Intelligence during the Italian Renaissance and at thepresent day.—Integrity of Bonaparte's mental machinery.—Flexibility, force, and tenacity of his attention.—Anotherdifference between Napoleon's intellect and that of hiscontemporaries.—He thinks objects and not words.—Hisantipathy to Ideology.—Little or no literary orphilosophical education.—Self-taught through directobservation and technical instruction.—His fondness fordetails.—His inward vision of physical objects and places.—His mental portrayal of positions, distances, andquantities.
"The human plant," said Alfieri, "is in no country born more vigorous than in Italy"; and never, in Italy, was it so vigorous as from 1300 to 1500, from the contemporaries of Dante down to those of Michael Angelo, Caesar Borgia, Julius II., and Macchiavelli.1143The first distinguishing mark of a man of those times is the soundness of his mental instrument. Nowadays, after three hundred years of service, ours has lost somewhat of its moral fiber, sharpness, and versatility: usually the compulsory specialization has caused it to become lop-sided making it unfit for other purposes. What's more, the increase in ready-made ideas and clichés and acquired methods incrusts it and reduces its scope to a sort of routine. Finally, it is exhausted by an excess of intellectual activity and diminished by the continuity of sedentary habits. It is just the opposite with those impulsive minds of uncorrupted blood and of a new stock.—Roederer, a competent and independent judge, who, at the beginning of the consular government, sees Bonaparte daily at the meetings of the Council of State, and who notes down every evening the impressions of the day, is carried away with admiration:1144
"Punctual at every sitting, prolonging the session five or six hours, discussing before and afterwards the subjects brought forward, always returning to two questions, 'Can that be justified?1145' 'Is that useful?' examining each question in itself, in these two respects, after having subjected it to a most exact and sharp analysis; next, consulting the best authorities, the pasts, experience, and obtaining information about bygone jurisprudence, the laws of Louis XIV. and of Frederick the Great.... Never did the council adjourn without its members knowing more than the day before; if not through knowledge derived from him, at least through the researches he obliged them to make. Never did the members of the Senate and the Legislative Corps, or of the tribunals, pay their respects to him without being rewarded for their homage by valuable instructions. He cannot be surrounded by public men without being the statesman, all forming for him a council of state."
"What characterizes him above them all," is not alone the penetration and universality of his comprehension, but likewise and especially "the force, flexibility, and constancy of his attention. He can work eighteen hours at a stretch, on one or on several subjects. I never saw him tired. I never found his mind lacking in inspiration, even when weary in body, nor when violently exercised, nor when angry. I never saw him diverted from one matter by another, turning from that under discussion to one he had just finished or was about to take up. The news, good or bad, he received from Egypt, did not divert his mind from the civil code, nor the civil code from the combinations which the safety of Egypt required. Never did a man more wholly devote himself to the work in hand, nor better devote his time to what he had to do. Never did a mind more inflexibly set aside the occupation or thought which did not come at the right day or hour, never was one more ardent in seeking it, more alert in its pursuit, more capable of fixing it when the time came to take it up."
He himself said later on:1146
"Various subjects and affairs are stowed away in my brain as in a chest of drawers. When I want to take up any special business I shut one drawer and open another. None of them ever get mixed, and never does this incommode me or fatigue me. If I feel sleepy I shut all the drawers and go to sleep."
Never has brain so disciplined and under such control been seen, one so ready at all times for any task, so capable of immediate and absolute concentration. Its flexibility1147is wonderful, "in the instant application of every faculty and energy, and bringing them all to bear at once on any object that concerns him, on a mite as well as on an elephant, on any given individual as well as on an enemy's army. ... When specially occupied, other things do not exist for him; it is a sort of chase from which nothing diverts him." And this hot pursuit, which nothing arrests save capture, this tenacious hunt, this headlong course by one to whom the goal is never other than a fresh starting-point, is the spontaneous gait, the natural, even pace which his mind prefers.
"I am always at work," says he to Roederer.1148"I meditate a great deal. If I seem always equal to the occasion, ready to face what comes, it is because I have thought the matter over a long time before undertaking it. I have anticipated whatever might happen. It is no spirit which suddenly reveals to me what I ought to do or say in any unlooked-for circumstance, but my own reflection, my own meditation. ... I work all the time, at dinner, in the theatre. I wake up at night in order to resume my work. I got up last night at two o'clock. I stretched myself on my couch before the fire to examine the army reports sent to me by the Minister of War. I found twenty mistakes in them, and made notes which I have this morning sent to the minister, who is now engaged with his clerks in rectifying them."—
His associates weaken and sink under the burden imposed on them and which he supports without feeling the weight. When Consul,1149"he sometimes presides at special meetings of the section of the interior from ten o'clock in the evening until five o'clock in the morning.. .. Often, at Saint-Cloud, he keeps the counselors of state from nine o'clock in the morning until five in the evening, with fifteen minutes' intermission, and seems no more fatigued at the close of the session than when it began." During the night sessions "many of the members succumb through weariness, while the Minister of War falls asleep"; he gives them a shake and wakes them up, "Come, come, citizens, let us bestir ourselves, it is only two o'clock and we must earn the money the French people pay us." Consul or Emperor,1150"he demands of each minister an account of the smallest details: It is not rare to see them leaving the council room overcome with fatigue, due to the long interrogatories to which he has subjected them; he appears not to have noticed, and talks about the day's work simply as a relaxation which has scarcely given his mind exercise." And what is worse, "it often happens that on returning home they find a dozen of his letters requiring immediate response, for which the whole night scarcely suffices." The quantity of facts he is able to retain and store away, the quantity of ideas he elaborates and produces, seems to surpass human capacity, and this insatiable, inexhaustible, unmovable brain thus keeps on working uninterruptedly for thirty years.
Through another result of the same mental organization, Napoleon's brain is never unproductive; that's today our great danger.—During the past three hundred years we have more and more lost sight of the exact and direct meaning of things. Subject to the constraints of a conservative, complex, and extended educational system we study
* the symbols of objects rather than on the objects themselves;
* instead of the ground itself, a map of it;
* instead of animals struggling for existence,1151nomenclatures and classifications, or, at best, stuffed specimens displayed in a museum;
* instead of persons who feel and act, statistics, codes, histories, literatures, and philosophies;
in short, printed words. Even worse, abstract terms, which from century to century have become more abstract and therefore further removed from experience, more difficult to understand, less adaptable and more deceptive, especially in all that relates to human life and society. Here, due to the growth of government, to the multiplication of services, to the entanglement of interests, the object, indefinitely enlarged and complex, now eludes our grasp. Our vague, incomplete, incorrect idea of it badly corresponds with it, or does not correspond at all. In nine minds out of ten, or perhaps ninety-nine out of a hundred, it is but little more than a word. The others, if they desire some significant indication of what society actually is beyond the teachings of books, require ten or fifteen years of close observation and study to re-think the phrases with which these have filled their memory, to interpret them anew, to make clear their meaning, to get at and verify their sense, to substitute for the more or less empty and indefinite term the fullness and precision of a personal impression. We have seen how ideas of Society, State, Government, Sovereignty, Rights, Liberty, the most important of all ideas, were, at the close of the eighteenth century, curtailed and falsified; how, in most minds, simple verbal reasoning combined them together in dogmas and axioms; what an offspring these metaphysical simulacra gave birth to, how many lifeless and grotesque abortions, how many monstrous and destructive chimeras. There is no place for any of these fanciful dreams in the mind of Bonaparte; they cannot arise in it, nor find access to it; his aversion to the unsubstantial phantoms of political abstraction extends beyond disdain, even to disgust.1152That which was then called ideology, is his particular bugbear; he loathes it not alone through calculation, but still more through an instinctive demand for what is real, as a practical man and statesman, always keeping in mind, like the great Catherine, "that he is operating, not on paper, but on the human hide, which is ticklish." Every idea entertained by him had its origin in his personal observation, and he used his own personal observations to control them.
If books are useful to him it is to suggest questions, which he never answers but through his own experience. He has read only a little, and hastily;1153his classical education is rudimentary; in the way of Latin, he remained in the lower class. The instruction he got at the Military Academy as well as at Brienne was below mediocrity, while, after Brienne, it is stated that "for the languages and belles-lettres, he had no taste." Next to this, the literature of elegance and refinement, the philosophy of the closet and drawing-room, with which his contemporaries are imbued, glided over his intellect as over a hard rock. None but mathematical truths and positive notions about geography and history found their way into his mind and deeply impressed it. Everything else, as with his predecessors of the fifteenth century, comes to him through the original, direct action of his faculties in contact with men and things, through his prompt and sure tact, his indefatigable and minute attention, his indefinitely repeated and rectified divinations during long hours of solitude and silence. Practice, and not speculation, is the source of his instruction, the same as with a mechanic brought up amongst machinery.
"There is nothing relating to warfare that I cannot make myself. If nobody knows how to make gunpowder, I do. I can construct gun-carriages. If cannon must be cast, I will see that it is done properly. If tactical details must be taught, I will teach them."1154
This is why he is competent right from the beginning, general in the artillery, major-general, diplomatist, financier and administrator of all kinds. Thanks to this fertile apprenticeship, beginning with the Consulate, he shows officials and veteran ministers who send in their reports to him what to do.
"I am a more experienced administrator than they,1155when one has been obliged to extract from his brains the ways and means with which to feed, maintain, control, and move with the same spirit and will two or three hundred thousand men, a long distance from their country, one has soon discovered the secrets of administration."
In each of the human machines he builds and manipulates, he perceives right away all the parts, each in its proper place and function, the motors, the transmissions, the wheels, the composite action, the speed which ensues, the final result, the complete effect, the net product. Never is he content with a superficial and summary inspection; he penetrates into obscure corners and to the lowest depths "through the technical precision of his questions," with the lucidity of a specialist, and in this way, borrowing an expression from the philosophers, with him the concept should be adequate to its purpose.1156
Hence his eagerness for details, for these form the body and substance of the concept; the hand that has not grasped these, or lets them go, retains only the shell, an envelope. With respect to these his curiosity is "insatiable."1157In each ministerial department he knows more than the ministers, and in each bureau he knows as much as the clerks. "On his table1158lie reports of the positions of his forces on land and on water. He has furnished the plans of these, and fresh ones are issued every month"; such is the daily reading he likes best.
"I have my reports on positions always at hand; my memory for an Alexandrine is not good, but I never forget a syllable of my reports on positions. I shall find them in my room this evening, and I shall not go to bed until I have read them."
He always knows "his position" on land and at sea better than is known in the War and Navy departments; better even than his staff-officers the number, size, and qualities of his ships in or out of port, the present and future state of vessels under construction, the composition and strength of their crews, the formation, organization, staff of officers, material, stations, and enlistments, past and to come, of each army corps and of each regiment. It is the same in the financial and diplomatic services, in every branch of the administration, laic or ecclesiastical, in the physical order and in the moral order. His topographical memory and his geographical conception of countries, places, ground, and obstacles culminate in an inward vision which he evokes at will, and which, years afterwards, revives as fresh as on the first day. His calculation of distances, marches, and maneuvers is so rigid a mathematical operation that, frequently, at a distance of two or four hundred leagues,1159his military foresight, calculated two or four months ahead, turns out correct, almost on the day named, and precisely on the spot designated.1160Add to this one other faculty, and the rarest of all. For, if things turn out as he foresaw they would, it is because, as with great chess-players, he has accurately measured not alone the mechanical moves of the pieces, but the character and talent of his adversary, "sounded his draft of water," and divined his probable mistakes. He has added the calculation of physical quantities and probabilities to the calculation of moral quantities and probabilities, thus showing himself as great a psychologist as he is an accomplished strategist. In fact, no one has surpassed him in the art of judging the condition and motives of an individual or of a group of people, the real motives, permanent or temporary, which drive or curb men in general or this or that man in particular, the incentives to be employed, the kind and degree of pressure to be employed. This central faculty rules all the others, and in the art of mastering Man his genius is found supreme.
His psychological faculty and way of getting at the thoughtand feeling of others.—His self-analysis.—How he imaginesa general situation by selecting a particular case,imagining the invisible interior by deducting from thevisible exterior.—Originality and superiority of his styleand discourse.—His adaptation of these to his hearers andto circumstances.—His notation and calculation ofserviceable motives.
No faculty is more precious for a political engineer; for the forces he acts upon are never other than human passions. But how, except through divination, can these passions, which grow out of the deepest sentiments, be reached? How, save by conjecture, can forces be estimated which seem to defy all measurement? On this dark and uncertain ground, where one has to grope one's way, Napoleon moves with almost absolute certainty; he moves promptly. First of all, he studies himself; indeed, to find one's way into another's soul requires, preliminarily, that one should dive deep into one's own.1161
"I have always delighted in analysis," said he, one day, "and should I ever fall seriously in love I would take my sentiment to pieces. Why and How are such important questions one cannot put them to one's self too often."
"It is certain," writes an observer, "that he, of all men, is the one who has most meditated on the why which controls human actions."
His method, that of the experimental sciences, consists in testing every hypothesis or deduction by some positive fact, observed by him under definite conditions; a physical force being ascertained and accurately measured through the deviation of a needle, or through the rise and fall of a fluid, this or that invisible moral force can likewise be ascertained and approximately measured through some emotional sign, some decisive manifestation, consisting of a certain word, tone, or gesture. It is these words, tones, and gestures which he dwells on; he detects inward sentiments by the outward expression; he figures to himself the internal by the external, by some facial appearance, some telling attitude, some brief and topical scene, by such specimen and shortcuts, so well chosen and detailed that they provide a summary of the innumerable series of analogous cases. In this way, the vague, fleeting object is suddenly arrested, brought to bear, and then gauged and weighed, like some impalpable gas collected and kept in a graduated transparent glass tube.—Accordingly, at the Council of State, while the others, either jurists or administrators, see abstractions, articles of the law and precedents, he sees people as they are—the Frenchman, the Italian, the German; that of the peasant, the workman, the bourgeois, the noble, the returned émigré,1162the soldier, the officer and the functionary—everywhere the individual man as he is, the man who plows, manufactures, fights, marries, brings forth children, toils, enjoys himself, and dies.—Nothing is more striking than the contrast between the dull, grave arguments advanced by the wise official editor, and Napoleon's own words caught on the wing, at the moment, vibrating and teeming with illustrations and imagery.1163Apropos of divorce, the principle of which he wishes to maintain:
"Consult, now, national manners and customs. Adultery is no phenomenon; it is common enough—une affaire de canapé... There must be some curb on women who commit adultery for trinkets, poetry, Apollo, and the muses, etc."
But if divorce be allowed for incompatibility of temper you undermine marriage; the fragility of the bond will be apparent the moment the obligation is contracted;
"it is just as if a man said to himself, 'I am going to marry until I feel different.'"
Nullity of marriage must not be too often allowed; once a marriage is made it is a serious matter to undo it.
"Suppose that, in marrying my cousin just arrived from the Indies, I wed an adventuress. She bears me children, and I then discover she is not my cousin—is that marriage valid? Does not public morality demand that it should be so considered? There has been a mutual exchange of hearts, of transpiration."
On the right of children to be supported and fed although of age, he says:
"Will you allow a father to drive a girl of fifteen out of his house? A father worth 60,000 francs a year might say to his son, 'You are stout and fat; go and turn plowman.' The children of a rich father, or of one in good circumstances, are always entitled to the paternal porridge. Strike out their right to be fed, and you compel children to murder their parents."
As to adoption:
"You regard this as law-makers and not as statesmen. It is not a civil contract nor a judicial contract. The analysis (of the jurist) leads to vicious results. Man is governed by imagination only; without imagination he is a brute. It is not for five cents a day, simply to distinguish himself, that a man consents to be killed; if you want to electrify him touch his heart. A notary, who is paid a fee of twelve francs for his services, cannot do that. It requires some other process, a legislative act. Adoption, what is that? An imitation by which society tries to counterfeit nature. It is a new kind of sacrament.... Society ordains that the bones and blood of one being shall be changed into the bones and blood of another. It is the greatest of all legal acts. It gives the sentiments of a son to one who never had them, and reciprocally those of a parent. Where ought this to originate? From on high, like a clap of thunder!"
All his expressions are bright flashes one after another.1164Nobody, since Voltaire and Galiani, has launched forth such a profusion of them; on society, laws, government, France and the French, some penetrate and explain, like those of Montesquieu, as if with a flash of lightening. He does not hammer them out laboriously, but they burst forth, the outpourings of his intellect, its natural, involuntary, constant action. And what adds to their value is that, outside of councils and private conversations, he abstains from them, employing them only in the service of thought; at other times he subordinates them to the end he has in view, which is always their practical effect. Ordinarily, he writes and speaks in a different language, in a language suited to his audience; he dispenses with the oddities, the irregular improvisations and imagination, the outbursts of genius and inspiration. He retains and uses merely those which are intended to impress the personage whom he wishes to dazzle with a great idea of himself, such as Pius VII., or the Emperor Alexander. In this case, his conversational tone is that of a caressing, expansive, amiable familiarity; he is then before the footlights, and when he acts he can play all parts, tragedy or comedy, with the same life and spirit whether he fulminates, insinuates, or even affects simplicity. When he is with his generals, ministers, and principal performers, he falls back on the concise, positive, technical business style; any other would be harmful. The keen mind only reveals itself through the brevity and imperious strength and rudeness of the accent. For his armies and the common run of men, he has his proclamations and bulletins, that is to say, sonorous phrases composed for effect, a statement of facts purposely simplified and falsified,1165in short, an excellent effervescent wine, good for exciting enthusiasm, and an equally excellent narcotic for maintaining credulity,1166a sort of popular mixture to be distributed just at the proper time, and whose ingredients are so well proportioned that the public drinks it with delight, and becomes at once intoxicated.—His style on every occasion, whether affected or spontaneous, shows his wonderful knowledge of the masses and of individuals; except in two or three cases, on one exalted domain, of which he always remains ignorant, he has ever hit the mark, applying the appropriate lever, giving just the push, weight, and degree of impulsion which best accomplishes his purpose. A series of brief, accurate memoranda, corrected daily, enables him to frame for himself a sort of psychological tablet whereon he notes down and sums up, in almost numerical valuation, the mental and moral dispositions, characters, faculties, passions, and aptitudes, the strong or weak points, of the innumerable human beings, near or remote, on whom he operates.
His Three Atlases.—Their scale and completeness.
Let us try for a moment to show the range and contents of this intellect; we may have to go back to Caesar to his equal; but, for lack of documents, we have nothing of Caesar but general features—a summary outline. Of Napoleon we have, besides the perfect outline, the features in detail. Read his correspondence, day by day, then chapter by chapter;1167for example, in 1806, after the battle of Austerlitz, or, still better, in 1809, after his return from Spain, up to the peace of Vienna; whatever our technical shortcomings may be, we shall find that his mind, in its comprehensiveness and amplitude, largely surpasses all known or even credible proportions.
He has mentally within him three principal atlases, always at hand, each composed of "about twenty note-books," each distinct and each regularly posted up.—
1. The first one is military, forming a vast collection of topographical charts as minute as those of an general staff, with detailed plans of every stronghold, also specific indications and the local distribution of all forces on sea and on land—crews, regiments, batteries, arsenals, storehouses, present and future resources in supplies of men, horses, vehicles, arms, munitions, food, and clothing.
2. The second, which is civil, resembles the heavy, thick volumes published every year, in which we now read the state of the budget, and comprehend, first, the innumerable items of ordinary and extraordinary receipt and expenditure, internal taxes, foreign contributions, the products of the domains in France and out of France, the fiscal services, pensions, public works, and the rest; next, all administrative statistics, the hierarchy of functions and of functionaries, senators, deputies, ministers, prefects, bishops, professors, judges, and those under their orders, each where he resides, with his rank, jurisdiction, and salary.
3. The third is a vast biographical and moral dictionary, in which, as in the pigeon-holes of the Chief of Police, each notable personage and local group, each professional or social body, and even each population, has its label, along with a brief note on its situation, needs, and antecedents, and, therefore, its demonstrated character, eventual disposition, and probable conduct. Each label, card, or strip of paper has its summary; all these partial summaries, methodically classified, terminate in totals, and the totals of the three atlases, combined together, thus furnish their possessor with an estimate of his disposable forces.
Now, in 1809, however full these atlases, they are clearly imprinted on Napoleon's mind he knows not only the total and the partial summaries, but also the slightest details; he reads them readily and at every hour; he comprehends in a mass, and in all particulars, the various nations he governs directly, or through some one else; that is to say, 60,000,000 men, the different countries he has conquered or overrun, consisting of 70,000 square leagues1168. At first, France increased by the addition of Belgium and Piedmont; next Spain, from which he is just returned, and where he has placed his brother Joseph; southern Italy, where, after Joseph, he has placed Murat; central Italy, where he occupies Rome; northern Italy, where Eugène is his delegate; Dalmatia and Istria, which he has joined to his empire; Austria, which he invades for the second time; the Confederation of the Rhine, which he has made and which he directs; Westphalia and Holland, where his brothers are only his lieutenants; Prussia, which he has subdued and mutilated and which he oppresses, and the strongholds of which he still retains; and, add a last mental tableau, that which represents the northern seas, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, all the fleets of the continent at sea and in port from Dantzic to Flessingen and Bayonne, from Cadiz to Toulon and Gaëta, from Tarentum to Venice, Corfu, and Constantinople.1169—On the psychological and moral atlas, besides a primitive gap which he will never fill up, because this is a characteristic trait, there are some estimates which are wrong, especially with regard to the Pope and to Catholic conscience. In like manner he rates the energy of national sentiment in Spain and Germany too low. He rates too high his own prestige in France and in the countries annexed to her, the balance of confidence and zeal on which he may rely. But these errors are rather the product of his will than of his intelligence, he recognizes them at intervals; if he has illusions it is because he fabricates them; left to himself his good sense would rest infallible, it is only his passions which blurred the lucidity of his intellect.—As to the other two atlases, the topographical and the military, they are as complete and as exact as ever; No matter how much the realities they contain will swell and daily become ever more complex, they continue to correspond to it in their fullness and precision, trait for trait.
His constructive imagination.—His projects and dreams.—Manifestation of the master faculty and its excesses.
But this multitude of information and observations form only the smallest portion of the mental population swarming in this immense brain; for, on his idea of the real, germinate and swarm his concepts of the possible; without these concepts there would be no way to handle and transform things, and that he did handle and transform them we all know. Before acting, he has decided on his plan, and if this plan is adopted, it is one among several others,1170after examining, comparing, and giving it the preference; he has accordingly thought over all the others. Behind each combination adopted by him we detect those he has rejected; there are dozens of them behind each of his decisions, each maneuver effected, each treaty signed, each decree promulgated, each order issued, and I venture to say, behind almost every improvised action or word spoken. For calculation enters into everything he does, even into his apparent expansiveness, also into his outbursts when in earnest; if he gives way to these, it is on purpose, foreseeing the effect, with a view to intimidate or to dazzle. He turns everything in others as well as in himself to account—his passion, his vehemence, his weaknesses, his talkativeness, he exploits it all for the advancement of the edifice he is constructing.1171Certainly among his diverse faculties, however great, that of the constructive imagination is the most powerful. At the very beginning we feel its heat and boiling intensity beneath the coolness and rigidity of his technical and positive instructions.
"When I plan a battle," said he to Roederer, "no man is more spineless than I am. I over exaggerate to myself all the dangers and all the evils that are possible under the circumstances. I am in a state of truly painful agitation. But this does not prevent me from appearing quite composed to people around me; I am like a woman giving birth to a child.1172
Passionately, in the throes of the creator, he is thus absorbed with his coming creation; he already anticipates and enjoys living in his imaginary edifice. "General," said Madame de Clermont-Tonnerre to him, one day, "you are building behind a scaffolding which you will take down when you have done with it." "Yes, Madame, that's it," replied Bonaparte; "you are right. I am always living two years in advance."1173His response came with "incredible vivacity," as if a sudden inspiration, that of a soul stirred in its innermost fiber.—Here as well, the power, the speed, fertility, play, and abundance of his thought seem unlimited. What he has accomplished is astonishing, but what he has undertaken is more so; and whatever he may have undertaken is far surpassed by what he has imagined. However vigorous his practical faculty, his poetical faculty is stronger; it is even too vigorous for a statesman; its grandeur is exaggerated into enormity, and its enormity degenerates into madness. In Italy, after the 18th of Fructidor, he said to Bourrienne:
"Europe is a molehill; never have there been great empires and great revolutions, except in the Orient, with its 600,000,000 inhabitants."1174
The following year at Saint-Jean d'Acre, on the eve of the last assault, he added
"If I succeed I shall find in the town the pasha's treasure and arms for 300,000 men. I stir up and arm all Syria.... I march on Damascus and Aleppo; as I advance in the country my army will increase with the discontented. I proclaim to the people the abolition of slavery, and of the tyrannical government of the pashas. I reach Constantinople with armed masses. I overthrow the Turkish Empire; I found in the East a new and grand empire, which fixes my place with posterity, and perhaps I return to Paris by the way of Adrianople, or by Vienna, after having annihilated the house of Austria."1175
Become consul, and then emperor, he often referred to this happy period, when, "rid of the restraints of a troublesome civilization," he could imagine at will and construct at pleasure.1176
"I created a religion; I saw myself on the road to Asia, mounted on an elephant, with a turban on my head, and in my hand a new Koran, which I composed to suit myself."
Confined to Europe, he thinks, after 1804, that he will reorganize Charlemagne's empire.
"The French Empire will become the mother country of other sovereignties... I mean that every king in Europe shall build a grand palace at Paris for his own use; on the coronation of the Emperor of the French these kings will come and occupy it; they will grace this imposing ceremony with their presence, and honor it with their salutations."1177The Pope will come; he came to the first one; he must necessarily return to Paris, and fix himself there permanently. Where could the Holy See be better off than in the new capital of Christianity, under Napoleon, heir to Charlemagne, and temporal sovereign of the Sovereign Pontiff? Through the temporal the emperor will control the spiritual,1178and through the Pope, consciences."
In November, 1811, unusually excited, he says to De Pradt:
"In five years I shall be master of the world; only Russia will remain, but I will crush her.1179... Paris will extend out to St. Cloud."
To render Paris the physical capital of Europe is, through his own confession, "one of his constant dreams."
"At times," he says,1180"I would like to see her a city of two, three, four millions of inhabitants, something fabulous, colossal, unknown down to our day, and its public establishments adequate to its population.... Archimedes proposed to lift the world if he could be allowed to place his lever; for myself, I would have changed it wherever I could have been allowed to exercise my energy, perseverance, and budgets."
At all events, he believes so; for however lofty and badly supported the next story of his structure may be, he has always ready a new story, loftier and more unsteady, to put above it. A few months before launching himself, with all Europe at his back, against Russia, he said to Narbonne:1181
"After all, my dear sir, this long road is the road to India. Alexander started as far off as Moscow to reach the Ganges; this has occurred to me since St. Jean d'Acre.... To reach England to-day I need the extremity of Europe, from which to take Asia in the rear.... Suppose Moscow taken, Russia subdued, the czar reconciled, or dead through some court conspiracy, perhaps another and dependent throne, and tell me whether it is not possible for a French army, with its auxiliaries, setting out from Tiflis, to get as far as the Ganges, where it needs only a thrust of the French sword to bring down the whole of that grand commercial scaffolding throughout India. It would be the most gigantic expedition, I admit, but practicable in the nineteenth century. Through it France, at one stroke, would secure the independence of the West and the freedom of the seas."
While uttering this his eyes shone with strange brilliancy, and he accumulates subjects, weighing obstacles, means, and chances: the inspiration is under full headway, and he gives himself up to it. The master faculty finds itself suddenly free, and it takes flight; the artist,1182locked up in politics, has escaped from his sheath; he is creating out of the ideal and the impossible. We take him for what he is, a posthumous brother of Dante and Michael Angelo. In the clear outlines of his vision, in the intensity, coherency, and inward logic of his dreams, in the profundity of his meditations, in the superhuman grandeur of his conceptions, he is, indeed, their fellow and their equal. His genius is of the same stature and the same structure; he is one of the three sovereign minds of the Italian Renaissance. Only, while the first two operated on paper and on marble, the latter operates on the living being, on the sensitive and suffering flesh of humanity.
1101 (return)[ Reforms introduced by Napoleon after his coup d'état 9 Nov. 1799. (SR.)]
1102 (return)[ The main authority is, of course, the "correspondance de l'Empereur Napoléon I.," in thirty-two-volumes. This correspondance, unfortunately, is still incomplete, while, after the sixth volume, it must not be forgotten that much of it has been purposely stricken out. "In general," say the editors (XVI., p.4), "we have been governed simply by this plain rule, that we were required to publish only what the Emperor himself would have given to the public had he survived himself, and, anticipating the verdict of time, exposed to posterity his own personality and system."—The savant who has the most carefully examined this correspondence, entire in the French archives, estimates that it comprises about 80,000 pieces, of which 30,000 have been published in the collection referred to; passages in 20,000 of the others have been stricken out on account of previous publication, and about 30,000 more, through considerations of propriety or policy. For example, but little more than one-half of the letters from Napoleon to Bigot de Préameneu on ecclesiastical matters have been published; many of these omitted letters, all important and characteristic, may be found in "L'Église romaine et le Premier Empire," by M. d'Haussonville. The above-mentioned savant estimates the number of important letters not yet published at 2,000.]
1103 (return)[ "Mémorial de Sainte Héléne," by Las Casas (May 29, 1816).—"In Corsica, Paoli, on a horseback excursion, explained the positions to him, the places where liberty found resistance or triumphed. Estimating the character of Napoleon by what he saw of it through personal observation, Paoli said to him, "Oh, Napoleon, there is nothing modern in you, you belong wholly to Plutarch!"—Antonomarchi, "Mémoires," Oct. 25, 1819. The same account, slightly different, is there given: "Oh. Napoleon," said Paoli to me, "you do not belong to this century; you talk like one of Plutarch's characters. Courage, you will take flight yet!"]
1104 (return)[ De Ségur, "Histoire et Mémoires," I., 150. (Narrative by Pontécoulant, member of the committee in the war, June, 1795.) "Boissy d'Anglas told him that he had seen the evening before a little Italian, pale, slender, and puny, but singularly audacious in his views and in the vigor of his expressions.—The next day, Bonaparte calls on Pontécou1ant, Attitude rigid through a morbid pride, poor exterior, long visage, hollow and bronzed.... He is just from the army and talks like one who knows what he is talking about."]
1105 (return)[ Coston, "Biographie des premières années de Napoléon Buonaparte," 2 vols. (1840), passim.—Yung, "Bonaparte et son Temps," I., 300, 302. (Pièces généalogiques.)—King Joseph, "Mémoires," I., 109, 111. (On the various branches and distinguished men of the Bonaparte family.)—Miot de Melito, "Mémoires," II., 30. (Documents on the Bonaparte family, collected on the spot by the author in 1801.)]
1106 (return)[ "Mémorial," May 6, 1816.—Miot de Melito, II., 30. (On the Bonapartes of San Miniato): "The last offshoot of this branch was a canon then still living in this same town of San Miniato, and visited by Bonaparte in the year IV, when he came to Florence."]
1107 (return)[ "Correspondance de l'Empereur Napoléon I." (Letter of Bonaparte, Sept.29, 1797, in relation to Italy): "A people at bottom inimical to the French through the prejudices, character, and customs of centuries."]
1108 (return)[ Miot de Melito, I., 126, (1796): "Florence, for two centuries and a half, had lost that antique energy which, in the stormy times of the Republic, distinguished this city. Indolence was the dominant spirit of all classes.. . Almost everywhere I saw only men lulled to rest by the charms of the most exquisite climate, occupied solely with the details of a monotonous existence, and tranquilly vegetating under its beneficent sky."—(On Milan, in 1796, cf. Stendhal, introduction to the "Chartreuse de Parme.")]
1109 (return)[ "Miot de Melito," I., 131: "Having just left one of the most civilized cities in Italy, it was not without some emotion that I found myself suddenly transported to a country (Corsica) which, in its savage aspect, its rugged mountains, and its inhabitants uniformly dressed in coarse brown cloth, contrasted so strongly with the rich and smiling landscape of Tuscany, and with the comfort, I should almost say elegance, of costume worn by the happy cultivators of that fertile soil."]
1110 (return)[ Miot de Melito, II., 30: "Of a not very important family of Sartène."—II., 143. (On the canton of Sartène and the Vendettas of 1796).—Coston, I., 4: "The family of Madame Laetitia, sprung from the counts of Cotalto, came originally from Italy."]
1111 (return)[ His father, Charles Bonaparte, weak and even frivolous, "too fond of pleasure to care about his children," and to see to his affairs, tolerably learned and an indifferent head of a family, died at the age of thirty-nine of a cancer in the stomach, which seems to be the only bequest he made to his son Napoleon.—His mother, on the contrary, serious, authoritative, the true head of a family, was, said Napoleon, "hard in her affections she punished and rewarded without distinction, good or bad; she made us all feel it."—On becoming head of the household, "she was too parsimonious-even ridiculously so. This was due to excess of foresight on her part; she had known want, and her terrible sufferings were never out of her mind.... Paoli had tried persuasion with her before resorting to force... . Madame replied heroically, as a Cornelia would have done.... From 12 to 15,000 peasants poured down from the mountains of Ajaccio; our house was pillaged and burnt, our vines destroyed, and our flocks. ... In other respects, this woman, from whom it would have been so difficult to extract five francs, would have given up everything to secure my return from Elba, and after Waterloo she offered me all she possessed to restore my affairs." (" Mémorial," May 29, 1816, and "Mémoires d'Antonomarchi," Nov. 18, 1819.—On the ideas and ways of Bonaparte's mother, read her "Conversation" in "Journal et Mémoires," vol. IV., by Stanislas Girardin.) Duchesse d'Abrantès," Mémoires," II., 318, 369. "Avaricious out of all reason except on a few grave occasions.... No knowledge whatever of the usages of society.... very ignorant, not alone of our literature, but of her own."—Stendhal, "Vie de Napoleon": "The character of her son is to be explained by the perfectly Italian character of Madame Laetitia."]
1112 (return)[ The French conquest is effected by armed force between July 30, 1768, and May 22, 1769. The Bonaparte family submitted May 23, 1769, and Napoleon was born on the following 15th of August.]
1113 (return)[ Antonomarchi, "Mémoires," October 4, 1819. "Mémorial," May 29, 1816.]
1114 (return)[ "Miot de Melito," II., 33: "The day I arrived at Bocognano two men lost their lives through private vengeance. About eight years before this one of the inhabitants of the canton had killed a neighbor, the father of two children.... On reaching the age of sixteen or seventeen years these children left the country in order to dog the steps of the murderer, who kept on the watch, not daring to go far from his village.... Finding him playing cards under a tree, they fired at and killed him, and besides this accidentally shot another man who was asleep a few paces off. The relatives on both sides pronounced the act justifiable and according to rule." Ibid., I., 143: "On reaching Bastia from Ajaccio the two principal families of the place, the Peraldi and the Visuldi, fired at each other, in disputing over the honor of entertaining me."]
1115 (return)[ Bourrienne, "Mémoires," I., 18, 19.]
1116 (return)[ De Ségur, "Histoire et Mémoires," I,, 74.]
1117 (return)[ Yung, I., 195. (Letter of Bonaparte to Paoli, June 12, 1789); I., 250 (Letter of Bonaparte to Buttafuoco, January 23 1790).]
1118 (return)[ Yung, I., 107 (Letter of Napoleon to his father, Sept. 12, 1784); I., 163 (Letter of Napoleon to Abbé Raynal, July, 1786); I., 197 (Letter of Napoleon to Paoli, June 12, 1789). The three letters on the history of Corsica are dedicated to Abbé Raynal in a letter of June 24, 1790, and may be found in Yung, I., 434.]
1119 (return)[ Read especially his essay "On the Truths and Sentiments most important to inculcate on Men for their Welfare" (a subject proposed by the Academy of Lyons in 1790). "Some bold men driven by genius.. .. Perfection grows out of reason as fruit out of a tree.... Reason's eyes guard man from the precipice of the passions... The spectacle of the strength of virtue was what the Lacedaemonians principally felt.... Must men then be lucky in the means by which they are led on to happiness?.... My rights (to property) are renewed along with my transpiration, circulate in my blood, are written on my nerves, on my heart.... Proclaim to the rich—your wealth is your misfortune, withdrawn within the latitude of your senses.... Let the enemies of nature at thy voice keep silence and swallow their rabid serpents' tongues.... The wretched shun the society of men, the tapestry of gayety turns to mourning.... Such, gentlemen, are the Sentiments which, in animal relations, mankind should have taught it for its welfare."]
1120 (return)[ Yung, I., 252 (Letter to Buttafuoco). "Dripping with the blood of his brethren, sullied by every species of crime, he presents himself with confidence under his vest of a general, the sole reward of his criminalities."—I., 192 (Letter to the Corsican Intendant, April 2, 1879). "Cultivation is what ruins us"—See various manuscript letters, copied by Yung, for innumerable and gross mistakes in French.—Miot de Melito, I., 84 (July, 1796). "He spoke curtly and, at this time, very incorrectly."—Madame de Rémusat, I., 104. "Whatever language he spoke it never seemed familiar to him; he appeared to force himself in expressing his ideas."—Notes par le Comte Chaptal (unpublished), councillor of state and afterwards minister of the interior under the Consulate: "At this time, Bonaparte did not blush at the slight knowledge of administrative details which he possessed; he asked a good many questions and demanded definitions and the meaning of the commonest words in use. As it very often happened with him not to clearly comprehend words which he heard for the first time, he always repeated these afterwards as he understood them; for example, he constantly used section for session, armistice for amnesty, fulminating point for culminating point, rentes voyagères for 'rentes viagères,' etc."]
1121 (return)[ De Ségur, I., 174]
1122 (return)[ Cf. the "Mémoires" of Marshal Marmont, I., 15, for the ordinary sentiments of the young nobility. "In 1792 I had a sentiment for the person of the king, difficult to define, of which I recovered the trace, and to some extent the power, twenty-two years later; a sentiment of devotion almost religious in character, an innate respect as if due to a being of a superior order. The word King then possessed a magic, a force, which nothing had changed in pure and honest breasts.... This religion of royalty still existed in the mass of the nation,, and especially amongst the well-born, who, sufficiently remote from power, were rather struck with its brilliancy than with its imperfections.... This love became a sort of worship."]
1123 (return)[ Bourrienne, "Mémoires," I. 27.—Ségur, I. 445. In 1795, at Paris, Bonaparte, being out of military employment, enters upon several commercial speculations, amongst which is a bookstore, which does not succeed. (Stated by Sebastiani and many others.)]
1124 (return)[ "Mémorial," Aug. 3, 1816.]
1125 (return)[ Bourrienne, I., 171. (Original text of the "Souper de Beaucaire.")]
1126 (return)[ Yung, II., 430, 431. (Words of Charlotte Robespierre.) Bonaparte as a souvenir of his acquaintance with her, granted her a pension, under the consulate, of 3600 francs.—Ibid. (Letter of Tilly, chargé d'affaires at Genoa, to Buchot, commissioner of foreign affairs.) Cf. in the "Mémorial," Napoleon's favorable judgment of Robespierre.]
1127 (return)[ Yung, II., 455. (Letter from Bonaparte to Tilly, Aug. 7, 1794.) Ibid., III., 120. (Memoirs of Lucien.) "Barras takes care of Josephine's dowry, which is the command of the army in Italy." Ibid., II., 477. (Grading of general officers, notes by Schérer on Bonaparte.) "He knows all about artillery, but is rather too ambitious, and too intriguing for promotion."]
1128 (return)[ De Ségur, I., 162.—La Fayette, "Mémoires," II., 215. "Mémorial" (note dictated by Napoleon). He states the reasons for and against, and adds, speaking of himself: "These sentiments, twenty-five years of age, confidence in his strength, his destiny, determined him." Bourrienne, I., 51: "It is certain that he has always bemoaned that day; he has often said to me that he would give years of his life to efface that page of his history."]
1129 (return)[ "Mémorial," I., Sept 6, 1815. "It is only after Lodi that the idea came to me that I might, after all, become a decisive actor on our political stage. Then the first spark of lofty ambition gleamed out." On his aim and conduct in the Italian campaign of Sybel, "Histoire de l'Europe pendant la Révolution Française" (Dosquet translation), vol. IV., books II. and III., especially pp.182, 199, 334, 335, 406, 420, 475, 489.]
1130 (return)[ Yung, III., 213. (Letter of M. de Sucy, August 4, 1797.)]
1131 (return)[ Ibid., III., 214. (Report of d'Entraigues to M. de Mowikinoff, Sept., 1797.) "If there was any king in France which was not himself, he would like to have been his creator, with his rights at the end of his sword, this sword never to be parted with, so that he might plunge it in the king's bosom if he ever ceased to be submissive to him."—Miot de Melito, I., 154. (Bonaparte to Montebello, before Miot and Melzi, June, 1797.) Ibid, I., 184. (Bonaparte to Miot, Nov. 18, 1797, at Turin.)]
1132 (return)[ D'Haussonville, "L'Église Romaine et la Premier Empire," I., 405. (Words of M. Cacault, signer of the Treaty of Tolentino, and French Secretary of Legation at Rome, at the commencement of negotiations for the Concordat.) M. Cacaut says that he used this expression, "After the scenes of Tolentino and of Leghorn, and the fright of Manfredini, and Matéi threatened, and so many other vivacities."]
1133 (return)[ Madame de Staël, "Considérations sur la Révolution Française," 3rd part, ch. XXVI., and 4th part, ch. XVIII.]
1134 (return)[ Portrait of Bonaparte in the "Cabinet des Etampes," "drawn by Guérin, engraved by Fiesinger, deposited in the National Library, Vendémiaire 29, year VII."]
1135 (return)[ Madame de Rémusat, "Mémoires," I., 104.—Miot de Melito, I., 84.]
1136 (return)[ Madame de Staël, "Considerations," etc., 3rd part, ch. XXV.—Madame de Rémusat, II., 77.]
1137 (return)[ Stendhal, "Mémoires sur Napoléon," narration of Admiral Decrès.—Same narration in the "Mémorial."]
1138 (return)[ De Ségur, I., 193.]
1139 (return)[ Roederer, "Oeuvres complétes," II., 560. (Conversations with General Lasalle in 1809, and Lasalle's judgment on the débuts of Napoleon).]
1140 (return)[ Another instance of this commanding influence is found in the case of General Vandamme, an old revolutionary soldier still more brutal and energetic than Augereau. In 1815, Vandamme said to Marshal d'Ornano, one day, on ascending the staircase of the Tuileries together: "My dear fellow, that devil of a man (speaking of the Emperor) fascinates me in a way I cannot account for. I, who don't fear either God or the devil, when I approach him I tremble like a child. He would make me dash through the eye of a needle into the fire!" ("Le Général Vandamme," by du Casse, II., 385).]
1141 (return)[ Roederer, III., 356. (Napoleon himself says, February 11, 1809): "I, military! I am so, because I was born so; it is my habit, my very existence. Wherever I have been I have always had command. I commanded at twenty-three, at the siege of Toulon; I commanded at Paris in Vendémiaire; I won over the soldiers in Italy the moment I presented myself. I was born for that."]
1142 (return)[ Observe the various features of the same mental and moral structure among different members of the family. (Speaking of his brothers and sisters in the "Memorial" Napoleon says): "What family as numerous presents such a splendid group?"—"Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France, in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. Vol. I. p. 400. (This author, a young magistrate under Louis XVI., a high functionary under the Empire, an important political personage under the restoration and the July monarchy, is probably the best informed and most judicious of eye-witnesses during the first half of our century.): "Their vices and virtues surpass ordinary proportions and have a physiognomy of their own. But what especially distinguishes them is a stubborn will, and inflexible resolution.... All possessed the instinct of their greatness." They readily accepted "the highest positions; they even got to believing that their elevation was inevitable.... Nothing in the incredible good fortune of Joseph astonished him; often in January, 1814, I heard him say over and over again that if his brother had not meddled with his affairs after the second entry into Madrid, he would still be on the throne of Spain. As to determined obstinacy we have only to refer to the resignation of Louis, the retirement of Lucien, and the resistances of Fesch; they alone could stem the will of Napoleon and sometimes break a lance with him.—Passion, sensuality, the habit of considering themselves outside of rules, and self-confidence combined with talent, super abound among the women, as in the fifteenth century. Elisa, in Tuscany, had a vigorous brain, was high spirited and a genuine sovereign, notwithstanding the disorders of her private life, in which even appearances were not sufficiently maintained." Caroline at Naples, "without being more scrupulous than her sisters," better observed the proprieties; none of the others so much resembled the Emperor; "with her, all tastes succumbed to ambition"; it was she who advised and prevailed upon her husband, Murat, to desert Napoleon in 1814. As to Pauline, the most beautiful woman of her epoch, "no wife, since that of the Emperor Claude, surpassed her in the use she dared make of her charms; nothing could stop her, not even a malady attributed to the strain of this life-style and for which we have so often seen her borne in a litter."—Jerome, "in spite of the uncommon boldness of his debaucheries, maintained his ascendancy over his wife to the last."—On the "pressing efforts and attempts" of Joseph on Maria Louise in 1814, Chancelier Pasquier, after Savary's papers and the evidence of M. de Saint-Aignan, gives extraordinary details.—"Mes souvenirs sur Napoléon, 346, by the count Chaptal: "Every member of this numerous family (Jérôme, Louis, Joseph, the Bonaparte sisters) mounted thrones as if they had recovered so much property."]