(1) I call Napoleon a democrat because he made war upon caste and
privilege, upon Kings and aristocracies, and because he favored universal
education, equal opportunities for all, and equal rights for all.
In judging any man, great or small, you must allow for environment.
Born in Corsica, and coming to France to be educated for the army in a
royal school, Napoleon could hardly be the kind of democrat the average
American boy so naturally becomes.
France was ruled by a King and aristocracy, just as other European
nations were. Monarchical institutions, hundreds of years old, stood on
every hand.
The Revolution crashed through them all, and prostrated them all, but
the Revolution could not sustain itself. Reaction set in, and there was
danger of a Bourbon restoration.
Napoleon struck in at “the psychological moment,” and became the people’s
King. Personally he became despotic, but _his work_ was always democratic.
I call him a democrat because he made it possible for the poorest boy in
France to advance to the highest pinnacle of glory; because he lifted
the boycott against men of obscure birth and made _merit_ the test of
distinction; because he abolished the outrageous privileges of feudal
nobility in every part of Europe which came under his control; because
he rebuked the bigotry of priesthood and punished a clerical Ass who
had insulted the corpse of an actress; because he scornfully repulsed
the flatterers who wished to “make up” a fine ancestral tree for him,
and proudly dated _his_ nobility from the date of his first great
achievement; because he studied to improve the condition of the common
people; because he tried to make school-teaching practical—that is he
tried to have his schools fit every boy for the career which _that_ boy’s
talent was suited for; because he equalized taxation; because he based
his administration and his Code upon the broad righteous principle of
“Equal Rights for all and special privileges for none.”
(2) An oversight. Green’s “Short History” is a classic and every library
should contain it.
(3) The Bourbons had broken the pledges which they had made as a
condition precedent to their being restored. Not until Talleyrand and the
other traitors had besought the help of the Czar Alexander, would Louis
XVIII even go through the form of granting the reforms which had been
promised.
When the Allied armies withdrew, the Bourbon reaction set in with a
headlong rush. The veteran soldiers of the army were affronted brutally
by young aristocratic officers who had never smelled gunpowder.
Napoleon’s officers who had won renown on scores of battle-fields were
contemptuously maltreated. The _wives_ of the officers were snubbed by
the high-born dames of the old nobility.
The revolutionary and Napoleonic system was being uprooted in various
directions, and _the people_ of France realized that the Bourbons
meant to restore the Old Order with all of its brutal inequalities and
injustice and oppression. _The people_ saw that the Bourbon restoration
meant once more the galling chains of _the noble and the priest_. Hence,
when Napoleon came from Elba, the masses of the French hailed him wildly.
They followed him with mad cries of “_Hang the priests!_” _The Masses_
clamored for arms, asking to fight and die for _The Man_, Napoleon. Even
after Waterloo, they clung to him frantically, tumultuously rallying
to him, and begging him to give them guns. Had Napoleon frankly thrown
himself into the hands of the masses of the French people, he could have
hung the Talleyrands, Fouchés and Marmonts, and driven the Allies out of
France.
But Napoleon was a soldier of the Military Academy. He had no faith in
the fighting quality of “the mob.”
Another hundred years had to elapse before the Boers of South Africa
could show to the world that if your mob is the right sort of mob, and
has the best guns, and can shoot with the best aim, it can knock your
painfully disciplined army into a cocked hat.
Yes: Clarence Darrow is a writer of marvelous power. Read his “An Eye for
an Eye,” and you will realize that the Chicago lawyer has all the genius
of Tolstoy when it comes to making a story of thrilling interest out of
the commonest human materials.
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