Madame de Staël said of Rienzi and his Romans: “They mistook
reminiscences for hopes;” of the second French Empire and the third
Napoleon we may say: “They staked their hopes on reminiscences.”
In our individual lives we realize the power of memory, suggestion,
association. If we have ever yielded to a vice, we have felt, it may
be years after, how the sight of the old conditions revives the old
temptation. A glance, a sound, a smell, may be enough to conjure up a
long series of events, whether to grieve or to tempt us, with more than
their original intensity. So we learn that the safest way to escape the
enticement is to avoid the conditions. Recent psychology has at last
begun to measure the subtle power of suggestion.
But now, suppose that instead of an individual a whole nation has had
a terrific experience of succumbing to temptation, and that a cunning,
unscrupulous man, aware of the force of association and reminiscence,
deliberately applies both to reproduce those conditions in which the
nation first abandoned itself to excess: the case we have supposed is
that of France and Louis Napoleon. Before the reality of their story
the romances of hypnotism pale.
After Sédan it was the fashion to regard Louis Napoleon as the only
culprit in the gilded shame of the Second Empire; we shall see,
however, that the great majority of Frenchmen longed for his coming,
applauded his victories, and by frequent vote sanctioned his deeds. A
free people keeps no worse ruler than it deserves.
The Napoleonic legend, by which Louis Napoleon rose to power, was not
his creation, but that of the French: he was simply shrewd, and used
it. What was this legend?
When allied Europe finally crushed the great Napoleon at Waterloo,
France breathed a sigh of relief. Twenty campaigns had left her
exhausted: she asked only for repose. This the Restoration gave her.
But the gratification of our transient cravings, however strong they
may be, cannot long satisfy; and when the French recovered from their
exhaustion, they felt their permanent cravings return. The Bourbons,
they soon realized, could not appease those dominant Gallic desires.
For the Bourbons had destroyed even that semblance of liberty Napoleon
took care to preserve; they persecuted democratic ideas; they
brought back the old aristocracy, with its mildewed haughtiness; they
babbled of divine right,--as if the worship of St. Guillotine had
not supervened. During twenty years France had been the arbitress of
Europe; now, under the narrow, forceless Bourbons, she was treated like
a second-rate power. Waterloo had meant not only the destruction of
Napoleon, from which France derived peace, but also humiliation, which
galled Frenchmen more and more as their normal sensitiveness returned.
The Bourbons, knowing that they might be tolerated so long as they
were not despised, got up a military promenade into Spain, to prove
that France could still meddle in her neighbors’ affairs, and that
the Bourbons were not less mighty men of war than the Bonapartes.
They captured the Trocadero, and restored vile King Ferdinand and
his twenty-six cooks to the throne of Spain; and they hoped that the
one-candle power of fame lighted by these exploits would outdazzle the
Sun of Austerlitz. But no, the dynasty of Bourbon, long since headless,
proved to be rootless too: one evening Charles X played his usual game
of whist at St. Cloud; the next, he was posting out of France with all
the speed and secrecy he could command.
Louis Philippe, who came next, might have been expected to please
everybody: Royalists, because he was himself royal; Republicans,
because he was Philippe Egalité’s son; constitutionalists, because he
hated autocratic methods; shopkeepers of all kinds, because he was
‘practical.’ And in truth his administration may be called the Golden
Age of the _bourgeoisie_,--the great middle class which, in France and
elsewhere, was superseding the old aristocracy. Napoleon had organized
a nobility of the sword; after him came the nobility of the purse.
Louis Philippe could say that under his rule France prospered: her
merchants grew rich; her factories, her railroads, all the organs of
commerce, were healthily active. And yet she was discontented. The
spectacle of her Citizen King walking unattended in the streets of
Paris, his plump thighs encased in democratic trousers, his plump and
ruddy face wearing a complacent smile, his whole air that of the senior
partner in some old, respectable, and rich firm,--even this failed to
satisfy Frenchmen. “He inspires no more enthusiasm than a fat grocer,”
was said of him. Frenchmen did not despise money-making, but they
wanted something more: they wanted _gloire_.
Let us use the French word, because the English _glory_ has another
meaning. _Glory_ implies something essentially noble,--nay, in
the Lord’s Prayer it is a quality attributed to God himself: but
_gloire_ suggests vanity; it is the food braggarts famish after. The
minute-men at Concord earned true glory; but when the United States,
listening to the seductions of evil politicians, attacked and blasted
a decrepit power,--fivefold smaller in population, twenty-fold weaker
in resources,--they might find _gloire_ among their booty, but glory,
never. As prosperity increased, the Gallic appetite for _gloire_
increased. Louis Philippe made several attempts to allay it, but he
dared not risk a foreign war, and the failure of his attempts made him
less and less respected.
And now arose the Napoleonic legend, at first no more than a bright
exhalation in the evening, but gradually taking on the sweep, the
definiteness, the fascination, of mirage at noonday. Time enough had
elapsed to dull or quite blot out the recollections of the hardships
and strains, the millions of soldiers killed and wounded, the taxes,
the grievous tyranny; men remembered only the victories, the rewards,
and the splendor. A new generation, unacquainted with the havoc of war,
had grown up, to listen with fervid envy to the reminiscences of some
gray-haired veteran, who had made the great charge at Wagram or ridden
behind Ney at Borodino. Those exploits were so stupendous as to seem
incredible, and yet they were vouched for by too many survivors to be
doubted. Was not Thiers setting forth the marvelous story in nineteen
volumes? Were not Béranger and even Victor Hugo singing of the departed
grandeur? Were not the booksellers’ shelves loaded with memoirs,
lives, historical statements, polemics? Paris, France, seemed to exist
merely to be the monument of one man. And wherever the young Frenchman
traveled--in Spain, in Italy, along the Rhine or the Danube, to Vienna,
or Cairo, or Moscow--he saw the footprints of French valor and French
audacity, reminders that Napoleon had made France the mistress of
Europe. No Frenchman, were he Bourbon or Republican, but felt proud to
think that his countrymen had humbled Prussia and Austria.
Confronted by such recollections, the France of Louis Philippe looked
degenerate. It offered nothing to thrill at, to brag over; it sinned in
having--what it could not help--a stupendous past just behind it. So
the Napoleonic legend grew. The body of the great Emperor was brought
home from St. Helena, to perform more miracles than the mummy of a
mediæval saint. Power and _gloire_ came to be regarded as the products
of a Napoleonic régime: to secure them it was only necessary to put a
Bonapartist on the throne.
Contemporaneous with the expansion of this spell, Socialism grew up,
and taught that, just as the _bourgeoisie_ had overthrown the old
privileged classes in the French Revolution, so now the working classes
must emancipate themselves from the tyranny of the _bourgeoisie_.
Political equality without industrial equality seemed a mockery. In
this wise the doctrines of a score of Utopians penetrated society
to loosen old bonds and embitter class with class. And besides all
this, there was the usual wrangle of political parties. The tide of
opposition rose, and on February 24, 1848, swept away Louis Philippe
and his minister Guizot. Among the many fortune-seekers whom that tide
brought to land was Louis Napoleon.
He was born in Paris, April 20, 1808, his mother being Hortense
Beauharnais, who had married Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland. The
younger Louis could just remember being petted in the Tuileries by the
great Emperor: then, like all the Bonapartes, he had been packed off
into exile. His youth was chiefly spent on Lake Constance, at Augsburg,
and at Thun. In 1831 he had joined the Carbonari plotters in Italy.
The next year, through the death of his elder brother and of the great
Napoleon’s son, he became the official Pretender to the Bonapartist
hopes. People knew him only as a visionary, who talked much about his
“star,” and by writings and deeds tried to persuade the world that he
too, like his uncle, was a man of destiny. A few adventurers gathered
round him, eager to take the one chance in a thousand of his success.
Accompanied by some of these, in 1836, he appeared before the French
troops at Strasburg, expecting to be acclaimed Emperor and to march
triumphantly to Paris. He did go to Paris, escorted by policemen; but
his attempt seemed so foolish that Louis Philippe merely paid his
passage to America to be rid of him.
The Prince soon returned to Europe and settled in London, where he
lived the fast life of the average nobleman. In 1840 he set out on
another expedition against France. Carrying a tame eagle with him,
he landed at Boulogne: but again neither the soldiers nor populace
welcomed him; the eagle seems to have been a spiritless fowl, likewise
incapable of arousing enthusiasm; and the Prince shortly after was
under imprisonment for life in the fortress of Ham. Nearly six years
later he bribed a jailer, escaped to London, and, like Micawber, waited
for something to turn up.
The fall of Louis Philippe gave Prince Louis his opportunity. He
hurried to Paris, but was considerate, or cunning, enough to hold aloof
for a while from disturbing public affairs. In those first months of
turmoil many aspirants were destroyed, by their own folly and by mutual
collision. Discreetly, therefore, he stood aside and watched them
disappear.
Of the several factions, the Socialists and Red Republicans first
profited by the Revolution. They organized that colossal folly, the
National Workshops, in which 120,000 loafers received from the state
good wages for pretending to do work which, had they done it, would
have benefited no one. When the state, realizing that it could not
continue this preposterous expense, proposed to close the workshops,
the loafers became sullen: when the wages were cut off, they throttled
Paris. For four days, in June, 1848, they made the streets of Paris
their battle-ground, and succumbed only after 30,000 of their number
had been killed, wounded, or captured by Cavaignac’s troops. The
terror inspired by those idlers of Louis Blanc’s workshops was the
corner-stone of the Second Empire.
A few weeks later, Louis Napoleon, elected by five constituencies, took
his seat in the Assembly. His uncle’s name was still his only political
capital. His own record--the Strasburg and Boulogne episodes--inspired
mirth. In person there was nothing commanding about him. An
“olive-swarthy paroquet” some one called him. “His gray eyes,” says De
Tocqueville, “were dull and opaque, like those thick bull’s-eyes which
light the stateroom of a ship, letting the light pass through, but out
of which we can see nothing.” In after years “inscrutable” was the word
commonly chosen to describe his cold, unblinking gaze. Reserve always
characterized his manners; for even when most affable, his intimates
felt that he concealed something or simulated something.
In the Assembly he strove for no sudden recognition; outside, however,
he and his emissaries busied themselves night and day fanning the
embers of Imperialism; and when, in December, 1848, the French people
voted for a president, Louis Napoleon received 5,434,000 votes, while
Cavaignac, his nearest competitor, had but 1,448,000. How had this
come about? Old soldiers and peasants composed the great bulk of his
supporters, every one of them glad to vote for “the nephew of the
Emperor.” Next, Socialists, blue blouses and others, voted for him
because they hated Cavaignac for repressing Red Republicanism in
June; and Monarchists of both stripes, believing that he would be an
easy tool for their plots, preferred him to the unyielding Cavaignac.
Mediocrity and other negative qualities thus availed to transform
Louis the Ridiculed into the first President of the Republic. “We made
two blunders in the case of Louis Napoleon,” said Thiers; “first in
deeming him a fool, and next in deeming him a genius.” Louis Napoleon
knew not only how to profit by both of these blunders, but also how to
superinduce either belief in the French mind.
Having sworn to uphold the Republic, he began his administration.
During several months he let no sign of his ambition flutter into view,
but seemed wholly bent on discharging the duties of president. In the
spring of 1849, however, he put forth a feeler by engineering the
expedition against the Roman Republic. Honest Frenchmen protested, but
a majority in the Assembly supported him; and presently the instinct
to be revenged on the Romans for defending themselves, and thereby
inflicting losses on the French, silenced many who had disapproved of
the expedition at the outset. Only the Radicals forcibly resisted, but
their revolt was quickly put down. Louis Napoleon gained the prestige
of having successfully reasserted French influence in Italy, where,
for a generation, it had been supplanted by the influence of Austria.
Furthermore, by becoming guardian of the Pope, he propitiated the
Clericals, who might some time be useful. That he also roused the wrath
of the Red Republicans did not spoil his prospects.
One year, two years passed. Faction discredited faction. Every one
looked on the Republic as but a preparation for either Anarchy or
the Empire. The Reds, irreconcilable and ferocious, terrorized the
imagination of every one else. No doubt the majority of honest
Frenchmen--if by honest we mean the really intelligent and patriotic
minority--wished a republic, but those Red Extremists had made all
Republicans indiscriminately odious; and as the Royalist plotters
showed neither courage nor ability, the great multitude of Frenchmen
came to regard the Empire or Anarchy as their only alternatives. Most
of them, having nothing to gain through disorder, leaned to the side
which promised to leash the bloodhounds of murder and pillage. Spasm
after spasm of terror swept over Paris, and when Paris shudders in the
evening the rest of France shudders by daybreak. Anything to prevent
the triumph of the Reds--with their guillotine and their abolition of
private ownership of property--became the ruling instinct of all other
Frenchmen.
Louis Napoleon, we may be sure, took care to encourage the belief
that he alone could save France from the abyss. In addition to
his recognized newspaper organs, he employed a literary bureau to
spread broadcast his portrait, his biography, and even songs with an
Imperialist refrain. He knew the political persuasiveness of cigars
and sausages distributed among the troops, and of wine dispensed to
their officers. He was by turns modest--declaring that his sole purpose
was to obey the Constitution--and bold, announcing that he would not
shrink from making France strong and prosperous, whenever Frenchmen
intrusted that task to him. In his capacity for waiting, he gave the
best proof of his ability; and we must add that the Assembly, by its
folly, gave him indispensable aid.
The Assembly, for instance, restricted the suffrage, in the hope that,
by preventing workmen from voting, the victory of the Reds might be
staved off. Again, the Constitution declared that no president was
eligible for reëlection until he had been four years out of office. As
the time for thinking of Louis Napoleon’s successor approached, the
moderates of all parties urged that the Constitution be amended, so
that he might be quietly reëlected,--there being no other candidate
who promised to preserve order. But the factious deputies, by a narrow
vote, rejected the amendment.
Napoleon now saw his chance, and openly assailed the Assembly. He
posed as the champion of universal suffrage, the true representative
of the people misrepresented by the factious deputies. They proposed
to subject France to the uncertainties of a political campaign: his
continuation in office would mean the certain maintenance of order. But
Napoleon did not rely on demagogy alone: in secret he plotted a _coup
d’état_.
The trade of house or bank burglar long ago fell into disrepute: not
so that of the state burglar, who, if he succeed, may wear ermine
jauntily,--for ermine, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. Louis
Napoleon, ready to risk everything, laid his plans for stealing the
government of France. The venture was less difficult than it seems,
for if he could win over four or five men the odds would be with him.
He must have the Prefect of Paris, the Commandant of the Garrison,
the Ministers of War and of the Interior: others might make assurance
double sure, but these were absolutely necessary.
Early in the spring of 1851 he set to work. Chief among his accomplices
was his half brother, Morny,--a facile, audacious man, whose
reputation, if he had ever had any, would have been lost long since in
stock-swindling schemes; after him, in importance, came Persigny, an
adventurer who had fastened on Louis Napoleon fifteen years before;
Fleury, a major most active and efficient, without qualm, for he
foresaw a marshal’s _bâton_; and Maupas, one of those easy villains
who, never having been suspected of honesty, are spared the fatigue
of pretending to be better than they are. If we assume that all these
gentlemen were Imperialists for revenue only, we shall do them no
injustice.
Their first move was to send Fleury to Algiers to secure a general to
act as minister of war. He had not to search long; for Saint Arnaud,
one of the Algerian officers, guessing Fleury’s purpose, offered his
services forthwith. But Saint Arnaud stood only fifty-third in the
line of promotion among French generals; some excuse must be found for
passing by his fifty-two seniors. In a few weeks the French press and
official gazette announced an outbreak of great violence among the
Kabyles in Algeria; a little later they reported that the insurrection
had been subdued by the energy of General Saint Arnaud; then, another
proper interval elapsing, Saint Arnaud had come to Paris as minister of
war.
It took less trouble to dismiss the Prefect of the Seine, and to
substitute Maupas for him. Magnan, who commanded the troops, had
already been corrupted. Half-brother Morny, at the critical moment,
would appear in the Ministry of the Interior. The National Guard and
the Public Printer could both be counted on,--the latter required
for the prompt issuing of manifestoes. Everything being ready, the
President, after some brief delays, set December 2--the anniversary of
Austerlitz, and of the coronation of the great Napoleon--for committing
the crime.
* * * * *
On the evening of December 1, he held his weekly reception at the
Elysée; moved with his habitual courtesy among the guests; seemed
less stiff than usual,--as if relieved of a burden; then went to his
study for a last conference with his fellow-conspirators. The next
morning Paris learned that two hundred leading citizens, military
and political, including many deputies, had been arrested and taken
to Vincennes. Placards declared that the President, having had news
of a plot against the state, had stolen a march on the plotters,
dissolved the Assembly, proclaimed universal suffrage, and called for
a plebiscite to accept or reject the constitution he would frame. At
first, the stupefied Parisians knew not what to do. Then the deputies
who had escaped arrest met and voted to depose the President; but his
gendarmes quickly broke up the meeting, and lodged the deputies in
prison. Thanks to the system of centralization which France had long
boasted of, Morny, from the Ministry of the Interior, controlled every
prefect in France by telegraph. The provinces were informed that Paris
had accepted the _coup d’état_ almost before Paris had collected her
dazed senses on the morning of the 2d of December.
The chief politicians and other leaders being caged, there was no one
left, except among the workingmen, to direct a resistance. They did
revolt, and Napoleon and Saint Arnaud gave them free play to raise
barricades, to arm and gather. Then the eighty thousand soldiers in
Paris surrounded them, stormed their barricades, and made no prisoners.
Accompanying this suppression of the mob was the bloodthirsty
massacre of a multitude of defenseless men, women, and children who
had collected on the boulevards to see the troops move against the
barricaders. They were shot down in cold blood, the soldiers (according
to general report) having been rendered ferocious by drink. Thus was
achieved the crime of the _coup d’état_.
By this crime Napoleon had demonstrated that he had the necessary
force to put down the lawless, and that he did not hesitate to use it;
by massacring the innocent throng, he made the army his accomplices,
against any risk of their fraternizing with the populace. A fortnight
later, 7,439,000 Frenchmen ratified his crime and elected him president
for ten years: only 646,000 voted against him. Napoleon the Great, by
the _coup d’état_ of the 18th Brumaire, had suppressed the Directory;
his imitative nephew could now point to an equally successful 2d of
December.
France acquiesced all the more readily because she was put under
martial law. One hundred thousand suspects were arrested, and more
than ten thousand, were deported to Cayenne and Algeria. Police
inquisitions, military commissions, and the other usual devices of
tyranny quickly smothered resistance. Under the pretense of suppressing
anarchy,--an anarchist meaning any one who did not submit to Louis
Napoleon,--persecution supplanted law and justice. Had you asked to see
most of the Frenchmen whose names were the most widely known, you would
have been told that they were in exile.
Like his uncle, Louis Napoleon waited a little before putting on the
purple. Only on December 2, 1852, the anniversary of his crime, did
he have himself proclaimed emperor. The mockery of a plebiscite had
preceded, and he had assured France and Europe that the “Empire means
peace.”
Having reached the throne, he made the following arrangements for
staying on it. He organized a Senate and a Council of State, whose
members he appointed. The public were allowed to elect members to the
Corps Législatif, or Legislature; but as his minions controlled the
polls, only such candidates as he preferred were likely to be chosen.
He suffered a few opponents to be elected, in order to have it appear
that he encouraged discussion. Otherwise, he scarcely took pains to
varnish his autocracy. As a deft Chinese carver incloses a tiny figure
in a nest of ivory boxes, so did Bonaparte imprison the simulacrum of
Liberty in the innermost compartment of the political cage in which he
held France captive.
What must the condition of the French people have been that they
submitted! How much antecedent incapacity for government, how much
cherishing of unworthy ideals, were implied by the success of such an
adventurer! And what could patriotism mean, when the French fatherland
meant the land of Louis Napoleon, Morny, Maupas, Persigny, and their
unspeakable underlings? The new Empire gave France what is called a
strong government, by which commercially she throve. Tradesmen, seeing
business improve and their hoards grow, chafed less at the loss of
political freedom. The working classes were propitiated by public
works--the favorite nostrum of socialists and tyrants--organized on a
vast scale. Pensions were showered on old soldiers, or their widows.
Taxes ran high; the public debt had constantly to be increased: but an
air of opulence pervaded France.
Established at home, Napoleon now looked abroad for _gloire_. Before
his elevation, some one had warned him that he would find the French
a very hard people to govern. “Not at all,” he replied; “all that
they need is a war every four years.” Europe had formally recognized
him,--no country being more ready than England to condone his great
crime. Queen Victoria, the typical British matron, exchanging visits
with the Imperial adventurer made an edifying spectacle! Presently the
land-greed of England and the _gloire_-thirst of France brought the
sons of the Britons who had whipped the great Napoleon at Waterloo
into an alliance with the sons of the Frenchmen who had there been
whipped; and in the summer of 1854 British and French fleets swept
through the Bosphorus and across the Black Sea, and landed two armies
near Sebastopol. Of the Crimean war which ensued, we need say no more
than that it was immoral in conception, blundering in execution, and
ineffectual in results. Nevertheless, it supplied Napoleon III with
just what he had sought. He extracted from it large quantities of
_gloire_. Marshal’s _bâtons_ and military promotions, the parade of
returning troops, the assembling at Paris of the European envoys who
were to agree on a treaty of peace,--what did all this show but that
Europe had accepted Napoleon III at his own valuation? In Russia’s
wilderness of snow the great Napoleon had been ruined; now his nephew
posed as the humbler of Russia. The great Napoleon had been finally
crushed by England: now his nephew had enticed good, pious England into
an alliance, and thereby he had surely avenged his uncle. The last
European compact, humiliating to France, had been signed at Vienna: the
new compact, signed at Paris, bore witness to the supremacy of France.
That year 1856 marks the acme of Napoleon the Third’s career. It
saw him the recognized arbiter of Europe. The world, which worships
success, forgot that the suave, impassive master of the Tuileries had
been Louis the Ridiculed, a political vagabond and hapless pretender,
only ten years before. Now, as arbiter, he would meddle when he chose,
and the world should not gainsay him. Moreover, he believed his power
so secure that he was willing to forgive those whom he had injured. He
had gained what he wanted: why, therefore, should _they_ reject his
amnesty?
Unscrupulously selfish till he had attained his ends, Napoleon III had,
nevertheless, curious streaks of disinterestedness in his nature. What
but Quixotism impelled him to promise to free Italy from her bondage to
Austria? He might add thereby to his personal renown, but the French
people, who must pay the bills and furnish the soldiers, were offered
no adequate compensation. Whatever his motives, he crossed the Alps in
the spring of 1859, joined the Piedmontese, and defeated the Austrians
in two great battles. But after Solferino he paused, grew anxious,
and drew back. Many reasons were hinted at: he had been horrified at
the sight of twelve thousand corpses festering in the midsummer heat
on the battlefield; he perceived that the campaign must last many
months before the Austrians could be dislodged from the Quadrilateral;
he dreaded to create in Italy a kingdom strong enough to be a menace
to France; he was worried at the mobilization of the Prussian army,
foreboding a war on the Rhine. Motives are usually composite: perhaps,
therefore, all these, and others, made him resolve to quit Italy with
his mission only half achieved. But of all his schemes, that Italian
expedition has alone escaped the condemnation of posterity.
Possessing a great talent for scenic display, Napoleon dressed his
victories so as to get the fullest spectacular effect from them. He
could pose now as the conqueror of Austria, and offset the _gloire_ of
his uncle’s Marengo with that of his own Magenta. He had more _bâtons_
and dukedoms to bestow,--more trophies to deposit in the Invalides. The
gazettes, the official historians, the court writers, the spell-bound
populace, acclaimed the new triumphs. Europe became too small for
Imperial France to swagger in. Napoleon the First had meddled in Egypt,
and Palestine, and the West Indies; his nephew must do likewise, and
seek new worlds to conquer over sea.
Already, however, sober observers noted other symptoms, and soon the
list of Imperial reverses grew ominously long. Early in 1860, Central
Italy became a part of Victor Emanuel’s kingdom: Napoleon had insisted
that it should form a new state for his cousin Plon-Plon. That autumn,
Sicily and Naples united themselves to Italy: Napoleon had wished
and schemed otherwise. That same year, too, England compelled him to
renounce his protectorate over Syria. Then he planned a French empire
in Mexico; sent French troops over under Bazaine; set up Maximilian,
who appeared to have grafted Napoleonism on our continent. But in 1867
he recalled his army,--“spontaneously” as he said. The world smiled
when it reflected that the spontaneity of his withdrawal had been
superinduced by a curt message from the United States and the massing
of United States troops on the Rio Grande. In 1864 he would have kept
Prussia and Austria from robbing Denmark; but as he had only words to
risk, they heeded him not. In 1866, when Prussia and Austria went to
war, expecting that Austria would be the victor, he had arranged to
take a slice of Rhineland while Austria took Silesia. But Prussia was
victorious, and so quickly that Napoleon could not save his reputation
even as mediator.
At last Europe realized that his nod was not omnipotent,--that Prussia,
his enemy, could raise herself to a power of the first rank, not only
without but against his sanction. Napoleon also realized that his
prestige was tottering. He must have some compensation for Prussia’s
aggrandizement. But when he asked for a strip of Rhineland, Bismarck
replied: “I will never cede an inch of German soil.” Napoleon, not
ready for war, cast about for some other screen to his humiliation;
for even in his legislature men now dared to taunt him with allowing
Germany to grow perilously strong. To this taunt one of the Imperial
spokesmen retorted, “Germany is divided into three fragments, which
will never come together.” A day or two later Bismarck published the
secret treaties by which North and South Germany had bound themselves
to support each other in case of attack.
Thus thwarted, Napoleon schemed to buy the tiny grandduchy of
Luxemburg, which had long been garrisoned by Prussian troops. The
King of Holland, who owned it, agreed to sell it for ninety million
francs. Europe was willing, but Bismarck said _no_. He would consent
to withdraw his troops, to destroy the fortifications, and to convert
Luxemburg into a neutral state; more than that he would not allow.
And with that Napoleon had to content himself, and to persuade the
French--as best he could--that he had frightened the Prussians out of
the grandduchy.
In 1863 Bismarck said to a friend: “From a distance, the French Empire
seems to be something; near by, it is nothing.” About the same time
Napoleon, who had had much friendly intercourse with the Prussian
statesman, said: “M. de Bismarck is not a serious man.”
Just as the Luxemburg affair was concluded, all the world went to Paris
to attend the Exposition, which was intended to be, and seemed, a
symbol of the permanence of the Second Empire. The projectors knew that
the immense preparations would enable the government to employ many
workmen, who might otherwise be unruly, and that the vast concourse
of visitors would bring money to the tradespeople and keep them
from grumbling. The ostensible purpose, however, was to dazzle both
Frenchmen and strangers by a view of Imperial magnificence; and it was
fully achieved.
Paris herself, the Phryne among cities, astonished those who had
never seen her, or who had seen her in old days. Where, they asked,
were the narrow, crooked streets, in which barricaders once fortified
themselves? Were these boulevards, stretching broad and straight,--were
these they? And by what magic had the old, irregular dwellings been
transformed into miles of tall, stately blocks? New churches, new
quays, new parks, new palaces, bearing the impress of grace, symmetry,
and a unifying planner, excited the wonder of the cosmopolitan throng
of visitors. But the products of industry, the triumphs of the arts of
peace, were not allowed to obscure the military glories of the Second
Empire. A “Bridge of the Alma” and a “Boulevard of Sebastopol” kept
the Crimean prowess in memory; a “Solferino Bridge” and a “Magenta
Boulevard” bore witness to the Italian triumphs. And there were
pageants, military, courtly, artistic; balls, at which, among the
picked beauties of the world, the Empress Eugénie shone most beautiful;
banquets, at which Napoleon sat at the head of the table, with monarchs
at his right hand and his left deferentially listening. Little did the
on-lookers suppose that the master of those magnificent revels had been
lately frustrated by M. de Bismarck, who was merely one of the million
whose presence in Paris seemed a tribute to Napoleon’s supremacy.
History, it is said, never repeats: but is the saying true? Is there
not an old, old story of Belshazzar and the magnificent feast he gave
in ancient Babylon, and the mysterious writing on the wall? And was not
another Belshazzar repeating the episode in this modern Babylon less
than thirty years ago? However that may be, the Exhibition of 1867 was
the last triumph of Imperial France.
Imperialism had made a great show, reproducing, so far as it could, the
glamour of the First Empire. Judge how potent that First Empire must
have been, when mere imitation of it could thus hypnotize France and
delude Europe! But Imperialism, generated by a crime and vitalized by
corruption and deceit, was not _all_ France. Honest France, excluded in
the beginning, could not, would not, be lured in later. Napoleon would
have conciliated, but the men whom he needed to conciliate would not
even parley. To offset Victor Hugo and patriots of his rigid defiance,
the Emperor had the outward acquiescence of Prosper Mérimée, the
worldly courtier; of Alfred de Musset, the weak-willed, debauched poet;
and of such as they. But he had the conscience of France against him;
to offset _that_ he leagued himself with Jesuits and Clericals. Having
exhausted the expedients of force, he had tried the arts of flattery;
he had intimidated, he had blandished; he had made vice easy and
attractive, in order that, though he could not win over the stubborn to
his cause, their character might be softened through voluptuousness.
Whosoever could be corrupted--let us give him full credit--he did
corrupt in masterful fashion; but conscience, in France as elsewhere,
is incorruptible.
Despite his complicated machinery for gagging conscience, protests
began to be made boldly. One such protest, uttered towards the end
of 1868, rang throughout France; and well it might, so audacious
was the eloquence of the protester. Several newspapers had opened a
subscription for a monument to Baudin, a Republican killed in the _coup
d’état_. The proprietors of these newspapers were arrested. One of
them, Delescluze, had for his advocate Léon Gambetta, a vehement young
lawyer from the South. Before the judge, and the prosecuting attorneys,
and the police--all myrmidons of the Emperor--he arraigned the Empire,
closing with these words: “Here for seventeen years you have been
absolute masters--‘masters at discretion,’ it is your phrase--of
France. Well, you have never dared to say, ‘We will celebrate--we
will include among the solemn festivals of France--the Second of
December as a national anniversary!’ And yet all the governments which
have succeeded each other in the land have honored the day of their
birth; there are but two anniversaries--the 18th Brumaire and the
2d of December--which have never been put among the solemnities of
origin, because you know that, if you dared to put these, the universal
conscience would disavow them!” Gambetta’s invective did not save his
client from prison, but his arraignment of the Empire echoed throughout
France.
And all the next year, 1869, though Imperialism abated in language
none of its pretensions, it showed in deeds many signs of nervousness.
No longer did it think it prudent, for instance, to abet the enormous
extravagances of Hausmann, the remodeler of Paris. It even talked
Liberalism, and set up a seeming Liberal Cabinet, with Ollivier at
its head. “All the reform you may give us, we accept,” said Gambetta
bluntly; “and we may possibly force you to yield more than you intend;
but all you give, and all we take, we shall simply use as a bridge to
carry us over to another form of government.” Evidently the conscience
of France, expressing itself through the Republican spokesman, could
not be placated or seduced.
A still blacker omen ushered in 1870. Pierre Bonaparte, the Emperor’s
cousin, shot in cold blood a journalist, Victor Noir. Two hundred
thousand persons followed the victim’s hearse; two hundred thousand
voices shouted through the streets of Paris, “Vengeance! Down with
the Empire! Long live the Republic!” In April the ministers proposed
further reforms, and called for another plebiscite, that worn-out
Napoleonic device for deceiving public opinion. Seven and a third
million votes were dutifully registered for the Empire, and only a
million and a half against it; but the Imperialists did not exult,--a
majority of voters in Paris, and forty-six thousand soldiers, had voted
_no_.
To be deserted by the Parisians, on whom Napoleon had lavished so much
pomp,--that, indeed, was hard; but the disaffection in the army meant
danger. One desperate remedy remained,--a foreign war. Victory would
bring to Imperialism sufficient prestige to postpone for several years
the impending collapse; meanwhile, public attention would be diverted
from grievances at home.
Nemesis saw to it that rogues thus minded should not lack opportunity.
The Spaniards having elected an obscure German prince to be their
king, the French ministers announced that they would never suffer him
to reign. Of his own motion, the German prince declined the election,
but the French were not appeased. They would humble the King of
Prussia by forcing from him a meek promise. King William refused to
be bullied; the French ministers proclaimed that France had been
insulted. Not Imperialists only, but Frenchmen of all parties clamored
for satisfaction. That love of _gloire_, that mercurial vanity which,
twenty years before, had made them an easy prey to Louis Napoleon,
now made them abettors of his breakneck venture. He appealed to their
patriotism, the last refuge of a scoundrel, and they were beguiled.
War came, the Emperor being, by common report, most reluctant to
consent to its declaration. He was its first victim. Five weeks after
taking the field, he surrendered with nearly one hundred and ninety
thousand men at Sédan. The corruption which through twenty years he had
fostered, in all parts of the state where he expected to profit by it,
had gangrened the army also, that branch which a military tyrant needs
to have honestly administered. And now in his need the army failed him.
He had been caught, as every one is caught who imagines that he can be
wicked with impunity and still keep virtue for an ally when he needs
her. From top to bottom his war department was rotten. Conscripts had,
by bribe, evaded service; generals had sworn to false muster-rolls;
ministers had connived with dishonest contractors. At Sédan, Napoleon
paid the penalty of the corruption which he had erected into a
system; at Sédan, moreover, he completed that cycle of parallels and
imitations which he had made the business of his life. Just as Prussian
Blücher paralyzed the last rally of the great Napoleon at Waterloo, so
Prussian Moltke achieved the ignominy of Napoleon the Little at Sédan.
Men forget, even when they do not forgive. Frenchmen, furious at the
humiliation of Sédan, cursed Napoleon as the author of it. But after
a quarter of a century, although they have not forgiven him, they
have come to look on him as victim rather than as villain. Later
writers have held him up to be pitied. They describe his long years of
suffering from the stone; they paint him during that month of August,
1870, as a poor, abject creature of circumstances, driven to bay by an
irresistible foe, buffeted, scorned, despised by his own officers and
troops. They show him to us, speechless and in agony, lifted from his
horse at Saarbrücken; or huddled into a third-class railway carriage
with a crowd of common soldiers escaping from the oncoming Prussians;
or sitting, as cheerless as a death’s-head, at a council of war; now
lodged in mean quarters; now passing gloomily down regiments on their
way to defeat, and never a voice to cry _Vive l’Empereur_; ever growing
more and more haggard and nervous with worry, disaster, and endless
cigarettes; continually pelted with telegrams from Empress Eugénie at
Paris, “Do this--do that, or the Empire is lost;” until that final
early morning interview with Bismarck in the weaver’s cottage at
Donchéry. Latter-day Frenchmen, beholding such misery, have forgotten
that Napoleon himself was chiefly responsible for it, and have ceased
to execrate.
In closing, let us read, from a letter Bismarck wrote to his wife the
day after the surrender, a description of the meeting of Napoleon and
his conqueror:--
“_Vendresse_, Sept. 3, 1870. Yesterday morning at five o’clock,
after I had been negotiating until one o’clock, A. M.,
with Moltke and the French generals about the capitulation to
be concluded, I was awakened by General Reille, with whom I am
acquainted, to tell me that Napoleon wished to speak with me.
Unwashed and unbreakfasted, I rode towards Sedan, found the
Emperor in an open carriage, with three aides-de-camp and three
in attendance on horseback, halted on the road before Sédan. I
dismounted, saluted him just as politely as at the Tuileries,
and asked for his commands. He wished to see the King. I told
him, as the truth was, that his Majesty had his quarters fifteen
miles away, at the spot where I am now writing. In answer to
Napoleon’s question where he should go, I offered him, as I was
not acquainted with the country, my own quarters at Donchéry,
a small place in the neighborhood, close by Sédan. He accepted
and drove, accompanied by his six Frenchmen, by me and by Carl
(who in the mean time had ridden after me), through the lonely
morning, towards our lines. Before reaching the spot, he began
to be troubled on account of the possible crowd, and he asked
me if he could alight in a lonely cottage by the wayside. I had
it inspected by Carl, who brought word it was mean and dirty.
‘_N’importe_’ (No matter), said N., and I ascended with him a
rickety, narrow staircase. In an apartment ten feet square, with
a deal-table and two rush-bottomed chairs, we sat for an hour;
the others were below. A powerful contrast with our last meeting
in the Tuileries in ’67. Our conversation was difficult, if I
wanted to avoid touching on topics which could not but affect
painfully the man whom God’s mighty hand had cast down. I had
sent Carl to fetch officers from the town, and to beg Moltke to
come.”
That morning the terms of capitulation were drawn up, and the next
day Napoleon went a prisoner to Wilhelmshöhe, whence, in due time,
he was allowed to depart for England. At Chislehurst, on January 9,
1873, he died, having lived to see not only the extinction of French
Imperialism and of the temporal Papacy, but also the creation of the
German Empire and the union of Italy. To prevent all of these things
had been his aim.
In a life like Garibaldi’s we see what a disinterested genius can do
by appealing to men’s noble motives: the career of Louis Napoleon
illustrates not less clearly what a man with talents and without
scruples can accomplish by appealing to the instincts of vainglory and
selfishness and terror; to the instinct which bullies weak nations and
hoists the flag where it does not belong; to the instinct which has not
the courage to acknowledge an error, but is quick to impute injuries,
and declares that there shall be one conscience for politicians and
another for citizens. Let us not flatter ourselves that only the French
have cherished these stupendous delusions; let us rather take warning
by the retribution exacted from them.
“Forgetful is green earth: the Gods alone
Remember everlastingly; they strike
Remorselessly, and ever like for like.
By their great memories the Gods are known.”