Napoleon

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To an impartial observer of Europe around the year 1785 the salient fact would have been the success of unconstitutional monarchies, the so-called enlightened despotisms. In Portugal, Spain and Sweden kings of this type were reforming and modernizing, while in Prussia Frederick II and in Russia Catherine II were ruling arbitrarily yet earning the epithet ‘Great’. It is interesting that Napoleon averted his gaze from these personal successes and fixed it on the odd country out – England, with her monarchy limited by law. He did so partly because he was an admirer of Rousseau, whose social contract theory derives from Locke, but even more because of his family background of respect for the law and his personal sympathy with the oppressed.

Napoleon, then, wanted reform in France. He wanted a constitutional monarchy which ruled in the interests of the people. This decision was strengthened by a new turn of events in Corsica. There the French had done an about-face. In September 1786 Marbeuf died, and the island was henceforth administered by the Ministry of Finance. A set of bureaucrats moved in, and since France was heading for bankruptcy, had orders to cut expenditure. They refused to pay subsidies due on past improvement schemes to Letizia, who found herself in financial difficulties, especially since the presence of French bureaucrats and troops had sent up the cost of living: corn doubled in price between 1771 and 1784.

Napoleon’s first reaction was to seek justice. He went to Paris in 1787 to see the man at the top, the Controller General. He specified the sum owing, but added with feeling that no sum ‘could ever compensate for the kind of debasement a man experiences when he is made aware at every moment of his subjection.’

The Ministry did not pay Letizia her money. Nor did the French hand back the Odone property, because one of the officials, a Monsieur Soviris, was an interested party. Again Napoleon took action. He wrote to the Registrar of the Corsican States-General, Laurent Giubega, who happened to be his godfather, protesting in strong language about unenergetic tribunals and offices, where the decision lies with one man, ‘a stranger not only to our language and habits but also to our legal system … envious of the luxury he has seen on the Continent and which his salary does not allow him to attain.’

Napoleon’s letter had no effect. These two cases of injustice, touching his widowed mother, changed Napoleon’s whole attitude to the French in Corsica. Formerly he had accepted their presence as beneficial; now he saw that it was oppressive. Their rule in Corsica was a particular example of the injustice inherent in the French system. That rule, he decided, must be ended and Corsica again be free.

But how? At first Napoleon did not know. ‘The present position of my country,’ meaning Corsica, he noted gloomily, ‘and the powerlessness of changing it is a new reason for fleeing this land where duty obliges me to praise men whom virtue obliges me to hate.’ It took Napoleon two years to find a way. The way was a book. He would write a History of Corsica, along the lines of Boswell’s, in order to touch the French people, to rouse their feelings of humanity. Once they knew the facts, they would demand freedom for the Corsicans.

Napoleon’s History focuses attention on Corsica’s fighters for freedom against the Genoese, men such as Guglielmo and Sampiero. Napoleon intended to make Paoli his central figure, but when he asked for documents Paoli replied that history should not be written by young men. So Napoleon never finished his book. But he did write several very compelling chapters and made the point that Corsicans would have escaped subjection if only they had built a navy.

Napoleon believed that Corsica must be freed by ‘a strong just man’; equally he believed that a brave man must speak up for the French people and instigate reforms. He did not identify them – he was still thinking generally – but he asked himself, What would happen to such men? What was the fate of the reforming hero? To answer his question he wrote a short story. It is based on an incident in Barrow, and therefore set in England, but Napoleon clearly intended it to apply to the present situation in France and Corsica.

The scene is London, the year 1683. Three men plot to limit the power of the frivolous Charles II: Essex, austere, with a strong sense of justice; Russell, kind and warm, adored by the people; Sidney, a genius who realizes that the basis of all constitutions is the social contract. The conspirators are caught, Russell and Sidney executed. But the people ask pardon for Essex and the judges merely imprison him.

‘Night. Imagine a woman troubled by sinister dreams, warned by frightening sounds in the middle of the night, distraught in the darkness of a vast bedroom. She goes to the door and feels for the key. A shudder runs through her body as she touches the blade of a knife. The blood dripping from it is powerless to frighten her. “Whoever you are,” she cries, “stop. I am only the wretched wife of the Earl of Essex.”’ Instead of swooning, as most women would have done, she again feels for the key, finds it and opens the door. Far off in the next room she thinks she sees something walking but is ashamed of her weakness, shuts the door and goes back to bed.

It is eleven in the morning and the Countess, troubled, pale and oppressed, is trying to fight off a worrying dream. ‘Jean Bettsy, Jean Bettsy, dear Jean.’ She lifts her eyes – for the voice has wakened her – and she sees – Oh God! – she sees a ghost approach her bed, draw back the four curtains and take her by the hand. ‘Jean, you have forgotten me, you are sleeping. But feel.’ He draws her hand to his neck. Oh dread! The Countess’s fingers sink into extensive wounds, her fingers are covered in blood; she utters a cry and hides her face; but when she looks again she sees nothing. Terrified and trembling, broken-hearted by these frightful forewarnings, the Countess takes a carriage and drives to the Tower. In the middle of Pall Mall she hears someone in the street say ‘The Earl of Essex is dead!’ At last she arrives and the prison door is opened. Oh horrible sight! Three great razor blows have ended the Earl’s life. His hand is on his heart. Eyes raised to heaven, he seems to implore eternal vengeance.

King Charles II and the Duke of York are the murderers. ‘Perhaps you think that Jean falls down in a swoon and dishonours with cowardly tears the memory of the most estimable of men? In fact she has the body washed, taken home, and shown to the people … But in her deadly grief, the Countess drapes her rooms in black. She blocks up the windows and spends her days grieving over her husband’s terrible fate.’ Not until three years later – Napoleon gets his dates wrong – when the King has died and the Duke of York has been dethroned does the Countess leave her house. She is ‘satisfied with the vengeance exacted by heaven and again takes her place in society.’

Such is Napoleon’s short story. Most of his other writings are so calm and reasonable, it is surprising to come on this gruesome piece. But it is a facet of his character, as blood-tragedy is of Greek civilization. If the ghost comes from Corsica, and the gore from horror novels then in vogue, the basic theme is Napoleon’s own. A nobleman decides to act on behalf of an oppressed people against the King. And what is the result? He loses his life. This, Napoleon sensed, was the invariable dénouement. In his Corsican book he wrote: ‘Paoli, Colombano, Sampiero, Pompiliani, Gafforio, illustrious avengers of humanity … What were the rewards of your virtues? Daggers, yes, daggers.’

But daggers are not quite the end. Six years later Charles II and his brother are gone and a law-abiding king sits on the throne. Though Essex did not live to see it, the constitutional monarchy for which he died ultimately triumphed. There is, Napoleon believed, a higher vengeance at work. Over human affairs broods a divine regulative justice.

We have seen the reforms Napoleon wished accomplished in France and in Corsica, and the tragic fate he envisaged for the reformers. But all these notes and writings, revealing though they are, lack the unique personal touch. What did Second Lieutenant Buonaparte want to do with his own life? What were his aspirations? The answer lies in a forty-page essay which he submitted for a prize of 1,200 livres offered by the Academy of Lyon in answer to the question ‘What are the most important truths and feelings to instil into men for their happiness?’

Napoleon begins his essay with the epigraph: ‘Morality will exist when governments are free,’ an echo, not a quotation as Napoleon claimed, of Raynal’s dictum, ‘Good morals depend upon good government.’ Man, says Napoleon, is born to be happy: Nature, an enlightened mother, has endowed him with all the organs necessary to this end. So happiness is the enjoyment of life in the way most suitable to man’s constitution. And every man is born with a right to that part of the fruits of the earth necessary for subsistence. Paoli’s chief merit lies in having ensured this.

Napoleon turns next to feeling. Man experiences the most exquisitely pleasant feelings when he is alone at night, meditating on the origin of Nature. Sentiments such as this would be his most precious gift had he not also received love of country, love of wife and ‘divine friendship’. ‘A wife and children! A father and mother, brothers and sisters, a friend! Yet some people find fault with Nature and ask why they were ever born!’

Feeling makes us love what is beautiful and just, but it also makes us rebel against tyranny and evil. It is the second aspect we must try to develop and protect from perversion. The good legislator must therefore guide feeling by reason. At the same time he must allow complete and absolute freedom of thought, and freedom to speak and write except where this would damage the social order. Tenderness, for instance, must not degenerate into flabbiness, and we must never stage Voltaire’s Alzire, in which the dying hero instead of execrating his assassin pities and pardons him. It is reason that distinguishes genuine feeling from violent passion, reason that keeps society going, reason that develops a natural feeling and makes it great. To love one’s country is an elementary feeling, but to love it above everything else is ‘the love of beauty in all its energy, the pleasure of helping to make a whole nation happy’.

But there is a perverted kind of patriotism, engendered by ambition. Napoleon saves his most cutting language in order to denounce ambition, ‘with its pale complexion, wild eyes, hurried footsteps, jerky gestures and sardonic laugh’. Elsewhere, in his notebooks, he returns to the same theme: Brutus he calls an ambitious madman, and as for the fanatical Arab prophet Hakim who preached civil war and, having been blinded by an illness, hid his sightless eyes with a mask of silver, explaining that he wore it in order to prevent men being dazzled by the light radiating from his face, Napoleon scornfully comments: ‘To what lengths can a man be driven by his passion for fame!’

Napoleon concludes his essay by contrasting with the ambitious egoist the genuine patriot, the man who lives in order to help others. Through courage and manly strength the patriot attains happiness. To live happily and to work for others’ happiness is the only religion worthy of God. What pleasure to die surrounded by one’s children and able to say: ‘I have ensured the happiness of a hundred families: I have had a hard life, but the State will benefit from it; through my worries my fellow citizens live calmly, through my perplexities they are happy, through my sorrows they are gay.’

Such is the essay written by Second Lieutenant Buonaparte in his cramped billet in Auxonne between parades and sentry duty. He was doubtless disappointed when it did not win the prize: in fact none of the essays was deemed prizeworthy. But the essay had been well worth writing, for it is in some respects a life’s programme. The patriot is clearly Napoleon himself. His aim in life is to work for others’ happiness. The heroism and chivalry he had prized as a cadet are now eclipsed by patriotism of a more workaday kind. He has lost his admiration for the Cornelian hero standing on his rights; instead he sees himself as a member of a community, working for ‘a hundred families’. And he is not now a soldier, but a civilian.

Napoleon does not include Christianity as a factor in happiness, and in this respect is typical of his age. As he wrote in his notebook, Christianity ‘declares that its kingdom is not of this world; how then can it stimulate affection for one’s native land, how can it inspire any feelings but scepticism, indifference and coldness for human affairs and government?’

Napoleon’s trust in feeling was also typical of his age, beginning to weary of cynicism and masks. Where Napoleon is original is in recognizing that a dangerous confusion may arise between true feeling – virtue – and passion masquerading as sentiment. He is original in making reason, not the intensity of the feeling, the judge of the feeling’s worth. If pressed to list the criteria whereby reason acts, Napoleon would doubtless have named patriotism and values like truthfulness and generosity (but not forgiveness) learned from his parents, in other words some at least of the values of Christianity excluded from his essay.

While Second Lieutenant Buonaparte in a small garrison town studied, planned reforms and envisaged the life he would like to lead, the larger world of France was moving towards a crisis. Perhaps the root trouble was that no one any longer possessed the power to act. The well-meaning, still popular Louis XVI tried to make much-needed tax reforms, but the lawyers who composed the Parlements consistently refused to register them. As one young Counsellor in the Paris Parlement explained to a visitor: ‘You must know, sir, that in France the job of a consellour is to oppose everything the King wants to do, even the good things.’ At every level France consisted of groups ossified in opposition, and the strong French critical spirit ridiculed any proposed reform. Lack of confidence crept over the nation, hitting trade hard in 1788. Then came an exceptionally severe winter in 1788–9. The Seine and other rivers froze; trade was impeded; cattle and sheep died. After many years of stability the price of bread, meat and goods rose sharply, and this at a time when many workshops were laying off men. Across France swept the fear of hunger.

At the end of March 1789 in the small town of Seurre a barge was being loaded with wheat. The wheat had been bought by a Verdun businessman and was to be shipped to that town. The people of Seurre, convinced that their food was being bought up, rioted and prevented the barge sailing. The 64th was then stationed in Auxonne, twenty miles from Seurre, and its colonel, Baron Du Teil, sent a detachment of one hundred soldiers, with Napoleon among the officers, to restore order.

In Seurre Napoleon came to know at first hand the mood of the French people, frightened and angry, as they clamoured not only for food but for social justice. What Napoleon thought and felt in 1789 is much less well documented than what he was reading and writing, but we do know that he believed every Frenchman had a right to subsistence, and sympathized with them over the high price of bread. On the other hand, he hated riots and mob action. When men of the 64th broke into headquarters and seized regimental funds; when Baron Du Teil’s country house was set on fire, Napoleon certainly disapproved. Lawyer’s son that he was, he wanted this popular movement to express itself constitutionally within the States-General.

This in time happened. In February 1789 a certain Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, an ex-priest from Fréjus, published a pamphlet which swept the country. ‘What is the Third Estate?’ Sieyès asked. ‘Everything. What has it been in the political order up to now? Nothing. What does it ask? To become something.’ The common people had found a pen, and presently found a voice, that of Mirabeau. Mirabeau was a nobleman with southern blood in his veins, and, like Napoleon, steeped in English history. Rejected by his fellow noblemen, he had been elected by the Third Estate of Aix, and it was in their name that Mirabeau spoke, ‘the defender,’ he said, ‘of a monarchy limited by law and the apostle of liberty guaranteed by a monarchy’.

On 14 July 1789 a group of Parisians stormed the Bastille, but to Napoleon, far from Paris, this would have been an event comparable to the riots in Seurre. What interested him were the decrees of the Constituent Assembly, as the States-General now called itself. The Assembly abolished certain of the privileges of nobles and clergy, gave the vote to more than four and a half million men who possessed at least a little land or property, and in 1791 presented France with her first Constitution, thought up by Mirabeau, prefaced by a ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen’, of which the two key articles are the first and fourth: ‘Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be based only upon public utility …;’ ‘Liberty consists in the power to do anything that does not injure others.’

What was Napoleon’s reaction to these laws? He was a French nobleman. His friends and fellow officers were also French noblemen, and their brothers as likely as not on their way to becoming bishops or even cardinals. Because, as nobles, they shed, or were ready to shed, their blood for the King, they paid no taxes. They belonged to an élite, perhaps half a million among twenty-five million. Napoleon as a nobleman could rise to be marshal of France, and the fact that commoners could not, vastly increased his chances of getting to the top. Now these privileges were suddenly swept away, and many resented it. More than half of Napoleon’s fellow officers refused to accept the new situation and many, including his best friend, Alexandre des Mazis, decided to emigrate.

Napoleon did not see the situation in terms of self-interest. What he saw was a Constitution which limited the monarchy by law. This was something he had been hoping for for years. He saw also power passing to the French people, and, the smaller patriotism now engulfed in the larger, he believed that would help Corsica: the French people, he felt sure, would sympathize with the Corsican people and end colonial rule. If, in the ferment of the new popular movement, he lost his privileges, that was a small price to pay. He did not dream of going abroad to join Princes of the blood determined to save the old régime. Sovereignty had been transferred by the Assembly from the King to all the citizens; so his allegiance now was not to Louis XVI but to the French people.

Napoleon could very well have nodded silent approval to the Constitution and left it at that. As an artillery officer, he had his daily duties to perform. But in his essay on Happiness he had stated the obligation to become involved, to act on behalf of his fellow men. The Constitution was under attack from the nobles and clergy; from the kings of Europe; Napoleon decided to act in its defence.

He did so with great energy. He was one of the first to join the Society of Friends of the Constitution, a group of 200 Valence patriots, and he became secretary. On 3 July 1791 he played a leading part in a ceremony at which twenty-three popular societies of Isère, Drôme and Ardèche solemnly condemned the King’s attempted flight to Belgium. Three days later he swore the oath demanded of all officers, ‘to die rather than allow a foreign power to invade French soil’. On 14 July he swore an oath of loyalty to the new Constitution and, at a banquet the same evening, proposed a toast to the patriots of Auxonne.

Property began to be confiscated from the clergy and nobility and put up for sale by the Government under the name of biens nationaux. At first people were frightened to buy, fearing a counter-Revolution. Finally, in the dèpartment of the Drôme a man plucked up courage, put down money and made a purchase. Napoleon again stepped forward and publicly congratulated the buyer for his ‘patriotism’.

The Assembly had passed a decree known as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which declared the French clergy independent of Rome and that future clergy and bishops must be elected by their congregations. This decree was denounced by Pius VI. Napoleon promptly bought a copy of Duvernet’s anti-clerical History of the Sorbonne, studied the question of papal authority and noted down those occasions when French churchmen dared to say that a Pope was above the King. Napoleon thought Pius a meddler, but not everyone in Valence agreed. So Napoleon arranged for a priest named Didier, formerly a Recollect friar, to address his Society of Friends of the Constitution, where, amid applause, the priest assured the audience that clergy like himself who swore the oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution acted in good faith, whatever Rome might say.

That was Napoleon’s position in the summer of 1791. The officer of noble birth, great-nephew of Archdeacon Lucciano, was taking a lead in the sale of property confiscated from the nobles and clergy. He was rallying support to a Constitution which stripped sovereignty from the King who had paid for his education and signed his commission. But these were the by-products of an essentially positive course of action. Napoleon, at twenty-one, was a contented man, burning with enthusiasm for a popular movement which embodied many of his aspirations, a movement which, he believed, was bringing justice to France, an end to oppression, and possibly also benefits to Corsica.