Jerome Bonaparte with Miss Patterson, an American, who had been married
to Napoleon’s youngest brother in Baltimore in 1803 by the Roman
Catholic bishop of that city. There were fresh grounds of alienation
when, in 1806, Napoleon wrote to the Pope, who wished to be neutral,
to close his ports to English vessels and to expel from his court
English, Russians, and Swedes. “You are,” he said, “the sovereign of
Rome, but I am the Emperor; my enemies should be yours.” As the Pope
still proclaimed his neutrality, Napoleon seized the Papal States, and
finally occupied Rome in February, 1808. For fourteen months the Pope
was kept a virtual prisoner in the Quirinal under a guard of honor;
he was not allowed to communicate with the cardinals, twenty-four of
whom had been, by Napoleon’s orders, deported. Finally, in May, 1809,
a decree was issued by which the States of the Church were annexed to
the French Empire. Rome was proclaimed a free imperial city, the Pope
being allowed to keep only his palace and his estates with an income of
2,000,000 francs.
Napoleon spoke of himself as revoking the Donation of Constantine; his
intention was to make of Paris the religious head of the world with
himself the director of its religion as well as of its secular affairs.
Pius VII’s reply was a bull of excommunication against the Emperor,
who, however, was not mentioned by name in the document. It only spoke
in general terms of those who were guilty of deeds of violence in the
States of the Church. Napoleon affected to pay little attention to the
Papal protest, but he acted promptly, first by appealing to the old
principle of the Gallican Church, that denied the right of the Pope to
excommunicate a sovereign of a state. Then he had the person of the
Pope seized by the commander of the Roman gendarmerie. No resistance
was offered, and Pius was conducted as a prisoner, in a closed carriage
with drawn shades, to Savona on the western Riviera near Genoa. Here
he was kept carefully guarded, but he refused all terms of settlement
that insisted on his surrender of the temporal power. No one was
allowed to see him except in the presence of his guards. When Napoleon
desired canonical institution for some newly appointed bishops, the
Pope refused, on the ground that he was deprived of the advice of his
cardinals. The situation was embarrassing, for there were, in August,
1809, twenty-seven vacant sees in France. Efforts were made to find
a solution by calling a council at Paris; but the ecclesiastics, on
assembling there, declared that the Pope’s consent was necessary.
Napoleon then ordered the bishops to take charge of their dioceses
without institution from the Pope. But a brief came from Savona to
Cardinal Maury, the archbishop designate of Paris, enjoining him from
administering his diocese without the Pope’s consent. The Emperor now
treated the prisoner of Savona with even more rigor, put in prison the
clergy whom he suspected of bringing the Papal brief, and deprived Pius
of all means of corresponding with the outside world.
At this time the divorce of Napoleon from Josephine took place.
The difficulties of the civil law were got over easily, although
the Emperor had to violate the provisions of his own code, and the
ecclesiastical committee of the diocese of Paris showed itself equally
obliging, by recognizing the two imperial claims, that there had been
an absence of consent to his religious marriage of 1804, and that there
were defects of form in the ceremony itself. When the marriage with
the Austrian archduchess was celebrated on April 2, 1810, thirteen of
the twenty-six cardinals present in Paris refused to be present at
the religious ceremony. This behavior excited Napoleon to an act of
personal revenge, by which the recalcitrant princes of the Church were
deprived of the insignia of their office, were placed under police
supervision, and had to forego their allowance.
In 1811, a council was held in Paris to decide on the question as
to the rights of the Pope in the matter of institution. Some of the
bishops showed independence, urging the Emperor to restore Pius
to liberty. There was a general agreement that Papal consent was
necessary. In the meantime the Pope had been cajoled or bullied into
accepting a clause, to be added to the Concordat, that canonical
institution should be given within a fixed period, and if it were not
given, it might be granted by the metropolitan or oldest bishop of
the province. Just before the invasion of Russia the aged Pope was
brought incognito from Savona to Fontainebleau. During the trip, though
he was seriously ill, no consideration was shown him, and for many
months after his arrival he was confined to his bed. Only cardinals and
prelates who were partisans of Napoleon were allowed to see him. The
defeat in Russia brought about a radical change; Napoleon now saw the
advantage of arranging some terms of peace, because the harsh treatment
of the venerable head of the greatest Christian communion was being
used against his persecutor, both at home and abroad. Negotiations were
resumed, and under personal pressure from Napoleon, Pius, on condition
that the domains of the Holy See were restored to him, made large
concessions. He gave Napoleon the right to fill all the bishoprics of
France and Italy, except those in the vicinity of Rome, and he allowed
metropolitan institution. Afterwards, on consulting with his advisers,
the Pope published a retraction of his consent, by which the provisions
he had made were annulled. No attention was paid by the Emperor to
this change of attitude except that he ordered the imprisonment of the
Cardinal de Pietro, who he thought had persuaded Pius to change his
mind.
In 1814, before the last campaign on French territory, Napoleon
gave the Pope permission to leave Fontainebleau, and shortly before
the final defeat he restored the Papal States. There were no
further relations between the two, the restored Pope and dethroned
Emperor, except that Pius VII, after the Hundred Days and Waterloo,
magnanimously offered the Bonaparte family an asylum in Rome, and later
on made representations to the English government with a view to
reduce the severity of Napoleon’s captivity at St. Helena.
It is customary to ascribe to Napoleon creative originality as a
lawgiver. This is a part of the Napoleonic legend that has been upset
by the industrious investigations of the partisans of the French
Revolution, working under a famous professor at the Sorbonne. In
many ways these scholars have rescued from obscurity the positive
achievements of the Revolutionary statesmen, and it is now certain that
the various codes of Napoleon carry out the principles of procedure and
justice foreshadowed in the preliminary work done by the Constituent
Assembly and the Convention. Napoleon’s own temperament is seen in the
influence he brought to bear upon his lawyers to provide for rapidity
in procedure and in execution of judgment, and in the increase of
tribunals in which business men played an important rôle.
In education the Emperor’s influence was not so beneficial. He had
little sympathy with any type of training that was not practical,
and he had no sympathy at all with professorial free speech. Indeed,
he expected the teaching profession to take its model from the Grand
Army. There was to be little chance for personal development, each man
marched in an appropriate rank under orders from a superior. The result
of the iron-clad educational régime is acknowledged to have been most
unsatisfactory, and it has been one of the most brilliant and most
arduous achievements of the Third Republic to abolish the Napoleonic
ideals of university teaching, and to substitute for them a system
which encourages local and personal freedom. The change has already
justified itself, for France is now close to Germany as the home of
erudition in many fields of research in which Germany for years justly
claimed an uncontested primacy.
The supreme position of Napoleon as a military commander has often
led his admirers to affirm that he was infallible in his strategy. He
encouraged this tendency at St. Helena, for, when he was composing
his Memoirs, he invariably shifted the responsibility for errors in
his battles to the shoulders of his lieutenants. He was an expert
in manipulating figures, and he had such a good memory that he could
always compose a most plausible lie. For years people supposed that
the Russian expedition failed because of the extreme cold, and that
the defeat at Waterloo might have been turned into a victory if
the Emperor’s orders had been strictly carried out by Grouchy and
if Ney had advanced more rapidly, as he was bidden to do by his
commander-in-chief. These are misrepresentations--are the efforts of
a man who wished to manipulate history for his own benefit. When,
however, he was not dictating as an exile, Napoleon often enough
expressed the truth about himself spontaneously. He allowed, for
example, that he had been repeatedly defeated, and on more than one
occasion he conceded to his marshals the possession of military talent
superior to his own. One year after the Russian disaster he owned that
the invasion had been ruined by blunders of his own. He was just as
sweeping, too, in condemning various critical phases of his policy.
He condemned the attack upon Spain not only as a wholesale blunder,
but as a series of blunders in detail, and he characterized the
invasion of Russia, while the Spanish War was unfinished, as a hopeless
undertaking. Once, speaking to Talleyrand, he said, “I have made so
many mistakes in my life that I am not ashamed of them.” It was a
characteristic trait of his outlook on his own career that he imagined
himself carried on as the instrument of deeds and acts which he could
not justify. “I am not,” he once exclaimed, “a man, but a thing.”
Napoleon’s lack of appreciation of moral standards both in public and
in private life is notorious, but he was no hypocrite. The one pleasing
side of his character was his devotion to his family. Here the clear
light of his intellect could not reach. It is true he made grotesque
mistakes in putting his brothers into positions for which they were
manifestly unfitted, but this sign of weakness shows that, after all,
Napoleon was not entirely selfish. He seems to have had little actual
patriotism. He was not a Frenchman either by descent or by sympathy,
and what he accomplished was done at the expense of the French people.
He understood some of their characteristics, but his own point of view
was so practical that there were whole fields of achievement signalized
in the records of French genius that he never appreciated. On lower
planes of action, however, his driving power was immense, and the very
terror he created by the success of his concentrated individualism
prepared the way for that progressive acknowledgment of public justice
and social righteousness which characterized the civilization of
the nineteenth century. In spite of all his limitations, it seems
impossible to point to a more marvelous career in the annals of
humanity.
INDEX
A
Addington, 400
Ajaccio, 402
Alcuin, 181-183
Alexander of Russia, forms alliance with Napoleon, 417;
covets Finland and Sweden, 421;
sympathizes with French defeat in Spain, 422;
confers with Napoleon at Erfurt, 422;
takes aggressive attitude toward the French, 429
Alexander the Great, his descent, 7;
succeeds to the throne of Macedon, 5;
educated under Aristotle, 5;
his precociousness, 5;
master of Macedon, 7;
checks uprisings, 8, 9;
declared guardian of the temple, 9;
renews Hellenic league, 9;
begins his reign with crime, 9-10;
leaves Amphipolis, 11;
offers thanks to Dionysus, 11;
marches up the Danube, 11;
his rumored assassination, 13;
razes Thebes, 14-15;
his placability toward Athens, 16-17;
plans to dethrone Persia’s king, 18;
crosses the Hellespont, 18;
defeats Persians, 20;
marches against Halicarnassus, 21;
concludes peace with the Persians, 25;
is voted a crown, 25;
his reply to Darius, 25-26;
calls himself “Great King of Asia,” 26;
lays siege to Tyre, 27-28;
founds Alexandria, 28;
invades Syria and Egypt, 28-29;
again defeats Persians, 31;
proceeds to Babylon, 31;
razes Persepolis, 32;
takes Drangiana, 35;
executes Philotas and Parmenio, 36;
captures Bessus, 36;
founds new Alexandria, 36;
routs the Scythians, 37;
executes Bessus, 37;
spears Clitus, 38;
massacres Sogdianians, 38-39;
marries Roxane, 39;
hangs Hermolaus, 40;
motives for conquest of India, 40-41;
begins Indian campaign, 42;
fords the Hydaspes, 42;
defeats Indian army, 46;
forced to cease Eastern conquests, 46;
takes up organization of his empire, 49;
endeavors to amalgamate Greeks and Persians, 49-53;
looks after economic development, 52;
tries to legitimatize his rule in the East, 54-56;
his death, 57;
nature of his achievements, 58-59, 64;
his temperament, 38;
his lack of statesmanship, 40;
as an explorer, 46;
as a general, 11, 59-63
Alexander’s Conquest of Greece, 4-17
Alexander’s Conquest of Persia, 17-34
Alexander’s Empire, 48-64
Alexander’s Invasion of India, 34-48
Alexandria, 28, 36, 52
Almagro, 366, 367
Alvarado, 336, 337, 340, 362, 365
Amiens, 402, 409
Ancients, The, 390, 391, 392
Andronicus, 232
Antonius, Marcus, 125
Ariovistus, prepares to resist Cæsar, 89-90;
suffers defeat, 90
Aristotle, Alexander’s tutor, 5
Assembly, The Constituent, 402
Atahuallpa, 359-362, 364
Athens, opposed to Macedonian rule, 7;
aroused over Thebans’ defeat, 16;
double-faced toward Alexander, 16;
sends embassy to Darius, 22
Attalus, 9, 10
Austerlitz, Napoleon’s victory at, 412
Austrians, 380 _et seq._
Aztecs, 317-322, 338, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347
B
Babylon surrenders to Alexander, 31
Bagration, 431
Bajesid, son of Murad, murders his brother, 235;
his first military exploit, 235;
his repressive measures, 236-238;
prepares to complete siege of Constantinople, 238;
proceeds against Hungarians and Roumanians, 239;
massacres Christians, 242;
fails before Constantinople, 243;
defeated by Mongolo, 244;
his death, 244
Bajesid, son of Bajesid, proclaimed Sultan, 272;
defeats Djem, 272;
wars on Hungary, Morea, and Venice, 273;
abdicates the throne, 273
Balboa, 310, 357
Barras, 377, 378, 388
Belgæ, The, rise against Romans, 91;
retreat from Cæsar, 92
Bernadotte, 405, 429, 436
Bertoldo, 262
Bessus, as successor to Darius, 35;
his stand against the Greeks, 36;
his execution by Alexander, 37
Bibulus, 80
Blücher, 444, 445
Bolivia, 369
Bonaparte, Carlo, 371;
Joseph, arranges armistice at Paris, 439;
Lucien, 390, 391, 392, 414;
Napoleon (see Napoleon)
Borodino, 430
Brankovitch, 260, 261
Brutus, his opposition to Cæsarism, 121;
his share in the conspiracy, 129
C
Cadiz, 426
Cæsar, Julius, youth and education, 67;
political leanings, 68;
first public office, 68;
family connections, 69;
contests Pompeius’ leadership, 69-70;
his Agrarian Law, 70;
as a free-thinker, 71;
elected Pontifex Maximus, 72;
supports Catiline, 72;
opposes death penalty, 73-74;
seeks alliance with Pompeius, 75-76;
divorces his wife, 76;
tries Clodius, 76;
rules Spain, 77;
returns to Rome, 78;
forms alliance with Crassus and Pompeius, 78;
elected magistrate, 79;
arrests Cato, 79;
submits his agrarian measures to the populace, 79;
his anti-extortion law, 82;
starts for Gaul, 85;
defeats the Helvetii, 89;
defeats Ariovistus, 90;
crosses the Alps, 90;
defeats the Belgæ, 94;
returns to Rome to strengthen triumvirate, 95;
defeats the Veneti, 96;
“butchers” the Germans, 97;
goes to Britain, 98-99;
defeats Vercingetorix, 102;
ends Gallic campaign, 102;
breaks with Pompeius and the Senate, 102;
outgenerals Pompeius in Spain, 107-108;
returns to Italy, 111;
serves as Dictator, 111;
his second victory over Pompeius, 112-115;
asserts Roman sovereignty over Egypt, 116;
is made Dictator by Cæsarian Senate, 117;
suppresses mutiny among troops, 117-118;
defeats Scipio in Africa, 119;
returns triumphantly to Rome, 119;
beginning autocratic régime, 120;
his problems and plans, 120-121;
humbles the Senate, 121;
reforms the Roman Calender, 122;
his benevolent paternalism, 122;
his relations with Cleopatra, 116, 122;
defeats and executes Cnæus Pompeius, 123;
turns to Spanish provinces, 124;
is deified as founder of the Roman Empire, 124;
plans Eastern campaign, 125;
is offered a diadem, 125;
his autocratic ambitions, 126;
conspired against, 128;
assassinated, 128-129;
his sham republicanism, 131;
his generalship, 86, 131-133;
his manipulation of military figures, 93
Cæsar’s Alliance with Pompeius and Crassus, 75-84
Cæsar’s Beginnings, 65-75
Cæsar’s Break with Pompeius and the Senate, 102-119
Cæsar’s Conquest of Gaul, 84-102
Cæsar’s Supremacy, 119-133
Cambacérès, 400, 402
Capac, 352
Capiastro, 261
Carloman, 139
Carolingian Culture, Charles the Great as promoter of, 180;
Alcuin’s share in, 181-183;
its literary movement, 184-185;
its other phases, 186-188
Catiline, plans social revolution, 72
Cato, obstructs parliamentary proceedings, 79;
defeats Crassus’s plan, 81;
commits suicide, 119
Charles IV, 420
Charles VIII, 272
Charles, Archduke, 424, 425
Charles the Great, acknowledged sole Frankish King, 139;
offers peace to Desiderius, 142;
besieges Pavia, 142;
honored as Exarch of Ravenna, 143;
as Patrician, 144, 159, 160;
his policy with the Saxons, 145;
his view of the Saxon gods, 146;
attacks Saxon tribes, 146-147;
occupies Eresburg, 147;
his first general assembly, 147;
strengthens ecclesiastical organization, 147-148;
his retaliation at Verden, 148;
his Saxon campaign, 149;
his drastic measures of pacification, 150;
his warlike expeditions, 151-158;
his coronation as Emperor of Rome, 158-165;
provides for his succession, 167-169;
his death, 169-170;
his dress and physical features, 171;
his marriages and progeny, 171;
his education and intellectual interests, 172;
as king and emperor, 172-179;
as promoter of Carolingian Culture, 180, 185;
as general, 195-196;
his relations with the Church, 198-212
Châtillon, congress of, 438
Chlodvig, 134
Church, The, under Charles the Great, 199-212
Cicero, on Cæsar’s education, 67;
defeats Cæsar’s agrarian legislation, 70;
frustrates social revolution, 72-73;
makes overtures to Pompeius, 75;
on Cæsar’s administration of Spain, 77;
refuses to leave aristocratic party, 78;
opposes Crassus’ legislative measures, 81
Clitus, 38
Clodius, 76
Cleopatra, 5, 116, 122
Coalitions, Anti-Napoleonic, 388-389, 390, 397-398, 410, 414, 423
Colonial System, The, 308-309
Columbus, sordid motives for his voyages, 295-296;
results of his voyages, 297;
starts American slave-trade, 298;
deports Spanish criminals to the Indies, 308;
dies in Spain, 298;
his opinion of the Haytians, 306
Committee of Public Safety, The, 375-376
Constant, Benjamin, 444
Constantine, 253, 254, 255, 258
Consul, Napoleon as, 392;
the provisional, 393-394;
the First, 395, 397;
of State, 394, 396, 401, 404
Cornwallis, Lord, 400
Corsica, its heroic struggle for independence, 371
Cortez, his birth and education, 322;
his expeditions and conquests, 323-326;
founds Vera Cruz, 325;
yearns for Montezuma’s capital, 326;
punishes disloyalty, 327;
starts for Aztec capital, 327, 330;
at the home of Montezuma, 331-334;
his extreme cruelty, 330 _et seq._;
imprisons Spanish envoys, 334-335;
condemns Narvaez and his men, 335;
wars on Vera Cruz Indians, 338;
executes Montezuma, 338;
his perilous escape from the Aztecs, 339;
plans Mexican siege, 341;
progress of the expedition, 341-348;
takes Mexico, 348;
plans a new city, 348;
goes to Honduras, 349;
returns to Mexico, 349;
his last years, 349-350
Cromwell, 137
Cuba, its discovery and occupation, 307;
barbarities practised on its inhabitants, 307-308
Curio, Cæsar’s agent at Rome, 104-105
Cuzco, taken by the Spaniards, 366
D
Dagobert, 135
Darius, resists Alexander in Syria, 22;
outgeneraled by Alexander, 24;
recrosses the Euphrates, 24;
his humiliation, 25;
gathers another army, 26-27, 29;
again defeated by Alexander, 31;
escapes to Media, 31;
tries to make another stand, 33;
his assassination, 34
Dauchan, 221
Davout, 444, 445
Demosthenes, leads patriotic Athenians, 7;
delivers commemoration speech, 8;
thanks gods for deliverance at Ægæ, 8;
his relations with Attalus, 9;
is given means to bribe Greek states, 12;
aids Thebes’ struggle for restoring independence, 13;
involved in Harpalus’ scandal, 57
Desaix, 398, 400
Desiderius, King of the Lombards, offers his daughter’s hand to
Charles the Great, 139;
before the walls of Rome, 140;
prepares against Northern invasion, 141;
flees to Pavia, 142;
surrenders to Charles the Great, 143
Dionysus, Alexander’s thank offering to, 11
Directory, The, 379, 380, 382, 383, 384, 388, 389, 390, 392, 393,
394, 455
E
Eastern Emperor, The, 230
Economic conditions in Charles the Great’s empire, 189-198
Egypt, invaded by Alexander the Great, 28-29
Empire, Alexander’s, 48-64;
Charles’, 172-179;
Napoleon’s, 407-418;
Ottoman, 285-292
Erfurt, 422
Euphrates, The, Alexander crosses, 29
Eylau, 416, 425
F
Ferdinand, 294, 420
Five Hundred, The Council of, 377
Fontainebleau, Napoleon’s farewell at, 441
Fouché, 423
Franks, The, 135, 136
Frederick III, 253
Frederick the Great, 414, 418
Free States, The, the final struggle of, 4
G
Gaul, Cæsar’s conquest of, 84-102;
nature of the country, 85
Giustiniano, 257
Goethe, 422
Gold Fever, The, in Hayti, 305-306
Granada, end of, 294, 295
Greek Empire, feebleness of the revived, 223-224
Greek invasion of Persia, averted, 12
Greek and Persian elements, amalgamation of,
attempted by Alexander, 49-50
Greek people, influenced by Persian invasion, 3-4
Gregory the Great, 136
H
Halicarnassus, taken by Alexander, 21
Harpalus, seeks to stir up revolt, 49;
his fate in Athens, 57
Hayti, first European settlement in New World, 300;
civilization of its natives, 300-302;
its European colonization, 303;
its economic exploitation, 303-304;
discovery of gold in, 304
Heine, on Napoleon’s power, 415
Hellenic Confederation, votes Alexander a crown, 25
Helvetii, defeated by Cæsar, 89
Hermolaus, hanged by Alexander, 40
Hundred, The Five, 390, 391, 392
Hunyadi, 249, 250, 251
I
Illyrian campaign, The, 13
Incas, The, their state of civilization, 350-351;
rise of their domination, 351-352;
extent of their conquests, 353;
their theological ideas, 353-355;
their government, 355-356;
as warriors, 357;
capture and execution of their leader, 364
India, invasion of, 35-38, 40-41, 42, 46
J
Jacobins, The, 401
Jena, 415
Jerome of Westphalia, 435
John the Fearless, 239
Joseph, King of Naples, 421, 426
Josephine, 422
Jourdon, 427
K
Kutusoff, 431
L
Lafayette, opposes “arbitrary government,” 403
Lala Schahin, 232
Lannes, 417, 425
Las Casas, 299, 303-304, 306-308, 310, 349
Legion of Honor, Napoleon’s, 404
Leipzig, 437
Letitia, Maria, 371, 414
Louis XIV, 434
Louis XVIII, proclaimed King of France, 439;
plans for the dethronement of, 442
M
Macedon, Kingdom of, 3, 7
Macedonia, 10
Macedonians, 10
Manuel II, 236, 237, 239, 243, 244, 245, 247
Marbot, on the Prussian campaign, 416;
on Napoleon’s marshals, 434
Marcellus, wants Cæsar declared enemy of the people, 106
Marseilles, 375
Masséna, 425, 426-427
Memnon, 21-22
Memoirs, Napoleon’s, 448-449
Metternich, 433, 435, 436
Mexico, its great antiquity, 311;
its early history, 311-322;
taken by Cortez, 341-348;
plans for the reconstruction of, 348
Mohammed II, his ambitions, 253;
prepares to besiege Constantinople, 254-255;
his strategy, 256-257;
sacks Constantinople, 258;
inaugurates Mohammedan rule, 259;
attacks Belgrade, 260-261;
conquers Servia and Bosnia, 262;
takes Athens, 263;
ravages Morea, 263;
humiliates Venice, 264;
enters Italy, 265;
defeated at Croia, 266;
his aggressive policy, 266;
his fleet in the Greek islands, 267;
abandons aggression on Wallachia, 269;
defeated by Stephen of Moldavia, 270-271;
end of his reign, 271;
extent of his conquests, 271-272
“Moniteur,” The, 408
Montezuma II, 316, 324, 325, 326, 331, 332, 333, 336, 337, 338
Morea, ravaged by Turks, 263
Moreau, 405, 436
Moscow, Napoleon’s retreat from, 431-432
Murad I, his personal qualities, 220;
his measures and conquests, 220-234;
his assassination, 234
Murad II, succeeds Mohammed, 246;
besieges Constantinople, 246;
invades Morea, 247;
leads army in person, 248;
defeats Hunyadi, 250;
attempts to repress Albanian rebellion, 252;
his success in the Morea, 252;
his death, 252
Murat, 417, 423, 432, 433, 435, 442
N