Napoleon

by Emil Ludwig

" Only the sword-belt belongs to France ; the edge is my own," thinks the youth, as he first buckles on his sword. At sixteen he has become a sub-lieutenant—and he will don uniform a good many more times before he dies. He has qualified for this rank by a year in the Paris Cadets' School, where he spent his time as he had spent it at Brienne, poring over books. A lad of Spartan tastes, he finds the prodigal expenditure of the sprigs of the French nobility (by whom he is utterly outshone) extremely distasteful. Since, however, nature sets him, even more than most young men, in the centre of his own world, he makes a virtue of necessity, and pens a memorial to the effect that luxurious living is unsuitable for budding soldiers. He must not get into debt, for he knows how poor they are at home. Now, when his father dies, the family affection of this Italian becomes intensified. Though little more than a boy, he begins to save money in order to help his mother.

  After his examination, passed with fair credit, his superiors wrote of him: " Reserved and diligent, he prefers study to any kind of conversation, and nourishes his mind upon good authors. . . He is taciturn, with a love for solitude ; is moody, overbearing, and extremely egotistical. Though he speaks little, his answers are decisive and to the point, and he excels in argument. Much self-love, and overweening ambition."

  Clad in his new uniform, the little sub-lieutenant goes to join his regiment at Valence, compelled by his poverty to walk a great part of the way. Three impulses stir his youthful heart: to despise and make use of his fellow-creatures, most of whom are empty-headed and pretentious; to extricate himself from the clutches of poverty; to learn much in order that he may rule others. The means and the goal are one. He is to be a leader in the struggle on the island, and then to make himself master of Corsica.

  The Lieutenant Reads

  How dull life is in this garrison town ! Of course, a young man should learn to dance, should taste the pleasures of lively society. He tries this, but soon abandons the attempt, for his teeming pride makes him want to hide his poverty. However, any one who holds converse with members of the burgher class, lawyers and shopkeepers, hears strange talk, gets wind of things that the young viscounts in Paris never dream of. Is it really true ? Has the spirit of Voltaire's and Montesquieu's and Raynal's writings actually climbed down so soon, to stalk among the provincial petty bourgeois ? Is the movement which these prophets were conjuring up now seriously afoot ? Can it be that the revolution is at hand ?

  Books clamour it abroad. Reading is free as breathing ; and when a man has read all the books in the lending library, he can spare a franc or two now and again to buy a new book. True, the youth lodges in a cafe, and the clicking of the billiard balls in the next room is tiresome. But it would be still more tiresome to move. In personal habits, he is conservative.

  What about his sentiments ? Judge for yourselves. Like every young man of his generation, he is keenly interested in the State and society. There he sits in the room next the billiard-room ; pale, lonely, in a hot and stuffy atmosphere. While his comrades, after their short hours of duty, scatter to seek distraction in gaming or the pursuit of women, the impoverished lieutenant bends over his books, reading with sure instinct about the things (and those only) that will be of use to him in days to come : artillery, its principles and its history ; the art of siege ; Plato's Republic; the constitution of the Persian, the Athenian, the Spartan State; the history of England ; the campaigns of Frederick the Great; French finances; the Tartars and the Turks, their manners and customs, and the topography of their countries; the history of Egypt and the history of Carthage; descriptions of In dia; English accounts of contemporary France: Mirabeau, Buffon, and Machiavelli; the history and the constitution of Switzerland; the history and constitution of China,

  Alexander as Prototype

  India, the Inca State; the history of the nobility and the story of patrician misdeeds; astronomy, geology, and meteorology; the laws of the growth of population ; statistics of mortality.

  He did not simply flutter the pages of his books, but was an attentive reader. There is extant a whole series of copybooks containing Napoleon's notes, penned in an almost illegible handwriting. The contents of these, reprinted, occupies four hundred pages. Here we find a map of the Saxon heptarchy with a list of the kings for three centuries; item, the varieties of foot-race in ancient Crete; item, lists of the Hellenic fortresses in Asia Minor; item, the dates of twenty-seven caliphs, with a note of the strength of their cavalry, and an account of the misconduct of their wives.

  Especially frequent are memoranda concerning Egypt and India, including even the measurements of the Great Pyramid and a catalogue of Brahminical sects. He copies a passage from Raynal: " In view of the position of Egypt, lying betwixt two seas, and in fact betwixt the East and the West, Alexander the Great conceived the design of establishing the capital of his world-wide empire in that country, and of making Egypt the centre of world commerce. This most enlightened of the conquerors had realised that if there was any practicable way of amalgamating his conquests into one consolidated State, it was by this use of Egypt, created as a point of union between Africa, Asia, and Europe." Thirty years later, he still had the words by heart. He had read them so often..

  At this date, too, he begins original composition, drafting more than a dozen essays and projects : the placing of artillery; suicide ; monarchical authority ; the inequality of men ; and Corsica, above all, Corsica— such were the topics. Rousseau, the most popular author of those days, is pulverised by Napoleon's realism. The young officer is epitomising Rousseau's views on the origin of the human race (in the Discours sur I'origine et les fondements de I'inegalite parmi les hommes), but

  Imagination in Its Cave

  abruptly he breaks off the epitome with the comment: " I don't believe a word of this." Then come a couple of pages filled with his own counterstatement. Human beings were not, to begin with, solitary ; nor were they nomadic. They were happy, and lived apart, because they were not numerous enough to be forced into close contact. When the population grew more thick upon the ground, " then imagination came forth from the cave in which for so long it had been prisoned : self-confidence, passion, and pride reared their heads; there arose ambitious men with pale features, who took control of affairs, and mastered the multicoloured young popinjays, the Lotharios and lady-killers."

  Do not we already hear him rattling his chains, in the dark cavern where he himself is prisoned with his titanic imagination ? Do not we see the fancy portrait of the young author, pale of visage, full of hatred for the brilliant lady-killers who are his messmates ?

  Away from these fellows, who are Frenchmen ! His gaze is still fixed upon his native isle, and it is to the advantage of Corsica that he twists the new sociological outlooks. We read in one of the essays : " How absurd to declare that divine laws forbid us to shake off a usurper's yoke ! Were that so, then every regicide who has clambered into the vacant throne would be under God's protection, whereas in case of failure he would have lost his head. With how much better right, then, can a people drive out a usurping prince ! Does not this speak for Corsicans ? . . . Thus we can shake off the yoke of France, just as we shook off the yoke of Genoa. Amen."

  Meanwhile, the fledgling genius wished to try its wings, and this urge led Napoleon to draft a novel on Corsica, and also some short stories. All were animated by hatred of France, but none of them were ever finished. Still he was learning his trade, spurred on by poverty, passion, and sentiment. Imagination rules the world, but cannons are the instrument whereby imagination realises its purposes. " I have no refuge but my work. I only change my linen once

  Big Guns

  a week. Since I was ill, I have slept very little. ... I eat only once a day."

  He studies ordnance and munitions of war, always thinking in figures, so that every one says that he is a born mathematician. Now, side by side with the drafts of works of imagination, he draws up specifications of all the localities in the island where he would place batteries, dig trenches, station troops—i
f he had but the power ! Beneath the network of poetical thoughts with which he has covered the island, he spreads over his maps a second network, wherein crosses denote big guns. Maps, maps! In his room beside the noisy cafe, he restudies everything conceivable, copies whole speeches out of the report of the parliamentary proceedings at Westminster, and sketches the remotest parts of the earth. At the end of the last of his copy-books, the final entry runs : " St. Helena, a small island in the Atlantic Ocean. English colony."

  At this juncture he received a letter from his mother. Her powerful patron, the marshal, was dead ; the house had lost its main prop ; the mulberry orchard was no longer to be a means of livelihood ; Joseph had no paid occupation ; could the second son give any help ? Shortly after this appeal reached him, he went home on furlough. Are we to consider him an unacknowledged conqueror, returning to the island of his plans and dreams ? Read what he wrote in his diary :

  " Always alone, though in the midst of men, I go back home that I may give myself up to my lonely dreams and to the waves of my melancholy. Whither, now, do my gloomy thoughts tend ? Towards death. Yet I stand on the threshold of life, and may reasonably expect to draw breath for many, many years. For the last six or seven years I have been far away from my country. How great the joy— to see my own people once more!—What demon, then, is it that tempts me to self-destruction ?—Since misfortune dogs my footsteps, and nothing gives me pleasure, why should I go on bearing a life in which, for me, everything goes awry ?— What a tragedy in the homeland ! My fellow-country

  Hopeless

  men, in chains, kiss the hand that beats them.—Proud, buoyed up by a sense of his own worth, so lived of yore the happy Corsican, giving his days to the service of the State, and spending his nights in the arms of his beloved wife—the nights which nature and affection made divine for him. With the disappearance of freedom, those happy times have vanished like a dream. Frenchmen, not only have you stolen from us our greatest good, but now you are corrupting our morals ! That is how I see my country, and yet I am powerless to help. Are there not reasons enough for quitting a world in which I must glorify those whom I hate ?—If it were but the life of one individual which stood between us and our liberties, I should not be slow to act.—Life has become a burden to me, I have no enjoyment, nothing but pain,—and because I cannot live after my own fashion, everything is loathsome to me."

  After a year spent in Corsica, a year rendered gloomy by money troubles and family cares, he was still in this mood of despair when his furlough expired. He returned not to Valence, but to Auxonne. What did the change matter ?

  But, at last, recognition comes. His new general, who sees that this subaltern of nineteen is well informed, puts into his hands the task of carrying out some works upon the parade ground. " Difficult calculations are involved; and so, for the last ten days, I have been busied from morning till night at the head of two hundred men. This unusual preferment has given some of my superiors a spite against me. They are furious that so important a job should have been taken out of their hands and given to a lieutenant."

  The old depression recurs. Promotion will be desperately slow, and when he becomes a captain he will be retired on half-pay. He will return home, to be despised because he is a pensioner of the French. At long last, he

  Drums of the Revolution

  will be buried in his native soil. Of that privilege, at least, the French cannot rob him ! Were they, then, nothing but froth, the dreams of liberty revealed in the books he had read ? If mighty France herself was unable to shake off the yoke of the nobility, to rid herself of venality and nepotism, how was poor little Corsica to shake off the French tyranny ?

  The young author fills his diary with new schemes. He would have had to pay heavily for it if the book had fallen into the hands of his superiors. " Draft for a memorial concerning monarchical authority. Set forth details as to the usurped power which kings enjoy to-day in the twelve monarchies of Europe. There are few of them who have not merited dethronement." Thus does he vent his spleen in the faithful diary; whilst in public on every royal birthday, dressed in gala uniform, he must join in the cry : Long live the king !

  Another year of his youth is spent in the dull routine of such service, while Napoleon holds his peace and waits, dividing his energies between imaginative writing and mathematics.

  The year of destiny has opened. Into the most out-of-the-way regions of the slumbering province comes the presage of the trumpets that are about to sound. We are in the month of June 1789. The melancholy lieutenant feels that the day of vengeance draws near. Is the arrogance of those who have so long humiliated him, to bring destruction upon their own heads ? May it not be that the call of the myriads is also the battle-cry of the island ? He takes his Letters on Corsica; sends them to his admired exemplar Paoli, in exile ; and writes :

  " General! I came into the world when my country was perishing. My cradle was surrounded by men with the death-rattle in their throats, and by those whom despair had driven to tears. . . . With them, hope vanished. Slavery was the reward of our subjugation. To justify themselves, the traitors have heaped calumnies upon you. . . When I read this, my blood boiled, and I resolved

  The First «F

  to scatter the mists. Now I shall blacken with the brush of shame all who have betrayed the common cause. ... If I lived in the capital, I should find other means. . . . "Owing to my youth, this undertaking may be fruitless; but I shall be helped by my passion for truth, my love for my country, and my enthusiasm. If you, General, will encourage in this work a young man whose coming into the world you saw, I shall gain confidence. . . . My mother, Madame Letizia, has charged me to remind you of the old days in Corte."

  We notice a new tone, a symphony of new tones : the soaring emotion of the epoch ; the gesture of the tyrannicide ; the whole equipment of scintillating words, not an uprush of feeling (as in the pages of his diary), but deliberately chosen with an eye to their effect. Only one thing is alarmingly original, quite peculiar to the writer: the decisive " I " at the opening of the letter, this " I" as a great thesis, fronting the world. Immeasurable self-confidence is breaking a trail; for now the drum-taps of a new era are sounding ; an era which will give the palm, not to birth but to action, thus sweeping away the only hindrance that has hitherto been insuperable. An unprecedented claim is voiced, a claim which henceforward will never cease to be heard. But at the close of the letter, with a courteous turn of phrase, he slips back into the familiar, implying that he looks to Paoli for protection. What adroitness, what good manners, we find in all the letters of this adolescent, who in person is still rough and enigmatical!

  Paoli, the survival from an earlier day, is annoyed by such arrogance, and answers with civil irony that young people should not try to write history.

  Four weeks after the sending of the letter, young people begin to write history, for the first time in the eighteenth century. They storm the Bastille ; the great signal has been given ; and France leaps to arms. Even in the garrison town of our young lieutenant, the masses riot and loot, until the propertied classes join forces with the troops. Buonaparte

  The Red Cockade

  is at his post with his battery in the streets, and helps to shoot down the people. This is the first time he has fired a gun in real earnest. He acts under orders from the king's officers; but there can be no doubt that he acts wholeheartedly against the mob, which he despises no less than he despises the nobility.

  In the depths of his soul, he regards this as nothing more than a dispute among foreigners. What does he care about Frenchmen who raise their hands against other Frenchmen ? His brain is fired by a single thought: " Corsica's hour has come ! " Madness or enthusiasm, an ideal or merely a catchword ? What matter ? Let us carry the message to our island. Apply for leave ; and, in the turmoil of the new movement, be the first to reach home !

  VI

  Lieutenant Buonaparte landed on his island like a prophet carrying a new doctrine to a foreign coast. He was th
e first to bring the red cockade ; to promise liberty, equality, and fraternity. Was not this a race of free mountaineers, who of old had been self-governing, but for twenty years had groaned under the heel of the oppressor—a conqueror who ruled through the instrumentality of the nobles and the Church, but did not understand the people ?

  What did it matter to the young Jacobin that until yesterday he had lived upon his patrician birth, that solely because of his rank he had been educated at the king's cost ? What was the king to him ? At length the peoples were to be free to rule themselves. If the new France, just awakened, had proclaimed the right of self-government, Corsica, which the old France had loaded with chains, must proclaim its own freedom. Citizens, the hour has struck ! To arms ! Let every one wear the red cockade of the new era; let us form a National Guard, as they have done in Paris ! Let us wrest

  A Reverse

  the means of power from the king's troops. I am an artillerist, and I will be your leader !

  Twenty years of age, pale of countenance, with cold, blue-grey eyes, but with a mouth full of glowing phrases, such is the aspect of young Buonaparte as he hastens through the streets of Ajaccio. Every one in the little town knows him, and he is followed by a growing number of persons, some eager for liberty, and others in search of a change of any kind. To the crowd in the square, he seems a man bringing passionate hopes; his figure is that of a tribune of the people. In this half-oriental atmosphere, and among these quarrelsome families (so he says later), " a man soon learns to study the human heart."

  But there is a set-back. No reinforcements come from the mountains ; and, when the regular troops put in an appearance, they scatter the revolutionists. Within a few hours, all have been disarmed, though, for prudence, no arrests are made. This is a further source of disillusionment. He is not even a martyr, but only a would-be popular leader who has been defeated ; his position borders on the ludicrous. Yet the fever is still burning in his veins, and at all costs he must do something to cool himself. A statement of grievances to the National Assembly in Paris! First of all, in the florid style of the day, an ode to the new freedom, and then a spate of complaints and adjurations. To the gallows with the king's servants! Arm the citizens of the island !—A committee promptly joins him in signing the document.