judgment.
Within the past twelve months, the genuine character of Louis Napoleon
has displayed itself, strikingly, nakedly, in his policy. He has tried,
in succession, mild liberalism, severe despotism, reactionary
conservatism, antique Caesarism, and then, in an apologetic, contrite
sort of way, a liberalism of a rather pronounced character. Every time
that he tried any new policy he was secretly intriguing with some other,
and making ready for the possible necessity of having to abandon the
former and take up with the latter. He was like the lady in "Le Diable
Boiteux," who, while openly coquetting with the young lover, slily gives
her hand behind her back to the old admirer. So far as the public could
judge, Louis Napoleon has, for many months back, been absolutely without
any settled policy whatever. He has been waiting for a wind. Such a
course is probably the safest a man in his position can take; but one
who, at a great crisis, cannot originate and initiate a policy, will not
be remembered among the grand rulers of the world. I do not remember any
greater evidence given in our time of absolute incapacity to seize a
plan of action and decide upon it, than was shown by the Emperor of the
French during the crisis of June and July. So feeble, so vague, halting,
vacillating was the whole course of the government, that many who detest
Louis Napoleon, but make it an article of faith that he is a sort of
all-seeing, omnipotent spirit of darkness, were forced to adopt a theory
that the riots in Paris and the provinces were deliberately got up by
the police agents of the Empire, for the purpose of frightening the
_bourgeois_ class out of any possible hankering after democracy. No
doubt this idea was widely spread and eagerly accepted in Paris; and
there were many circumstances which seemed to justify it. But I do not
believe in any such Imperial stage-play. I fancy the riots surprised the
Government, first, by their sudden outburst, and next, by their sudden
collapse. Probably the Imperial authorities were very glad when the
disturbances began. They gave an excuse for harsh conduct, and they
seemed, for the time, to put the Government in the right. They restored
Louis Napoleon at that moment, in the eyes of timid people, to that
position, as a supreme maintainer of order, which for some years he had
not had an opportunity effectively to occupy. But the obvious want of
stamina in the disturbing force soon took away from the Imperial
authorities this opportune _prestige_, and very little political capital
was secured for Imperialism out of the abortive barricades, and
incoherent brickbats, and effusive chantings of the "Marseillaise." In
truth, no one had anything else to offer just then in place of the
Empire. The little crisis was no test whatever of the Emperor's hold
over his people, or of his power to deal with a popular revolution. To
me it seems doubtful whether the elections brought out for certain any
fact with which the world might not already have been well acquainted,
except the bare fact that Orleanism has hardly any more of vitality in
it than Legitimacy. Rochefort, and not Prevost Paradol, is the typical
figure of the situation.
The popularity and the success of Rochefort and his paper are remarkable
phenomena, but only remarkable in the old-fashioned manner of the straws
which show how the wind blows. Rochefort's success is due to the fact
that he had the good-fortune to begin ridiculing the Empire just at the
time when a general notion was spreading over France that the Empire of
late had been making itself ridiculous. Louis Napoleon had reached the
turning-point of his career--had reached and passed it. The country saw
now all that he could do. The bag of tricks was played out. The
anticlimax was reached at last.
The culmen, the crisis, the turning-point of Louis Napoleon's career
seems to me to have been attained when, just before the outbreak of the
Schleswig-Holstein war--so small a war in itself, so fateful and
gigantic in its results--he appealed to the Emperors and Kings of
Europe, and proposed that the nations should hold a Congress, to settle,
once and forever, all pending disputes. I think the attitude of Louis
Napoleon at that moment was dignified, commanding, imperial. His
peculiar style, forcible, weighty, measured--I have heard it well
described as a "monumental" style--came out with great effect in the
language of the appeal. There was dignity, and grace, there was what
Edmund Burke so appropriately terms "a proud humility," in Louis
Napoleon's allusion to his own personal experience in the school of
exile and adversity as an excuse for his presuming to offer advice to
the sovereigns of Europe. One was reminded of Henry of Navarre's
allusion to the wind of adversity which, blowing so long upon his face,
had prematurely blanched his hair. I do not wonder that the proposed
Congress never met. I do not wonder that the European governments put it
aside--some with courteous phrase and feigned willingness to accept the
scheme, like Russia and Austria; some with cold and brusque rejection,
like England. Nothing worth trying for could have come of the Congress.
Events were brooding of which France and England knew nothing, and which
could not have been exorcised away by any resolutions of a conclave of
diplomatists. But that was, I think, the last occasion when Louis
Napoleon held anything like a commanding, overruling position in
European affairs, and even then it was but a semblance. After that, came
only humiliations and reverses. In a diplomatic sense, nothing could be
more complete than the checkmate which the Emperor of the French drew
upon himself by the sheer blundering of his conduct with regard to
Prussia. He succeeded in placing himself before the world in the
distinct attitude of an enemy to Prussia; and no sooner had he, by
assuming this attitude, forced Prussia to take a defiant tone, than he
suddenly sank down into quietude. He had bullied to no purpose; he had
to undergo the humiliation of seeing Prussia rise in public estimation,
by means of the triumph which his unnecessary and uncalled-for hostility
had enabled her to win. In fact, he was outgeneralled by his pupil,
Bismarck, even more signally than he had previously been outgeneralled
by his former pupil, Cavour. More disastrous and ghastly, by far, was
the failure of his Mexican policy. That policy began in falsehood and
treachery, and ended as it deserved. Poetic and dramatic justice was
fearfully rendered. Never did Philip II., of Spain, never did his
father, never did Napoleon I., never did Mendez Pinto, or any other
celebrated liar, exceed the deliberate monstrosity of the falsehoods
which were told by Louis Napoleon or Louis Napoleon's Ministers at his
order, to conceal, during the earlier stages of the Mexican
intervention, the fact that the French Emperor had a _protege_ in the
background, who was to be seated on a Mexican throne. The world is not
much affected by perfidy in sovereigns. It laughs at the perjuries of
princes as Jove does at those of lovers. But it could not overlook the
appalling significance of Louis Napoleon's defeat in that disastrous
chapter of his history. Wisdom after the event is easy work; but many,
many voices had told Louis Napoleon beforehand what would come of his
Mexican policy. Not to speak of the hints and advice he received from
the United States, he was again and again assured by the late Marshal
O'Donnell, then Prime Minister of Spain; by General Prim, who commanded
the allied forces during the earlier part of the Mexican expedition; by
Prince Napoleon, by many others--that neither the character of the
Mexican people nor the proximity of the United States would allow a
French proconsulate to be established in Mexico under the name of an
Empire. It is a certain fact that Louis Napoleon frequently declared
that the foundation of that Empire would be the great event of his
reign. This extraordinary delusion maintained a hold over his mind long
after it had become apparent to all the world that the wretched bubble
was actually bursting. The catastrophe was very near when Louis
Napoleon, in conversation with an English political adventurer, who then
was a Member of Parliament, assured him that, however the situation
might then look dark, history would yet have to record that he, Louis
Napoleon, had established a Mexican Empire. The English member of
Parliament, although ordinarily a very shrewd and sceptical sort of
person, was actually so impressed with the earnestness of his Imperial
interlocutor that he returned to London and wrote a pamphlet, in which,
to the utter amazement of his acquaintances, he backed the Empire of
Mexico for a secure existence, and said to it _esto perpetua_. The
pamphlet was hardly in circulation when the collapse came. If Louis
Napoleon ever believed in anything, he believed in the Mexican Empire.
He believed, too, in the certain success of the Southern Confederation.
No Belgravian Dundreary, no _exaltee_ Georgian girl, could have been
more completely taken by surprise when the collapse of that enterprise
came than was the Emperor Napoleon III., whose boundless foresight and
profound sagacity we had all for years been applauding to the echo.
"That which is called firmness in a King," said Erskine, "is called
obstinacy in a donkey." That which is called foresight and sagacity in
an Emperor, is often what we call blindness and blundering in a
newspaper correspondent. The question is whether we can point to any
great event, any political enterprise, subsequent to his successful
assumption of the Imperial crown, in regard to which Napoleon III., if
called upon to act or to judge, did not show the same aptitude for rash
judgments and unwise actions? Certainly no great thing with which he has
had to do came out in the result with anything like the shape he meant
it to have. The Italian Confederation, with the Pope at the head of it;
the Germany irrevocably divided by the line of the Main; the Mexican
Empire; the "rectification" of frontier on the Rhine; the acquisition
of Luxembourg; these are some of the great Napoleonic ideas, by the
success or failure of which we may fairly judge of the wisdom of their
author. At home he has simply had a new plan of government every year.
How many different ways of dealing with the press, how many different
schemes for adjusting the powers of the several branches of legislation,
have been magniloquently announced and floated during the last few
years, each in turn to fail rather more dismally than its predecessor?
Now, it seems, we are to have at last something like that ministerial
responsibility which the Imperial lips themselves have so often
described as utterly opposed to the genius of France. Assuredly it shows
great mental flexibility to be able thus quickly to change one's policy
in obedience to a warning from without. It is a far better quality than
the persistent treachery of a Charles I., or the stupid doggedness of a
George III. But unless it be a characteristic of great statesmanship to
be almost always out in one's calculations, wrong in one's predictions,
and mistaken in one's men, the Emperor has for years been in the habit
of doing things which are directly incompatible with the character of a
great statesman.
Contrasting the Louis Napoleon of action and reality with the Louis
Napoleon of the journals, I am reminded of a declaration once made by a
brilliant, audacious, eccentric Italian journalist and politician,
Petruccelli della Gattina. Petruccelli was, and perhaps still is, a
member of the Italian Parliament, and he had occasion to find fault with
some office or dignity, or something of the kind, conferred by Count
Cavour on the Neapolitan, Baron Poerio, whose imprisonment and chains,
during the reign of the beloved Bomba, aroused the eloquent anger of Mr.
Gladstone, and through Gladstone's efforts and appeals became the wonder
and the horror of the world. Petruccelli insisted that Poerio's
undeserved sufferings were his only political claim. "You know perfectly
well," he said, in effect, to Cavour, "that there is no such man as the
Poerio of the journals. It suited us to invest the poor victim with the
attributes of greatness, and therefore, we, the journalists, created a
Poerio of our own. This imposed upon the world, but it did not impose
upon you, and you have no right to take our Poerio _au serieux_." I do
not know whether the journals created an imaginary Poerio, but I am
convinced that they have created an imaginary Louis Napoleon. The world
in general now so much prefers the imaginary to the real Louis, that it
would for the present be as difficult to dethrone the unreal and set up
the real, as it would be to induce the average reader to accept Lane's
genuine translation of the "Arabian Nights" instead of the familiar
translation from a sprightly, flippant, flashy French version, which
hardly bears the slightest resemblance to the original. English
journalism has certainly created a Disraeli of its own--a dark, subtle,
impenetrable, sphinx-like being, who never smiles, or betrays outward
emotion, or is taken by surprise, or makes a mistake. This Disraeli is
an immense success with the public, and is not in the least like the
real Disraeli, who is as good-natured and genial in manner as he is bold
and blundering in speech and policy. So, on a wider scale, of Louis
Napoleon. We are all more or less responsible for the fraud on the
public; and, indeed, are to be excused on the ground that, enamored of
our own creation, we have often got the length of believing in it. We
have thus created a mysterious being, a sphinx of far greater than even
Disraelian proportions, an embodiment of silence and sagacity, a dark
creature endowed with super-human self-control and patience and
foresight; one who can bend all things, and all men, and destiny itself
to his own calm, inexorable will.
I do not believe there is anything of the sphinx about Louis Napoleon. I
do not believe in his profound sagacity, or his foresight, or his
stupendous self-control. I have grown so heretical that I do not even
believe him to be a particularly taciturn man. I am well satisfied that
Louis Napoleon is personally a good-natured, good-tempered, undignified,
awkward sort of man, ungainly of gesture, not impressive in speech, a
man quite as remarkable for occasional outbursts of unexpected and
misplaced confidence as for a silence that often is, if I may use such
an expression, purely mechanical and unmeaning. I calmly ask my
_confreres_ of the press, is it not a fact that Louis Napoleon is
commonly made the dupe of shallow charlatans, that he has several times
received and admitted to confidential counsel and conference, and
treated as influential statesmen and unaccredited ambassadors, utterly
obscure American or English busybodies who could hardly get to speech of
the Mayor of a town at home; that he has entered into signed and sealed
engagements with impudent adventurers from divers countries, under the
impression that they could render him vast political service; that he
has paid down considerable sums of money to subsidize the most obscure
and contemptible foreign journals, and never seemed able for a moment to
comprehend that in England and the United States no journal that can be
bought for any price, however high, is worth buying at any price,
however low; that his personal inclinations are much more toward quacks
and pretenders than toward men of real genius and influence; that Cobden
was one of the very few great men Louis Napoleon ever appreciated, while
impostors, and knaves, and blockheads, of all kinds, could readily find
access to his confidence? Of course, a man might possibly be a great
sovereign although he had these weaknesses; but the Louis Napoleon of
journalism is not endowed with these, or indeed with any other
weaknesses.
Those who know Paris well, know that there is yet another Louis Napoleon
there, equally I trust a fiction with him of the journals. I speak of
the Louis Napoleon of private gossip, the hero of unnumbered _amours_
such as De Grammont or Casanova might wonder at. I have heard stories
poured into my patient but sceptical ears which ascribed to Louis
Napoleon of to-day, adventures illustrating a happy and brilliant
combination of Haroun Al Raschid and Lauzun--the disguises of the Caliph
employed for the purposes of Don Juan. Now, Louis Napoleon certainly
had, and perhaps even still has, his frailties of this class, but I
reject the Lauzun or Don Juan theory quite as resolutely as the sphinx
theory.
What we all do really know of Louis Napoleon is, that having the
advantage of a name of surpassing prestige, and at a moment of
unexampled chances not created by him, he succeeded in raising himself
to the throne made by his uncle; that when there, he held his place
firmly, and by maintaining severe order in a country already weary of
disturbance and barren revolution, he favored and stimulated the
development of the material resources of France; that he entered on
several enterprises in foreign politics, not one of which brought about
the end for which it was undertaken, and some of which were ludicrous,
disastrous failures; that he strove to compensate France for the loss of
her civil liberty, by audaciously attempting to make her the dictator of
Europe, and that he utterly failed in both objects; for here toward the
close of his rule, France seems far more eager for domestic freedom than
ever she was since the _coup d'etat_, while her influence over the
nations of Europe is considerably less than it was at any period since
the fall of Sebastopol. Now, if this be success, I want to know what is
failure? If these results argue the existence of profound sagacity, I
want to know what would show a lack of sagacity? Was Louis Napoleon
sagacious when he entered Lombardy, to set Italy free from the Alps to
the sea, and sagacious also when, after a campaign of a few weeks, he
suddenly abandoned the enterprise never to resume it? Was he wise when
he told Cavour he would never permit the annexation of Naples, and wise
also when, immediately after, he permitted it? Was he a great statesman
when he entered on the Mexican expedition, and also a great statesman
when he abandoned it and his unfortunate pupil, puppet, and victim
together? Did it show a statesmanlike judgment to bully Prussia until he
had gone near to making her an irreconcilable enemy, and also a
statesmanlike judgment then to "cave in," and declare that he never
meant anything offensive? Was it judicious to demand a rectification of
frontier on the Rhine, and judicious also to abandon the demand in a
hurry, when it was received as anybody might have known that a proud,
brave nation, flushed with a splendid success, would surely have
received it? Did it display great foresight to count with certainty that
the Southern Confederation would succeed, and that Austria would win an
easy victory over Prussia? Was it judicious to instruct an official
spokesman to declare that France had taken steps to assure herself
against any spread of Prussian influence beyond the Main, and to have to
stand next day, amazed and confounded, before an amazed and amused
Europe, when Bismarck made practical answer by contemptuously unrolling
the treaties of alliance actually concluded between France and the
principal States of South Germany? Was it a proof of a great ruling mind
to declare that France could never endure a system of ministerial
responsibility, and also a proof of a great ruling mind to declare that
this is the one thing needful to her contentment? All this bundle of
paradoxes one will have to sustain, if he is content to accept as a
genuine being that monstrous paradox, the Louis Napoleon of the press.
Of course, I do not deny to Louis Napoleon certain qualities of
greatness. But I believe the public was not a whit more gravely mistaken
when it regarded the King street exile as a dreamy dunce, than it is
now, when it regards Napoleon III. as a ruler of consummate wisdom.