Napoleon

by Emil Ludwig

  children a better position than his, because they would be the grandsons of an empress ! He had the impudence to talk to me about his rights and his interests ! He wanted to touch me on the raw ! He might almost as well have boasted he had slept with my mistress, or hoped to do so soon. My mistress ! Power is my mistress ! The conquest of that mistress has cost me so much that I will allow no one to rob me of her, or to share her with me! "

  Thus does the volcano suddenly spout forth great rocks, in the midst of a conversation about trifles. But the rest of the conversation does not turn wholly on trifles. He speaks bitterly of his brothers and sisters, comparing them with Eugene and Hortense. " My stepchildren always side with me. If their mother is put out because I take a fancy for a pretty girl, they say to her : ' Oh, well, he's still quite young, you know. You mustn't make a fuss. No doubt he has faults, but you must not forget how much he has done for us all.'"

  But nothing will keep him from pushing his brothers' advancement. When Joseph refuses all other occupations, Napoleon forces him into the army. " He must have military rank, get a nice wound, and win a good reputation for himself. I shall only give him easy jobs. Then he can win a battle, and I shall be able to promote him to a higher rank than all the other commanders." It sounds like the education of a degenerate son by a great father.

  Louis has an enthusiasm for poetry; he becomes chief of the imperial guard, so that he may have a dignified position; but he can stay at home when the guns begin to shoot.

  Murat and Caroline are frightfully extravagant; their table service is of gold. " As for Caroline, my own sister, if I have to discuss anything with her, I must make longer speeches than at the Council of State. . . .

  " The whole lot of them are always thinking about my death. It's rather nasty of them to be continually bringing that into my mind. . . . Were it not that I find some happiness in my home

  "Pourvou Que Cela Doure"

  life, I should be miserable ! Why are they always so suspicious of my wife ? What has she more than they ? Diamonds and debts ! . . . She's a good wife to me, and does them no harm! She's rather fond of playing the empress, with her jewels, her dresses, and the whimsies natural to her age. I have never been blinded by love. But I am just. She shall be crowned, even if it costs me two hundred thousand men ! "

  Thus he is continually bickering with a family which he could reduce to nonentity in a moment, but from which he is unable to cut adrift.

  Only one of them is incorruptible, asks for nothing, and holds aloof. Lucien writes from Rome :

  " Mother thinks that the First Consul is wrong to take the Bourbons' crown. She has uneasy presentiments which she will not confide to me. Her dread is that a gang of fanatics will assassinate the Emperor."—While this dignified mother of the family, still a beautiful woman though well over fifty, is led by her knowledge of the world and her gloomy forebodings to keep herself to herself, while she holds her tongue and only mentions her anxieties to a few intimates, in the Tuileries her children are quarrelling about titles and precedence, disputing who is to sit at the Emperor's right, debating whether they are entitled to walk out of the room in front of a sovereign prince !

  Then Napoleon summons Madame Mere to Paris. But here is one who will not obey him. At first she makes excuses. When more urgent commands are sent, she sets out on the journey, but takes her time, and does not reach Paris for the most splendid festival that a mortal mother can ever have witnessed. She hears and reads all that a gaping world says and writes about the affair. Her only comment is : " Pourvou que cela doure! "

  IX

  Meanwhile, Letizia's protector the pope has become more compliant, and is already on the way to Paris. What else could

  Belated Blessing

  the Holy Father do ? The man of might had summoned him, and the Emperor must be kept in a good humour. Besides, he who is to be crowned is an Italian. As one of the cardinals had put it, in the decisive conclave : " After all, we have this satisfaction, that we are taking vengeance on the Gauls by setting an Italian family to rule over these barbarians." Napoleon is still regarded as a foreigner in France! But why does he not go to Rome for his coronation ? Why is he not content to be anointed in Rome, as Charlemagne had been, and all the emperors of the West since Charlemagne's day ? What does he want a pope for at all ?

  In this matter, once more, he is trying to harmonise the new with the old. At first he is silent about details, and merely asks the pope " to give the highest religious consecration to the anointing and crowning of the first Emperor of the French." For weeks, letters have been exchanged between Rome and Paris, but the exact nature of the ceremony still remains obscure. Pius VII. is in an uneasy frame of mind as he draws near to Paris, and his spirit is by no means one of benediction. Never before has a pope been summoned in this way, much as a great physician is summoned. When the Emperor meets the pope at the gate of the city, the Holy Father does not fail to note that Napoleon neither kneels to receive a blessing nor kisses hands in token of fealty. Paris is a town where people's faith is unstable and where popes are held in little honour. The visitor is chilled.

  But Josephine is different. All devotion, she confides to him that she and her husband were not married in church, and that therefore from the pope's point of view they are not married at all. She is eager to grasp the opportunity of consolidating her union, which seems to her frail in view of her barrenness. Taking the hint, Pius insists upon a religious celebration of the marriage before he will crown her as empress. In the palace chapel, two days before the festival, Uncle Fesch, clad in purple, solemnises the union of the pair who eight years before had needed the intervention neither of priests nor civilian

  The Self-Crowned Emperor

  officials before coming together. There are no witnesses, not one who could laugh over this comedy in which cheating is still the order of the day—for even the Corsican uncle is not aware what is about to happen.

  On December 2, 1804, in Notre Dame, an abundance of precious stones reflects the light of a myriad candles, so that the place looks more like a banqueting hall than a church. Everything has been prepared for weeks beforehand. A skilful museum director has even produced a colourable imitation of Charlemagne's sceptre. Ancient parchments from the days of the Roi Soleil had been consulted, to ensure that the crowning of this revolutionist should vie in every respect with that of the legitimate monarchs of France. Segur had studied the etiquette of the occasion with the utmost care; Isabey had rehearsed the whole affair with an array of dolls; the old palace, Paris, France, were in a fever.

  The Emperor is in a pleasant humour. Early in the morning he makes sure that Josephine's crown is a good fit. The great procession drives to the cathedral. Napoleon, robed in an antique imperial mantle, strides to the high altar leading the empress by the hand. Josephine's charm helps to divest the great moment of a certain sense of embarrassment. Surrounded by attendant cardinals, the pope is seated, waiting. The organ peals forth.

  Then, when the appointed instant has come, and all are expecting this man who has never bowed the knee to any one, to kneel before the Holy Father, Napoleon, to the amazement of the congregation, seizes the crown, turns his back on the pope "and the altar, and, standing upright as always, crowns himself, in the sight of France. Then he crowns his kneeling wife.

  None but the pope had known his intentions. Informed at the eleventh hour, Pius had lacked courage to threaten immediate departure. Now, all he could do was to anoint and bless the two sinners. Moreover, the crown on the Emperor's head is not a

  A Naive Aside

  Christian crown at all, but a small pagan circlet of golden laurel leaves. All who describe the occasion agree in saying that the Emperor was pale but handsome. He resembled Emperor Augustus ; and from now onwards, as if by some mystical power, his features grew more and more like those of the first emperor of Rome.

  Thus, in this symbolical hour, Napoleon reduces to mockery the legitimate formalities he is affecting to copy. Furthermo
re, he makes a laughing-stock of the pope, who will not forget the slight. In an instant the cloud of Bourbon reminiscence has been scattered; the flavour of imitation and parody has vanished ; and on the steps of a temple there stands a soldier, a Roman imperator, whom a dozen years before this day no one had ever heard of, who since then has performed no miracles but only done deeds, and has now crowned himself with the golden laurels of these deeds. But his mantle is broidered with golden bees, the emblem of activity.

  Several incidents show that he has not, throughout this day of his coronation, wholly surrendered to the mood of a man who has made his own destiny.

  When he was seated on the throne, crown on head, with the pope in front of him, he said in a low aside to his brother : " Joseph, if only Father could see this ! " The remark, poignant at such an hour in the mouth of a man who was never wont to speak of his father, is fundamentally natural. The perfect simplicity, the unsophisticated innocence, of his course of action, lead his mind back to his origin. Memories of family feuds on the island, of the pride and ambition of the Corsican clans, direct his thoughts towards the stock from which he has sprung.

  Semblance never holds his attention, which always reaches out to the core of reality. Thus he is not bewildered even in this amazing hour. When he wants to whisper something to his uncle, who stands just in front of him during Mass, he gives the cardinal a gentle dig in the back with his sceptre. As soon as all is over, and, alone with Josephine, he goes in to dinner, he says

  (Photograph in the Kircheisen Collection.) Bonaparte as First Consul. Pencil sketch by J. D. A. Ingres. Germain Bapst Collection.

  Heroes of Antiquity

  with a sigh of relief: " Thank God we're through with it! A day on the battle-field would have pleased me better! " At their little dinner he tells her to keep on her crown, as if he and she were poet and actress, for, he says, she is charming, his little Creole woman as empress. Thus, in the most natural way in the world, he unmasks the whole masquerade, and we are at ease once more as we see the son of the revolution laughing his own empire to scorn.

  The freedom of spirit shown by the foregoing petty details is splendidly illuminated by an admission he made the same evening, when, to a confidant, he summed up the whole matter with sceptical emotion : " No, Decres, I have come into the world too late. There is nothing great left for me to do. I do not deny that I have had a fine career, but what a difference between me and the heroes of antiquity. Look at Alexander, for instance. After he has conquered Asia, he declares himself to be the son of Jupiter, and the whole East believes him, save only his mother and Aristotle and a handful of Athenian pedants. But if I, nowadays, were to declare myself the son of the Father Eternal, every fishwife would laugh in my face. There is nothing great left for me to do."

  This was said a few hours after he had crowned himself emperor ; said quite simply and quite truthfully. Is it not plain why the East has always allured him, and will continue to allure him ? By nature he is endowed with immense powers, and is overburdened by their incredible weight. Nothing can be adequate to his aspirations, now that he has learned how readily people obey the man who can command obedience by his skill and by his deeds. He is strong in his own strength ; what does Voltaire's enlightenment, what does Rousseau, matter to him ? How can he wish to establish democracy, to install popular government, when he knows the weakness of the popular instincts, and all the corruptness of the leaders of the people ? To expand his sway, to spread his name widely and ever more widely, to leave more record of himself in the book of universal

  An Eagle Volant

  history than that half page of which he spoke a few years ago, to sacrifice life itself to the little golden circlet on his head, to do these things without enjoyment and without leisure and without pause—this is all that life now offers.

  When, during these days, the sketch for an imperial seal is laid before him, and he sees a lion couchant, he draws his pen across the picture, and writes in the margin : " An eagle volant."

  X

  But with a sinister energ they dangerous fluid of divine right radiates from the golden circlet, and slowly spreads its waves through the brain of the wearer, the chosen man. Vainly he endeavours to master and transform the millennial force that has been stored up in this crown, or to make light of it; it masters him, and from time to time forces him to quit the realm of his self-control. When, a year after his coronation as emperor, he crowns himself in Milan with the iron crown of the Lombards (for the border States, like France itself, are to become monarchies), his voice reverberates through the cathedral as he thunders the traditional formula of the Carlovingian kings: " God gave it to me, woe to him who touches it! " Of course, it is only the statesman who speaks, for sound political reasons saying something he docs not believe. But, though he is well aware of the contradiction, he will not always be able to solve it with the same vigour as in Notre Dame.

  In the first place, the new position makes it necessary to impose new fetters on the mind. The Ministry of Police is revived ; and France is parcelled out into four great sectors, in which the most trusty members of the Council of State, each with an army of spies, keep watch upon the mood of the country, for he wants to collect " moral statistics." Fouche-is reappointed Minister of Police, and, since Napoleon's ties with Talleyrand become increasingly close, the Emperor is by degrees enmeshed in the nets of the two great intriguers—though

  A Mummy in Court Dress

  he is aware that they are playing a double game between himself and the Bourbons, and, by a second relay of spies, fruitlessly endeavours to keep watch and ward over his watchers.

  Sinister figures, these two ex-clerics, whom he hates, who hate him, but whom he will never be able to shake off.

  Fouche is a man of humble origin, pale, with a cold manner, taciturn, parchmenty. Though orders flash on his breast and a lace ruffle waves there, were it not for his piercing eyes he would look like a mummy in court dress.

  Talleyrand is in all respects the man of noble birth. Lame though he be, the prettiest women pay court to him. His charm is that of a rolling sphere, whose living summit is everywhere and nowhere. The assertion that he betrayed his master only for the sake of France, is belied by his immeasurable avarice and venality. For the nonce, he continues to serve the Emperor; but, from the first, the two men have mistrusted one another. Once, indeed, Talleyrand made a sacrifice for Napoleon. Late in the evening, when the two were on a journey together, the Emperor summoned the minister to his bedside for a talk about public affairs. Suddenly Napoleon fell asleep, and Talleyrand sat on guard till morning, not stirring, lest he should wake his master. That is his version of the affair. But the man's whole nature is so remote from any idea of sacrifice or sympathy, that we may suppose rather that his motive was the hope that Napoleon might reveal some important secret by talking in his sleep.

  A dozen times every year, the name of Madame de Stael crops up. Afraid of her and her works, he keeps her away from Paris with an obstinacy which arouses wonder. Yet she says of him : " His look grows infinitely tender when he speaks to women." Throughout Europe, the champions of the freedom of the spirit fall away from him; Byron, who had greatly admired him ; Beethoven, who cancels the original dedication of the Eroica to Napoleon. With painfully mixed feelings the Emperor must have read the tribute of the mad tsar Paul, who had already acclaimed the First

  England's Enmity

  Consul as the suppressor of the revolution.

  Since Marengo, he has been doing his utmost to maintain peace on the Continent, and for four years he has been successful. His hope is that the re-establishment of monarchy will appease the united princes, will assuage the anger they still cherish against France. The death of two men comes to thwart his plans. Tsar Paul is murdered, and this enemy of England is succeeded by a youthful son, an idealist, trained by French apostles of the enlightenment, a man with democratic leanings, gentle, muddle-headed, animated by the wish to be a better sovereign. Alexander, therefore, qui
ckly comes to an understanding with England, where, after Fox's brief predominance and death, a transient attempt at peace with France has been followed by a revival of the old jealous enmity. England fails to evacuate Malta as had been arranged, imposes new conditions, and is the first to break the peace. Once more there arises the menace of a European coalition under English leadership, a coalition that will aim at a Bourbon restoration, for talent enthroned in France sets so dangerous an example to all other countries.

  Thus, a year after the coronation, the war with England is resumed, and will not end until Napoleon's star sets. There is no campaigning, at first; simply a state of war, in which this great military commander cannot force a decision, and which, therefore, he cannot bring to a close. England has two notable advantages over her continental rivals, and over France in particular. It is an island realm; and it spreads athwart the world. Napoleon's historical sense, growing ever more alert, shows England to him as a new empire of Alexander, extending like Alexander's from homeland isles and peninsulas to Asia and to Africa, invincible so long as it remains a united whole. The dream of our new oriental splits upon this rock.

  On this rock, too, are wrecked the mathematician's calculations. The day after Aboukir, he had said that a decade would be

  No Sea Legs

  needed for the rebuilding of France's fleet. Half that time has elapsed, and England's naval predominance has steadily grown. During the brief peace, the soldiers of the unsuccessful Egyptian campaign are brought back to France in English bottoms ; England is confirmed in the possession of the Cape and other overseas colonies ; and France has more urgent claims on her energies than the building of the new fleet.

  Fundamentally, what was a ship to the Emperor ? He was competent to design a big gun, to cast it, to place every screw; and to repair every wheel and every shaft of an ammunition wagon. He knew when every horse in a cavalry squadron would have to be re-shod, and how much it would cost; and he knew exactly how many loaves a field bakery could turn out a day. This far-reaching knowledge was one of the secrets of his predominance ; made his subordinates zealous in their terror of his incessant control, whether in peace time or in war time ; aroused respect for the all-embracing intelligence of the chief; and ensured the exact carrying-out of his military ideas.