Napoleon

by Emil Ludwig

  This argument was valid in the past, when the general had sent from Italy the money which the indebted Directory needed, and when, as Consul and Emperor, he had made money by his wars. The French State, suffering more than any other from the effects of the blockade it had itself established, showed a deficit for the first time, though the deficit amounted to hardly more than fifty millions. Yet, even now, the Emperor refused to sanction any kind of State loan; " that would be immoral, for it would lay a burden upon later generations." Nevertheless, he introduced indirect taxes and monopolies ; nor did he act unwisely in doing so, since he expected to acquire fresh markets, and thereby more stable finances, from the Russian war. But victory was essential!

  He enthusiastically lays his plans before the Chambers of Commerce. " England has harmed herself far more by her blockade than she has harmed any other country; she has taught

  "I Alone Have Money"

  us how to dispense with her products. In a couple of years' time, Europe will have adapted herself to the new ways of feeding her populations. Soon, we shall have more than enough beet sugar and shall be able to do without cane sugar, . . . Every year I draw only nine hundred millions revenue from my own country; three hundred millions I put away, and store in the cellars of the Tuileries. The Bank of France is full of silver ; the Bank of England has none. Since the peace of Tilsit, I have received more than a milliard francs in indemnities. Austria is bankrupt. England and Russia will soon follow suit. I alone have money ! "

  All the same, no one has much faith in his fine words. The more the Emperor's plans for world conquest force the pace of recruiting, the more keenly does he keep watch upon the internal tranquillity of France. As the ruthlessness of his dictatorship increases, the mood of the citizens of France becomes gloomier and gloomier. Any criticism, even in the remotest corner of the realm, is immediately pounced upon and prosecuted. There are more than three thousand persons locked up in gaol without trial, because this one " hates the Emperor," or this other has certain " religious outlooks," or another has written, " in private letters, unfriendly expressions in regard to the government." A new press bureau, with the absurd name of " Bureau of Public Opinion," is established to manufacture political trends. When a Dutch newspaper publishes the statement that it is within the competence of the pope to excommunicate kings, not only is the journal suppressed, but the author of the offending article is arrested. In a certain book, an appreciation of the English constitution has to be deleted ; another work has to be rechristened " Campaigns of Napoleon the Great," whereas the author's original title had been " History of Bonaparte."

  While oppression of thought is rampant, it is not inconsonant with the imperialistic spirit to find that such men as Monge and Laplace, Guerin and Gerard, are willing to accept baronial

  Bureau of Public Opinion

  honours. And when the French version of The Robbers is prohibited in Hamburg, the last of the republicans recall with ironical bitterness the day twenty years earlier when the revolution had conferred the right of French citizenship upon its German author.

  What cares the Emperor for the mood of these ideologues ? Under the spell of the evolution of his own powers, his eyes fixed upon the goal of his life's aspiration, he misjudges now, as earlier in his struggle with the pope, the moral impression he is making upon his contemporaries. Yet in the past he had never failed to take this into account; at each step, he had questioned public opinion. Now, he allows the newfangled Bureau to manipulate public opinion : " What do I care for the opinion of the drawing-rooms and the babblers ! I recognise only one opinion, that of the peasants ! " Certain it is that the peasants are his most faithful supporters, mainly because he rescued their lands from the dangers threatened by the revolution. Now that the Spanish war has swallowed up larger and larger armies, the peasants have to pay eight thousand francs for a substitute, simply to save the few remaining sons to carry on the work of agriculture on the lands of their fathers. Many thousands of these young men are trying to evade service ; and those who in the early days of the war would have joyfully rallied to the colours, have now to be rounded up by mobile columns or forced into the ranks by threats against their families and the communes to which they belong.

  Why should the Emperor be surprised at such a change of mood ? Had not General Bonaparte set out to carry the ideas of the revolution to the peoples groaning under the yoke of emperors and kings ? Did not the First Consul go forth to repel in his one campaign, did not the Emperor likewise go forth to repel in his three wars, the ever-renewed onslaughts of the allied monarchs ? That by wars thus forced upon him he won more than freedom for the land of his adoption, that by the battles of Austerlitz, Jena, and Wagram he obtained new

  Peasants Begin to Grumble

  provinces from the enemy, was the outcome of his genius, and encouraged the people's army to fresh deeds of valour. Even the rivalry with England was comprehensible to the French people; had it not been ever thus in the days of their fathers and grandfathers before them ? But what could the peasant of Provence make of these purely political struggles in Spain and in Russia ? The Emperor could not explain to him the plan for setting up a United States of Europe. Men had disappeared in the rivers of Andalusia, the names of which fell haltingly from a Frenchman's lips. The peasant needed the support of his son's young arm, now that the years were creeping onward. So it was that he purchased his son's freedom from military service, and growled as he paid.

  What had the German peasants to say when, addressed as " contingents," they answered the call of their kings and accompanied the foreign Emperor into distant lands ? Thousands of peasants from the valley of the Main were dispatched to Spain; Jerome sent thirty thousand Westphalians to the Oder; Saxons guarded the Vistula ; Wiirttembergers and Bavarians flowed in a steady stream eastward, for " if the princes of the Confederation of the Rhine " (thus writes the Emperor to one of these same princes) " give me the least cause to doubt their willingness to undertake a joint defence, then, I tell them frankly, they are lost. I prefer open enemies to untrustworthy friends." Such is the crack of the master's whip. He deals more politely with the Habsburg. All being well, Austria may even be rewarded for her aid by receiving Silesia.

  Germany, composed as she is of many small and disintegrated fragments, serves Napoleon admirably in his jig-saw game with the nations. The three southern States have had their inhabitants and their lands bartered and exchanged at will; and, since Eugene has lost his throne to the Emperor's son (the baby was made " King of Rome ") he is immediately installed as ruler in the hastily concocted " grand duchy of Frankfort."

  Prussia Vacillates

  What of Prussia ? Why should Prussia continue to exist ? Had he not, in Tilsit days, merely preserved this kingdom to please the tsar ? But he is about to destroy the tsar ! By notices and decrees, the Emperor announces that now, just before the war with Russia begins, Prussia is to be parcelled up. Does he not know that for the last year Prussia has been the ally of Russia, and that in a secret treaty the tsar has promised Frederick William his assistance ? The Emperor hears much of defiant songs, of volunteer corps, of discontent in the universities, of the Tugendbund. Beware ! Remember Spain ! Do not trust to the proverbial " tolerance and coldness of these north Germans " ! Surely it would be wiser to utilise the Prussian army before destroying it. ...

  The great-hearted Scharnhorst assures Frederick William that now is the time to strike. But Metternich, in Vienna, tricks the Prussian general when he proposes an alliance, and advises him to seek alliance with Russia rather than with the Habsburg emperor. For only if the man with whom he exchanges these words of false friendship, becomes an opponent, only if Prussia enters the war as Austria's enemy, can Austria hope to enclose Silesia once more within her borders. At the same time Hardenberg bends before the Vienna wind, to-day as always. The king, who will take no risks, and who considers Napoleon absolutely unconquerable, at last makes up his mind to enter into alliance with the Emperor; his resolution comes to
o late to secure favourable terms. Silesia and Poland are already alive with troops, and Prussia is surrounded. In such circumstances it is natural that she should be treated as a vassal, should have to tolerate the passage of armies, should have to put up with requisitionings, should have to look on patiently while her eastern fortresses are manned by French soldiers and her auxiliary corps commanded by foreign marshals. Metternich writes to his master in gleeful mood : " Prussia need no longer be reckoned among the powers."

  And yet! And yet! Although Europe, from Capua to

  A-flicker with Excitement

  Tilsit, at the outset of 1812, is rallying to Napoleon's standard, although his arm reaches from Finisterre to Bukovina, he feels how uncertain is the outcome of his campaign, and, as Count Segur tells us, starts up from the conning of his interminable lists and calculations to exclaim in terror: "I am not ready to undertake a war in such far-off lands ! I need three years more ! "

  But the machine rolls on; no master hand can stay it. An inner impulse urges him forward; the whole history of his rise to power impels him ; all the shades of vanished years drive him on. He, who has built so many harbours wherein to seek refuge in times of storm and stress, is in the end tossed out upon the open sea, more roughly, more speedily than he had wished, and, with the wild determination of the adventurer, he now recklessly seizes the steering-wheel which for so long he has manipulated with statesmanlike care. " Do you not see," he exclaims to his brother, " that I can only keep my seat upon this throne by means of the fame which brought me to it ? That a private individual such as I, who has merely risen to become a ruler, dare not call a halt ? That such a one is constrained to mount higher and ever higher, and is doomed to perish the moment he stops climbing ? "

  His soul is a-flicker with excitement, so that at one moment he is eager for the final struggle, and at the next dreads it. His letter to the tsar, with which, as heretofore, he begins the campaign, still preserves a friendly tone. At the same time he says to a Russian colonel who is on spy duty in Paris : " Since the tsar is young and I have yet many years to live, I had thought to preserve the peace of Europe by means of our good feelings towards one another. My feelings have not changed. Tell him this; and say, in addition, that if the fates decree that the two greatest powers of the world are to come to blows over girlish peccadilloes, I shall enter the lists as a gallant knight, without hatred and without enmity. I suggest to him the possibility of our meeting for breakfast together between our

  What Is Alexander Thinking?

  respective outposts. ... I still hope that we shall not spill the blood of hundreds of thousands of brave men, simply because we cannot agree as to the colour of a ribbon ! "

  How his own unrest vibrates through these brilliant sub terfuges, which he specially adapts to cajole Alexander's feminine disposition! A grey gauntlet of steel is hurled from one world power to the other; the great fight between birth and genius is now to take place in all its grandeur. And he who, after two decades of dreaming, sees his dream descending out of the clouds earthwards, talks as if nothing more were at stake than a girls' quarrel or the colour of a piece of ribbon— when in reality the fate of the world hangs in the balance !

  IV

  What is passing in Alexander's mind ? Estranged from the Russian nobility, railed at by his mother, cheated out of his hopes of setting up the cross once more on St. Sophia, deeply concerned about Poland (which his adversary threatens to liberate)—there are reasons enough, both in political and court life, why he should no longer regard Napoleon as his friend. After Tilsit, Metternich had said that it would take five years for the tsar's feelings to swing to the opposite pole. That period had now elapsed, and although the tsar's was one of those nervous temperaments in which moods decide actions, on his side, too, the struggle could assume allegorical greatness. But he lacked a grand aim and a lofty thought. He was not even fighting to win warlike renown against the master craftsman in the art of war. The impulses that drove him to the fight were merely the outcome of a confused mysticism, in whose waters he had drowned his old veneration for the magician of Tilsit.

  Politically, he makes two successful moves in the game, one of these being intimately adapted to the peculiarities of human character, and therefore weighty with consequence. To cope

  Bernadotte 's Ambitions

  with Napoleon, he needs tranquillity on his southern and his northern borders. He finds means to keep the sultan neutral; but in the case of Sweden he manages even better, for he is able to secure an alliance. He and Bernadotte meet on the frontier; and here, for the second time, the tsar of all the Russias succumbs to the charm of a French revolutionary. Sweden is in danger of English vengeance. Norway belongs to the Francophil Danes. The community of interests between Sweden and Russia secures expression when Russia, in return for a promise of help in the coming war, guarantees that Sweden shall have Norway.

  But this prospect of territorial enlargement is not the thing that spurs Bernadotte to action. He, who is king in Napoleon's despite, cares no more about his new subjects than those who had become kings by Napoleon's favour cared about theirs. But the tsar, too, has an imagination. Looking forward to the winning of this game, he sees in broad outline what lies beyond. He sees, not only the Emperor's defeat, but the Emperor's destruction; and while Napoleon, at the head of the greatest army known to history, is slowly advancing to swallow up the tsar, Alexander is promising Bernadotte, the friend of Bonaparte's youth, no less a prize than the throne of France.

  To such heights, this summer, do the opposing eagles soar.

  In Dresden, the Emperor treats all the princes to the spectacle of a review, just as he had done four years earlier in Erfurt. The only sovereign from among that company who is absent, is the one he is now to fight. But Alexander's place has been taken by the Habsburg ruler. Only once before have Napoleon and Francis met, on the day after Austerlitz. Twice, since then, has the victorious Emperor of the French occupied the Austrian's abandoned capital. When peace had been made between them, and the victor had wedded the daughter of the vanquished, the girl had been sent alone from Vienna to distant Paris.

  Now Marie Louise sits between husband and father at the

  Many Legions

  sparkling board, and to outward seeming all is well. The father-in-law is pledged in alliance, and the Emperor has appointed his wife regent of France. But vainly has he forbidden her to be so foolish as to attempt the outshining of her stepmother on these festal occasions. The empress from Paris sheds tears at the prohibition, while the empress from Vienna weeps because her pearls are smaller than those worn by Marie Louise. The old jealousies between the principalities and powers now find vent in family quarrels which the courtiers try to gloss over. When a health is drunk to the boy who should be a tie between all four of them, both the men and both the women drown their thoughts in their champagne, though each knows perfectly well what the others are thinking.

  The December meeting in the windmill near Austerlitz, and the May meeting in the palace of the Saxon kings! Son-in-law and father-in-law will never set eyes on one another again.

  Meanwhile, half a million men are being ranged between Konigsberg and Lemberg. The master of these legions journeys to Posen, and announces the " Second Polish War," for his ostensible aim is merely to wrest Poland from, the tsar—most of the old kingdom, at any rate, as far as Smolensk. " There or in Minsk," he tells a confidant, " the campaign will end. I shall winter in Vilna, organise Lithuania, and live at Russia's expense. If, then, peace cannot be secured, I shall, next year, advance into the centre of the enemy's land, and stay there until the tsar becomes pliable." The whole disposition of Napoleon's troops is made in accordance with this scheme. At Russia's expense ? What supplies can he get from Russia ? Has he accurate information regarding the resources of this foreign land?

  In Gumbinnen, he sends for a Prussian president. Speaking of the stores of grain he has collected in the German ports, and proposes to have sent to Kovno, he says :r />
  " I presume there are plenty of mills in Kovno ? "

  " No, Sire; very few mills are to be found there."

  " Too Far, Sire!"

  The Emperor looks at Berthier "dubiously." This glance of the supreme war lord at his chief of general staff is a foreshadowing of the disillusionments he is to experience in the unknown land beyond the Memel. It is not the mere lack of mills which disturbs him, but the fact that he is taken by surprise. For a whole year, the Emperor has been preparing the great campaign. Troops, parks of ammunition, reserve corps, fourteen hundred pieces of ordnance, siege trains, bridge-building materials, pontoons, have been assembled from seven realms, counting the Confederation of the Rhine as one. Eight Baltic fortresses are used as storehouses, to which hundreds of ships and thousands of wagons bring wheat and rice. Some of the wagons are drawn by oxen which are destined for the slaughterhouse at the end of their journey—a symbol of compulsory military service, in which a man serves only that he may die. Now Napoleon learns that he is about to enter a country without mills. He can build them, no doubt; but at what cost in time and men ! Are other surprises awaiting him across the Russian border ? It will be impossible to carry fodder for one hundred and fifty thousand horses. That is why he has waited till June, when the grass will be green. But what if the steppe should disappoint him here ?

  And what if his men's spirit should disappoint him ?

  On the frontier, warning voices make themselves heard. He is told that these young recruits are hardly able to endure the long marches, and that the heat will be too much for them. In Dresden, Murat had vainly asked for furlough. Now, in Danzig, he and Berthier and Rapp are dining with the Emperor in gloomy silence. Napoleon, emerging from his thoughts of world conquest, suddenly asks Rapp : " How far is it from Danzig to Cadiz ? " Rapp is bold enough to answer : " Too far, Sire ! " Thereupon the master rejoins :