Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume V

But, with a dexterity peculiar to himself, Napoleon proceeded, while abolishing the Republic, to press into his service those very democratical principles which had given rise to the Revolution, and encouraged the attempt to found a commonwealth. His sagacity had not failed to observe, that the popular objections to the ancient government were founded less upon any objection to the royal authority in itself, than a dislike, amounting to detestation, of the privileges which it allotted to the nobles and to the clergy, who held, from birth and office, the right to fill the superior ranks in every profession, and barred the competition of all others, however above them in merit. When, therefore, Napoleon constructed his new form of monarchical government, he wisely considered that he was not, like hereditary monarchs, tied down to any particular rules arising out of ancient usage, but, being himself creator of the power which he wielded, he was at liberty to model it according to his own pleasure. He had been raised also so easily to the throne, by the general acknowledgment of his merits, that he had not needed the assistance of a party of his own; consequently, being unfettered by previous engagements, and by the necessity of gratifying old partisans, or acquiring new ones, his conduct was in a very unusual degree free and unlimited.

Having, therefore, attained the summit of human power, he proceeded, advisedly and deliberately, to lay the foundation of his throne on that democratic principle which had opened his own career, and which was the throwing open to merit, though without farther title, the road to success in every department of the state. This was the secret key of Napoleon's policy; and he was so well aided in the use of it, by acute perception of character, as well as by good nature and good feeling (both of which, in his cooler moments, he possessed,) that he never, through all his vicissitudes, lost an opportunity of conciliating and pleasing the multitude by evincing a well-timed attention to distinguish and reward talent.288 To this his conversation perpetually alluded; and for this he claims, and is entitled to, the highest praise. We have little hesitation in repeating, that it was thus opening a full career to talent of every kind, which was the key-stone of his reputation, and the main foundation of his power. Unhappily, his love of merit, and disposition to reward it, were not founded exclusively upon a patriotic attention to the public welfare, far less on a purely benevolent desire to reward what was praiseworthy; but upon a principle of selfish policy, to which must be ascribed a great part of his success, no small portion of his misfortunes, and almost all his political crimes.

We have quoted elsewhere the description given of the Emperor by his brother Lucien, in a moment probably of spleen, but which has been nevertheless confirmed by almost all the persons habitually conversant with Napoleon at whom we have had an opportunity of making inquiries. "His conduct," said his brother, "is entirely regulated by his policy, and his policy is altogether founded upon egotism." No man, perhaps, ever possessed (under the restrictions to be presently mentioned) so intense a proportion of that selfish principle which is so common to humanity. It was planted by nature in his heart, and nourished by the half monastic, half military education, which so early separated him from social ties; it was encouraged by the consciousness of possessing talents which rendered him no mate for the ordinary men among whom his lot seemed cast; and became a confirmed habit, by the desolate condition in which he stood at his first outset in life, without friend, protector, or patron. The praise, the promotion he received, were given to his genius, not to his person; and he who was conscious of having forced his own way, had little to bind him in gratitude or kindness to those who only made room for him because they durst not oppose him. His ambition was a modification of selfishness, sublime indeed in its effects and consequences, but yet, when strictly analyzed, leaving little but egotism in the crucible.

Our readers are not, however, to suppose, that the selfishness of Napoleon was of that ordinary and odious character, which makes men miserly, oppressive, and fraudulent in private life; or which, under milder features, limits their exertions to such enterprises as may contribute to their own individual profit, and closes the heart against feelings of patriotism, or of social benevolence. Napoleon's egotism and love of self was of a far nobler and more elevated kind, though founded on similar motives – just as the wings of the eagle, who soars into the regions of the sun, move on the same principles with those which cannot bear the dunghill fowl over the pales of the poultry-yard.

To explain our meaning, we may add that Napoleon loved France, for France was his own. He studied to confer benefits upon her, for the profit redounded to her emperor, whether she received amended institutions, or enlarged territories. He represented, as he boasted, the People as well as the Sovereign of France; he engrossed in his own person her immunities, her greatness, her glory, and was bound to conduct himself so as to exalt at the same time the emperor and the empire. Still, however, the sovereign and the state might be, and at length actually were, separated; and the egotistical character of Buonaparte could, after that separation, find amusement and interest in the petty scale of Elba, to which his exertions were then limited.289 Like the magic tent in the Arabian Tales, his faculties could expand to enclose half a world, with all its cares and destinies, or could accommodate themselves to the concerns of a petty rock in the Mediterranean, and his own conveniences when he retreated to its precincts. We believe that while France acknowledged Napoleon as emperor, he would cheerfully have laid down his life for her benefit; but we greatly doubt, if, by merely raising his finger, he could have made her happy under the Bourbons, whether (unless the merit of the action had redounded to his own personal fame) that finger would have been lifted. In a word, his feelings of self-interest were the central point of a circle, the circumference of which may be extended or contracted at pleasure, but the centre itself remains fixed and unchanged.

It is needless to inquire how far this solicitous, and we must add, enlightened attention to his own interest, facilitated Buonaparte's ascent to the supreme power. We daily witness individuals, possessed of a very moderate proportion of parts, who, by intently applying themselves to the prosecution of some particular object, without being drawn aside by the calls of pleasure, the seductions of indolence, or other interruptions, succeed ultimately in attaining the object of their wishes. When, therefore, we conceive the powerful mind of Napoleon, animated by an unbounded vivacity of imagination, and an unconquerable tenacity of purpose, moving forward, without deviation or repose, to the accomplishment of its purpose, which was nothing less than to acquire the dominion of the whole world, we cannot be surprised at the immense height to which he raised himself.

But the egotism which governed his actions, – subject always to the exercise of his excellent sense, and the cultivation of his interest in the public opinion – if in a great measure it favoured the success of his various enterprises, did him in the end much more evil than good; as it instigated his most desperate enterprises, and was the source of his most inexcusable actions.

Moderate politicians will agree, that after the imperial system was substituted for the republican, the chief magistrate ought to have assumed and exerted a considerable strength of authority, in order to maintain that re-establishment of civil order, that protection of the existing state of things, which was necessary to terminate the wild and changeful recurrence of perpetual revolutions. Had Napoleon stopped here, his conduct would have been unblameable and unblamed, unless by the more devoted followers of the House of Bourbon, against whom Providence appeared to most men to have closed the gate of restoration. But his principles of egotism would not be satisfied until he had totally destroyed every vestige of those free institutions which had been acquired by the perils, the blood, the tears of the Revolution, and reduced France, save for the influence of public opinion, to the condition of Constantinople, or of Algiers. If it was a merit to raise up the throne, it was natural that he who did so should himself occupy it; since in ceding it to the Bourbons he must have betrayed those at whose hands he accepted power; but to plunder the nation of their privileges as free-born men, was the act of a parricide. The nation lost, under his successive encroachments, what liberty the ancient government had left them, and all those rights which had been acquired by the Revolution. Political franchises, individual interests, the property of municipalities, the progress of education, of science, of mind and sentiment, all were usurped by the government. France was one immense army, under the absolute authority of a military commander, subject to no control nor responsibility. In that nation so lately agitated by the nightly assembly of thousands of political clubs, no class of citizens under any supposable circumstances, had the right of uniting in the expression of their opinions. Neither in the manners nor in the laws, did there remain any popular means of resisting the errors or abuses of the administration. France resembled the political carcass of Constantinople, without the insubordination of the Pachas, the underhand resistance of the Ulemas, and the frequent and clamorous mutinies of the Janizaries.290

Whilst Napoleon destroyed successively every barrier of public liberty – while he built new state prisons, and established a high police, which filled France with spies and jailors – while he took the charge of the press so exclusively into his own hand – his policy at once, and his egotism, led him to undertake those immense public works, of greater or less utility or ornament as the chance might be, but which were sure to be set down as monuments of the Emperor's splendour. The name given him by the working classes, of the General Undertaker, was by no means ill bestowed; but in what an incalculably greater degree do such works succeed, when raised by the skill and industry of those who propose to improve their capital by the adventure, than when double the expense is employed at the arbitrary will of a despotic sovereign! Yet it had been well if bridges, roads, harbours, and public works, had been the only compensation which Napoleon offered to the people of France for the liberties he took from them. But he poured out to them, and shared with them, to drown all painful and degrading recollections, the intoxicating and fatal draught of military glory and universal domination. To lay the whole universe prostrate at the foot of France, while France, the nation of Camps, should herself have no higher rank than the first of her own Emperor's slaves, was the gigantic project, at which he laboured with such tenacious assiduity. It was the Sisyphæan stone which he rolled so high up the hill, that at length he was crushed under its precipitate recoil.

The main objects of that immense enterprise were such as had been undertaken while his spirit of ambition was at its height; and no one dared, even in his councils, to interfere with the resolutions which he adopted. Had these been less eminently successful, it is possible he might have paused, and perhaps might have preferred the tranquil pursuit of a course which might have rendered one kingdom free and happy, to the subjugation of all Europe. But Napoleon's career of constant and uninterrupted success under the most disadvantageous circumstances, together with his implied belief in his Destiny, conspired, with the extravagant sense of his own importance, to impress him with an idea that he was not "in the roll of common men,"291 and induced him to venture on the most desperate undertakings, as if animated less by the result of reason than by an internal assurance of success. After great miscarriages, he is said sometimes to have shown a corresponding depression; and thence he resigned four times the charge of his army when he found his situation embarrassing, as if no longer feeling confidence in his own mind, or conceiving he was deserted for the moment by his guardian genius. There were similar alternations, too, according to General Gourgaud's account, in his conversation. At times, he would speak like a deity,292 at others, in the style of a very ordinary person.

To the egotism of Napoleon, we may also trace the general train of deception which marked his public policy, and, when speaking upon subjects in which his own character was implicated, his private conversation.

In his public capacity, he had so completely prostituted the liberty of the press, that France could know nothing whatever but through Napoleon's own bulletins. The battle of Trafalgar was not hinted at till several months after it had been fought, and then it was totally misrepresented; and so deep and dark was the mantle which covered the events in which the people were most interested, that, on the very evening when the battle of Montmartre was fought, the Moniteur, the chief organ of public intelligence, was occupied in a commentary on nosographie, and a criticism on a drama on the subject of the chaste Susannah.293 The hiding the truth is only one step to the invention of falsehood, and, as a periodical publisher of news, Napoleon became so eminent for both, that, to "lie like a bulletin," became an adopted expression, not likely soon to lose ground in the French language, and the more disgraceful to Napoleon, that he is well known to have written those official documents in most instances himself.

Even this deceptive system, this plan of alternately keeping the nation in ignorance, or abusing it by falsehood, intimated a sense of respect for public opinion. Men love darkness, because their deeds are evil. Napoleon dared not have submitted to the public an undisguised statement of his perfidious and treacherous attacks upon Spain, than which a more gross breach of general good faith and existing treaties could scarce have been conceived. Nor would he have chosen to plead at the public bar, the policy of his continental system, adopted in total ignorance of the maxims of political economy, and the consequences of which were, first, to cause general distress, and then to encourage universal resistance against the French yoke throughout the whole continent of Europe. Nor is it more likely that, could the public have had the power of forming a previous judgment upon the probable event of the Russian campaign, that rash enterprise would ever have had an existence. In silencing the voice of the wise and good, the able and patriotic, and communicating only with such counsellors as were the echoes of his own inclinations, Napoleon, like Lear,

"Kill'd his physician, and the fee bestow'dUpon the foul disease."

This was the more injurious, as Napoleon's knowledge of the politics, interests, and character of foreign courts was, excepting in the case of Italy, exceedingly imperfect. The peace of Amiens might have remained uninterrupted, and the essential good understanding betwixt France and Sweden need never have been broken, if Napoleon could, or would, have understood the free constitution of England, which permits every man to print or publish what he may choose; or if he could have been convinced that the institutions of Sweden did not permit their government to place their fleets and armies at the disposal of a foreign power, or to sink the ancient kingdom of the Goths into a secondary and vassal government.

Self-love, so sensitive as that of Napoleon, shunned especially the touch of ridicule. The gibes of the English papers, the caricatures of the London print-shops, were the petty stings which instigated, in a great measure, the breach of the peace of Amiens. The laughter-loving Frenchmen were interdicted the use of satire, which, all-licensed during the times of the republic, had, even under the monarchy, been only punished with a short and easy confinement in the Bastile. During the time of the consulate, Napoleon was informed that a comic opera, something on the plan of the English farce of High Life Below Stairs, had been composed by Monsieur Dupaty, and brought forward on the stage, and that, in this audacious performance, three valets mimicked the manners, and even the dress of the three Consuls, and especially his own. He ordered that the actors should be exposed at the Grève, in the dresses they had dared to assume, which should be there stripped from their backs by the executioner; and he commanded that the author should be sent to St. Domingo, and placed, as a person under requisition, at the disposal of the commander-in-chief. The sentence was not executed, for the offence had not existed, at least to the extent alleged;294 but the intention shows Napoleon's ideas of the liberty of the stage, and intimates what would have been the fate of the author of the Beggar's Opera, had he written for the French Opera Comique.

But no light, which reason or information could supply, was able to guide the intensity of a selfish ambition, which made Napoleon desire that the whole administration of the whole world should not only remotely, but even directly and immediately, depend on his own pleasure. When he distributed kingdoms to his brothers, it was under the express understanding that they were to follow in every thing the course of politics which he should dictate; and after all, he seemed only to create dependent states for the purpose of resuming them. The oppressions, which, in the name of France, he imposed upon Holland, were the direct, and, in all probability, the calculated means of dethroning his brother Louis; and he had thoughts of removing Joseph from Spain, when he saw of what a fair and goodly realm he had pronounced him king. In his wild and insatiable extravagance of administering in person the government of every realm which he conquered, he brought his powerful mind to the level of that of the spoiled child, who will not be satisfied without holding in its own hand whatever has caught its eye. The system, grounded on ambition so inordinate, carried with it in its excess the principles of its own ruin. The runner who will never stop for repose must at last fall down with fatigue. Had Napoleon succeeded both in Spain and Russia, he would not have rested, until he had found elsewhere the disasters of Baylen and of Moscow.

The consequences of the unjustifiable aggressions of the French Emperor were an unlimited extent of slaughter, fire, and human misery, all arising from the ambition of one man, who, never giving the least sign of having repented the unbounded mischief, seemed, on the contrary, to justify and take pride in the ravage which he had occasioned. This ambition, equally insatiable and incurable, justified Europe in securing his person, as if it had been that of a lunatic, whose misguided rage was not directed against an individual, but against the civilized world; which, wellnigh overcome by him, and escaping with difficulty, had a natural right to be guaranteed against repetition of the frantic exploits of a being who seemed guided by more than human passion, and capable of employing in execution of his purpose more than human strength.

The same egotism, the same spirit of self-deception, which marked Napoleon during his long and awful career of success, followed him into adversity. He framed apologies for the use of his little company of followers, as he had formerly manufactured bulletins for the Great Nation. Those to whom these excuses were addressed, Las Cases and the other gentlemen of Napoleon's suite, being too much devoted to him, and too generous to dispute, after his fall, doctrines which it would have been dangerous to controvert during his power, received whatever he said as truths delivered by a prophet, and set down doubtless to the score of inspiration what could by no effort be reconciled to truth. The horrid evils which afflicted Europe during the years of his success, were represented to others, and perhaps to his own mind, as consequences which the Emperor neither wished nor contemplated, but which were necessarily and unalterably attached to the execution of the great plans which the Man of Destiny had been called upon earth to perform, resembling in so far the lurid and fear-inspiring train pursuing the rapid course of a brilliant comet, which the laws of the universe have projected through the pathless firmament.

Some crimes he committed of a different character, which seem to have sprung, not like the general evils of war, from the execution of great and calculated plans of a political or military kind, but must have had their source in a temper naturally passionate and vindictive. The Duc d'Enghien's murder was at the head of this list; a gratuitous act of treachery and cruelty, which, being undeniable, led Napoleon to be believed capable of other crimes of a secret and bloody character – of the murder of Pichegru and of Wright – of the spiriting away of Mr. Windham, who was never afterwards heard of – and of other actions of similar atrocity. We pause before charging him with any of those which have not been distinctly proved. For while it is certain that he had a love of personal vengeance – proper, it is said, to his country – it is equally evident, that, vehement by temperament, he was lenient and calm by policy; and that, if he had indulged the former disposition, the security with which he might have done so, together with the ready agency of his fatal police, would have made his rage resemble that of one of the Roman emperors. He was made sensible, too late, of the general odium drawn upon him by the murder of the Duc d'Enghien, and does not seem to have been disposed to incur farther risks of popular hatred in prosecution of his individual resentment. The records of his police, however, and the persecutions experienced by those whom Napoleon considered as his personal enemies, show that, by starts at least, nature resumed her bent, and that he, upon whom there was no restraint, save his respect for public opinion, gave way occasionally to the temptation of avenging his private injuries. He remarked it as a weakness in the character of his favourite Cæsar, that he suffered his enemies to remain in possession of the power to injure him; and Antommarchi, the reporter of the observation, admitted, that when he looked on the person before him, he could not but acknowledge that he was unlikely to fall into such an error.295

When Napoleon laid aside reserve, and spoke what were probably his true sentiments, he endeavoured to justify those acts of his government which transgressed the rules of justice and morality, by political necessity, and reasons of state; or, in other words, by the pressure of his own interest. This, however, was a plea, the full benefit of which he reserved to vindicate his own actions, never permitting it to be used by any other sovereign. He considered himself privileged in transgressing the law of nations, when his interests required it; but pleaded as warmly upon the validity of public law, when alleging it had been infringed by other states, as if he himself had in all instances respected its doctrines as inviolable.

But although Napoleon thus at times referred to state necessity as the ultimate source of actions otherwise unjustifiable, he more frequently endeavoured to disguise his errors by denial, or excuse them by apologies which had no foundation. He avers in his Will,296 that by the confession of the Duc d'Enghien, the Comte d'Artois maintained sixty assassins against his life;297 and that for this reason the Duc d'Enghien was tried, convicted, and put to death. The examination of the duke bears no such confession, but, on the contrary, an express denial of the whole of the alleged system; nor was there the slightest attempt made to contradict him by other testimony. He bequeathed, in like manner, a legacy to a villain298 who had attempted the assassination of the Duke of Wellington; the assassin, according to his strange argument, having as good a right to kill his rival and victor, as the English had to detain him prisoner at St. Helena. This clause in the last will of a dying man, is not striking from its atrocity merely, but from the inaccuracy of the moral reasoning which it exhibits. Napoleon has drawn a parallel betwixt two cases, which must be therefore both right or both wrong. If both were wrong, why reward the ruffian with a legacy? but if both were right, why complain of the British Government for detaining him at St. Helena?