THE MAN HIMSELF
OF course, we all know him. He was rather short and corpulent, and he
wore a cocked hat, a green coat with red facings, and white breeches.
Sometimes, when the mood took him, he would appear in trailing robes,
with a wreath of laurel round his forehead. Very appropriate,
admittedly, but—that wreath does appear a little incongruous, does it
not? Then there are times when we see him on a white horse in the midst
of the battle. One or two dead men are lying near him in graceful
attitudes; one or two others are engaged in dying still more gracefully.
His staff is round him; in the distance are long lines of infantry and
volumes of cannon-smoke. But everything is so orderly and respectable
that one cannot help thinking that even in that discreet, dim distance
the dying are as careful about their manner as was Cæsar at the foot of
Pompey’s statue. Verestchagin and others strike a different note, but
they never saw Napoleon alive. We have portraits and pictures
innumerable, but are we any nearer to the man himself—to what was
inside the green coat and the cocked hat?
It is the same when we come to read the mountains of memoirs which have
been written around him. There are solemn memoirs, there are indiscreet
memoirs. There are abusive memoirs, there are flattering memoirs. There
are memoirs, written in all honesty, during the reading of which one
cannot help feeling that the writer would really like to begin personal
pronouns referring to Him with a capital letter. And yet, after
months—years, perhaps—of reading, one still feels that one knows
nothing of him. One realizes, naturally, that he was a marvellously
clever man, with a marvellous sense of his own cleverness. But of the
man himself, of his little intimate desires and feelings, one remains
ignorant. A century of memoir-reading will not do as much for us as
would, say, a week’s sojourn alone with him on a desert island. What
adds point to the argument is that obviously the writer of the most
intimate memoirs was just as far from him as we are.
The fact of the matter is that Napoleon in all his life never had a
friend. From his adolescence to his death there was nobody to whom he
could speak unguardedly. It was not so much that he posed, as that he
had himself well in hand on all occasions. He could unbend; he could
pinch a grognard’s ear or crack jokes with his Guard; he could write
passionate letters to Josephine or supplicatory ones to Walewska; but we
realize that each of these displays is merely a flash from some new
facet of the gem. To the design of the whole, to the light which glowed
within secretly, we are perforce blind.
His tastes in art, which would be a valuable indication to his
character, are variously rated by contemporaries. One thing is certain,
and that is that art did not flourish under the Empire. A heavily
censored press acts as a drag upon the wheel of progress in this, as in
all other matters, but one cannot help thinking that this cessation of
development is due as much to Napoleon’s lack of interest in the
subject. David’s hard classicism and Isabey’s futilities are the best
that the Empire can show in painting, while in sculpture (save perhaps
for Houdon), in poetry, in romance, in criticism, not one names
survives, with the slight exception of Madame de Staël. There is no
French contemporary with Körner who could bear a moment’s comparison;
there is not even any single achievement, like Rouget de l’Isle’s of the
previous decade, to which France can point with pride. Napoleon’s own
favourite works in literature make a rather curious list; tragedy was
the only kind of dramatic literature which he favoured, although tragedy
is the weakest part of the French drama, and in tragedy he ranked
Corneille far above all others; Ossian’s poems, despite translation into
French, had a great attraction for him, perhaps because the exalted
wording appealed to him in his moments of fantastic planning; Goethe,
the greatest living poet, held no fascination for him; but Rousseau did.
Indeed Rousseau’s influence is clearly visible in many of Napoleon’s own
writings. Beyond this, there is almost nothing modern which received the
seal of his approval. The classics he read in translation, and solely
for the sake of their matter. Music was not specially liked by him; he
tolerated it because it roused in him the same sensations as did
Ossian’s verse—it was a drug, a stimulant to him, but not a staple
necessary. In painting he showed no special taste; the honours he gave
David clearly indicate that he held no theories of his own on the
subject. This list of likes and dislikes is non-committal; it can tell
us little about Napoleon himself; and we are once more brought to an
abrupt halt in our endeavour to discover what manner of man he really
was.
Yet we can approach the question indirectly. Napoleon had no friend;
there was never a time when he was taken off his guard. His soldiers
loved him—stay! It was not love, it was adoration. That is the key to
the mystery. It was not the love of one man for another; it was the
worship of a God. But just as no man can be a hero to his own valet, so
can no general be a God to his immediate subordinates. The rank and file
could think of Marengo, of Austerlitz, of Jena, but what of the
Marshals? At Marengo, France was on the verge of a frightful disaster.
The slightest touch would have turned the scale, and Napoleon, hemmed in
against the Alps, must have surrendered. What of France then, with a
triumphant army at her frontier and not another regiment at hand? In the
Austerlitz campaign it was nearly the same. Before Jena, Napoleon fell
into error after error. Not until the next day was he made aware that
only half the Prussian army had fought against him, and that he had
recklessly exposed a single corps to meet the attack of the other half
at Auerstädt. That Davout fought and won was Napoleon’s good fortune,
not the result of his skill.
Looking back on fifteen years of unbroken success, the private soldiers
might well believe Napoleon to be a God, but the Marshals were near
enough to him to see the feet of clay. For them there was neither
adoration nor love. He was their taskmaster, and a jealous one at that,
lavish of reprimand and miserly of praise. He gave them wealth, titles,
kingdoms even, but he never risked rivalry with himself by giving any
one of them what they most desired—military power. The Peninsular War
dragged on largely because he did not dare to entrust the supreme
command of three hundred thousand men to a single general. With gold and
glory even misers like Masséna became eventually satiated, and one by
one they dropped away from his allegiance when the tide turned. It fell
to Marmont, the only one of all the Marshals who owed everything to the
Emperor, to surrender Paris to the Allies and complete his ruin. Not one
of the twenty-six paladins accompanied their master to Elba or St.
Helena; that was left to the junior officers such as Bertrand, Montholon
and Gourgaud, who had been near enough to him to adore, but too far off
to see faults. Yet even to these, life with their idol became at times
unbearable, and more than one of them deserted before the end. In men
Napoleon could not inspire the love that endures.
As regards women, it is an unpleasant task to venture a definite
opinion. An aura of tradition has gradually developed around Josephine’s
memory, and she is frequently looked upon as a woman who sacrificed
herself for her love, and allowed herself to be divorced to aid her
husband. Yet her most indignant partisan would not deny that she had
much to lose beside her husband. The position of Queen of Queens;
unlimited jewels; an unstinted wardrobe (and she was passionately fond
of clothes); the prospect of the loss of all this might well have moved
a woman to more tears even than Josephine shed. And of her affection for
her husband one may be permitted to have suspicions. Her circumstances
before the marriage were at least doubtful, and afterwards—those nasty
rumours about Hippolyte Charles and others seem to have some foundation
in fact.
Of Marie Louise mere mention is enough. When we come to discuss her
later life and her conduct with Neipperg we shall find clear proof that
she did not love Napoleon. The other women who came into his life are
pale shades compared even to these two. With none of them was he in
love, and none of them loved him, or came to share his exile. Madame
Walewska visited him for a few days at Elba, but that was merely to seek
further favours for herself and her son. After Waterloo she married; all
her predecessors had already done the same. Women did not love Napoleon.
We may picture Napoleon, then, going through life friendless and quite
alone. Never a moment’s relaxation from the stiffness of his mental
attitude of superiority; never the light of friendship in the eye of man
or woman; every single person in Europe was either his slave or his
enemy. To say the least, his was an isolated position. And yet, was he
unhappy? Bourrienne tells us that in the early Revolution days Napoleon
walked the streets, gaunt and passionate, with a lustful eye for rich
carriages, ornate houses, and all the outward emblems of power. The
phase ended as soon as power was his, and he passed easily into the
condition of isolation which endured for the rest of his life. He was
the Man of Destiny, the sole creature of his kind, and he was happy. His
isolation never troubled him in the least. If ever he referred to it, it
was in terms of satisfaction. He was guilty on more than one occasion of
saying that he was above all law, and it is well known that he believed
in his “star”; he believed that he was marked out by some inscrutable
higher power (the limitations of whose exact nature he never defined) to
achieve unbounded success and to wield a permanently unlimited power. It
is difficult to imagine such a condition. The most ordinary or most
modest man has usually an undying belief that his own ability transcends
all others, and that Providence regards him with a special interest, but
deeper still there is almost invariably a further feeling (often
ignored, but usually obvious at a crisis) that this simply cannot be so.
Even if this further feeling does not become apparent, a man’s sense of
humour usually comes to his rescue and saves him from the uttermost
absurdity. But Napoleon’s sense of humour was only feebly developed, and
in many directions was totally wanting. On the other hand, there were
certainly many reasons for his classification of himself as a different
being from ordinary men. He never turned his hand to anything without
achieving much greater success than his contemporaries. If a
codification of law was required, then Napoleon codified laws, without
one half of the difficulty previously experienced. He won battles over
every general whom the Continent pitted against him. If a province was
to be conquered, or, conquered, had to be reorganized, then Napoleon was
ready at a moment’s notice to dictate the methods of procedure—and he
was usually proved to be correct. For twelve years, from 1800 to 1812,
Napoleon did not know what it was to fail in any matter under his own
personal control, while during that period his successes were
unprecedented. Besides, there were more convenient standards of
comparison. He was able to work at a pace which wore out all his
subordinates, and he was able to continue working long after they had
been compelled to confess themselves beaten. In his capacity for mental
labour he stood not merely unequalled, but unapproached. Even physically
he was frequently able to display superiority; his staff over and over
again were unable to endure fatigues which he bore unmoved. Lastly, he
was usually able to bend to his will anyone with whom he came in
contact. The unruly generals of the Army of Italy in 1796 gave way to
him, when he was little more than a favoured upstart, with extraordinary
mildness. He induced conscientious men like Lefebvre to agree to the
most unscrupulous actions. Alexander of Russia, smarting under the
defeats of Austerlitz and Friedland, was won over in the course of a few
hours’ interview, and became Napoleon’s enthusiastic ally.
There certainly was a great deal in favour of the theory that Napoleon
was a very remarkable man, but not even the greatest of men is justified
in believing that he is different from other men in kind as well as in
degree. The fact that Napoleon really did believe this is highly
significant. It hints at something being wanting in his mental
constitution, something similar to, but even more important than a sense
of humour. His shameless duplicity in both his public and his private
concerns points to the same end. His inability to gain the lasting
friendship of any of those with whom he came in contact is another link
in the chain of argument. His complete disbelief in the
disinterestedness of the motives of any single human being completes it.
Napoleon was one of the most brilliant thinkers the world has ever seen;
he was the most practical and strenuous in action; he enjoyed for twenty
years more good luck than anyone has ever deserved; but he had a
meanness of soul unsurpassed in recorded history. As a machine, he was
wellnigh perfect (until he began to wear out); as a man he was
deplorably wanting.