Napoleon

by Emil Ludwig

  Miscalculation

  more, to send you a kiss. Ah, Josephine ! Josephine ! "

  What a confession! With ardour and ambition he pushes forward to the goal, but the enemy has escaped, and what is to be done ? Resignation must be the first aim after a failure, not raging and cursing. A man must retain his self-respect, and act prudently. A little mockery, embellished with courtesy, will have its due effect. Next day, he has turned things over in his mind. I must have her. How shall I lure her back ? To extol my exploits does not move her in the least. What does influence her ? Flattery and service. Such is his calculation. A miscalculation : for he, who is masterful with kings, fails to see that the charming Josephine would fear a master, even though she would not worship him; that nothing makes her more secure in her own position than his confessed passion.

  Napoleon's mistake is the outcome of his pride. His pride will lead him to the limits of what is humanly possible, but will in the long run mislead him into the greatest of his blunders. Now, it is pride that prevents his veiling a passion which he does not master because he does not wish to do so. After all his carefully planned phrases to the effect that he wishes to be of use to her, the foolish human heart drives him, with the gesture of a love-sick youth, to tear open his letter that he may "send a kiss."

  VI

  What is Paris saying ?

  Paris is radiant, for, after long years, it once more has a hero to worship. Bonaparte's picture is in all the shops; rhymed comparisons of him with the heroes of antiquity are in every one's mouth ; the actors speak of him when instructions are sent to announce a new victory; the colours he has taken from the enemy are on show at the Luxembourg; his reports, cut about by the Directors, appear in the " Moniteur." Songs, medals,

  The Government Grows Anxious

  caricatures (a recent importation from across the Channel), enliven the boulevards.

  He knows all this. He knows, likewise, that the rapid growth of his popularity is alarming the Directors, who feel that he has long ceased to be their creature. " The fellow's perpetual victories will be the death of us," they think, and put their heads together. A people's army is invincible, but it is dangerous unless its officers are genuinely devoted to the government. For the last seven years, it has been the rulers' way to threaten with the guillotine any general who has dared to meddle in politics on his own account. " A commander who does not comply with our orders, who makes light of the commissaries we send to his camp, must be dismissed, even if his name be Napoleon Bonaparte. Saliceti is too much under his thumb, being a fellow-Corsican, and having an uneasy conscience because he betrayed Bonaparte not very long ago. Let us send another commissary, Clarke, who is both prudent and ambitious.

  Elegant and high-spirited, himself a general, Clarke, while on the journey to Milan, looks forward to twisting Bonaparte round his fingers. That gawky little fellow in the threadbare uniform whom he had often met at Barras' should be easy enough to deal with. But in the Palazzo Serbelloni, the envoy is abashed before the commander. Napoleon has not grown any taller, certainly; but the manner of his entries and exits, while all wait for his coming or make way for his going, suggests the ruler rather than the simple warrior. The commissary has a courteous reception, but he is far from being able to penetrate Bonaparte's secret plans and report them to his masters. On the contrary, within a couple of days the commander-in-chief has full knowledge of the Directors' private designs, about which Clarke ought to have kept his mouth shut. The commissary has bowed before the higher authority. " Here is the man of the future," says he to himself; and promptly changes sides. Napoleon's suspicions are now confirmed. He knows that the Directors are using his conquests as mere pawns in the game

  The Fowler

  they are playing to secure peace with the Austrians. They have no intention of keeping Italy, and still less do they think of revolutionising it. Now that he is forewarned, he will make all his preparations to thwart the government's plans.

  But he still has need of the Directors. " Reinforcements ! Reinforcements ! Not in name only, not on paper merely, but armed men in the flesh. . . . My best soldiers are wounded; none of my staff officers and generals are fit for active service. The new levies are raw and unsteady. The army is reduced to a handful of exhausted warriors. We are forsaken in the middle of Italy. The few brave fellows left to me, are marked out for death unless you send ample reinforcements. Soon may strike the hour of the valiant Augereau, the indomitable Massena, Berthier, myself. What will happen then to the lads in the ranks ? This thought makes me cautious. I no longer dare to defy death, for if I were to fall it would demoralise those who are the object of all my care."

  Could anything be more artfully phrased ?

  Yes, he has another string to his bow. When he does not threaten imminent destruction, he cajoles with gifts. Month after month, to this government whose only resources have for some time been piles of almost worthless paper currency, he sends a consignment of hard cash, gold extorted from princes and republics by the terms of truce. He is the first commander to send money home, instead of continually demanding money. And in addition he has little presents to spare for the Directors. " I am sending a hundred of the finest horses I can lay my hands on, to replace any you may have that are not really good enough to draw your carriages."

  He asks for the troops quartered in the southern provinces of France, and is told that they are needed for home service. " It is better," he rejoins, " that there should be broils in Lyons, while we keep Italy, than conversely." When told to leave all diplomatic negotiations to the commissaries, his answer runs :

  And Again, Unity of Command

  " For such matters, you do not merely need a one and only general; you must see to it that no one and nothing interfere with him in his work. . . . My advance is no less precise than my thought process. . . . We have to do everything with a weak army : thrust back the German troops ; lay siege to fortresses; keep our lines of communication open; threaten Genoa, Venice, Tuscany, Rome, and Naples ; show our strength here, there, and everywhere. For this, absolute unity of the

  military, political, and financial command is indispensable. . . . Unless the general remains the great centre, you will be exposed to incessant danger. I hope this language will not be ascribed to personal ambition. For my own part, I am

  unfortunately overburdened with honours, and my health has been so seriously undermined that I may soon have to ask you to appoint my successor. I can no longer mount a horse; nothing is left to me but courage. ... I am continuing the negotiations. Troops ! troops !—if you want to keep Italy,. Bonaparte."

  The more popular he becomes, the more often does he tender his resignation, though his health is in truth excellent, and day after day he rides until his horse stumbles from fatigue. Woe to the Parisian lawyers if they run counter to his wishes ! While he strengthens France's power in Italy, he is consolidating his own influence in Paris ; this is his new idea. Although he neither champions popular freedom nor believes Italy ripe for it, he insists upon the formation of the " Cisalpine Republic," against the wishes of the Directors—among whom Carnot, at least, is a convinced democrat, though he wants to use Italy as a pawn in the French game.

  This is the first occasion on which Bonaparte builds up an organism out of centrifugal forces. In days to come, he will repeat the process again and again, on an ever grander scale of creation, his aim being to establish a United Europe. He now welds together the half-dozen petty States of northern Italy, prescribes their constitution, appoints and dismisses their

  The Price of Liberation

  officials. Throughout, he is the dictator, and yet all the time he acts on rational principles and allows for elasticity in matters of detail. He issues brilliant proclamations, announcing that these States are to be free whether they like it or not, and that they are to pay him promptly in hard cash for the privilege.

  " The French Republic has sworn hatred of the tyrants, brotherhood with the peoples. This principle of the
constitution is the principle of the army as well. The despot who has so long kept Lombardy enslaved, has done great injury to France. . . . The victorious army of an insolent monarch was compelled to spread terror among the conquered. But the republican army, while waging war to the death against its enemies, the kings, gives a pledge of friendship to the peoples it has set free. Respect for property, humanity, and religion— this is our animating principle. But the Lombards owe us, who are their brothers, a fair return. . . . Lombardy must support us with all her resources. We need provisions, for France is so far away that we cannot supply our requirements thence. We are entitled to them by the right of conquest; friendship must hasten to offer them to us. We have to requisition twenty million francs from the provinces. They are so rich that this will not be a serious burden."

  Then he takes whatever he wants out of the taxes, the countryside, the camps, the arsenals, and the domains. In the articles of every truce, he demands money, oxen, and pictures. If he sends pictures and statues to Paris, this will not, of course, stabilise the currency; but it will tickle the vanity of the Parisians, and win him popular favour. In a period of intense financial stringency, Bonaparte, with Italy as his source of supply, stocks the Louvre with precious works of art, contributing far more than the most resplendent of kings.

  But all the time, while he is ruthlessly extorting money from the Italians, he is not less ruthless with Frenchmen who are

  Struggle Against Venality

  trying to feather their own nests. In one of his early despatches, he writes : " The army consumes five times as much as it should, because the commissariat officers are falsifying their accounts. . . . Prodigality, venality, and peculation are rife. There is only one thing to do : a committee of three must be appointed, with power, during from three to five days, to shoot every dishonest administrator." When the deliveries of hay are found to be short weight, he declares : " It is of the utmost importance that not one of these rascals shall escape. Too long have the army and the country been the victims of cupidity." Innumerable are the documents bearing his signature which are directed against these plunderers. When the influx of women camp-followers exceeds all bounds, he issues the following order : " Any woman found among the troops without a permit twenty-four hours after the posting of this notice, will be blackwashed and publicly exposed for two hours."

  On the other hand, this strict disciplinarian was humane in his desire to put an end to some of the barbarities which still characterised war in those days : " The infamous practice of flogging men to make them disclose secrets, must come to an end. The only result of torturing people in this way is that the poor wretches say whatever they think will please their captors. I forbid the use of means that are equally repugnant to humanity and reason."

  VII

  As a diplomat, he strengthens all the instruments of diplomacy : flattery and threats ; lying and frankness—or sometimes, even in diplomatic negotiations, he will play the bluff soldier. He is especially shrewd in his dealings with the Vatican.

  As thorough-going revolutionists, the Directors wish to put an end to the temporal power of the pope ; for the Papal States are the focus of the religion which revolutionary France has rejected. The prospect of this moral success, to be gilded by

  Understanding with Rome

  the wealth of the Vatican, charms them more than all Bonaparte's activities in the formation of border States. They insist upon his advancing against Rome. Now he will be able to see it close at hand, this city with which, from childhood onwards, his imagination has associated power, greatness, and fame. Like Caesar, he will be able to pluck laurels from the Capitol, for the papal troops cannot stand against him for a moment.

  But he holds his hand. For him, the pope is the only ruler who cannot be dethroned by big guns. He sees the idea behind the papacy, with its millennial influence on France and Europe ; he knows the moral repercussions of martyrdom, and he has determined not to wage war upon the pope, unless it be a make-believe. " The influence of Rome is incalculable. It was a serious error to break with this power, which will profit by our mistake."

  He moves southward, and, literally, crosses the Rubicon, but there he stops. Because he is the stronger, he offers a truce; henceforward this will be his technique. The aged pope accepts the offer, for Bonaparte is wise enough to leave all ecclesiastical questions open. Pius VI promises to pay France several millions ; to hand over one hundred pictures, busts, vases, or statues as the French commissioners shall determine. There are only two articles for which the commander-in-chief makes a specific demand : He wants the busts of Junius Brutus and Marcus Brutus from the Capitol. He is a Roman from Corsica; he crosses the Rubicon, spares Rome, and does not enter the city; but he requisitions the busts of the two heroes of antiquity.

  When the pope fails to pay up, and makes difficulties, Napoleon sets out towards Rome a second time, but does not go to the city. After a trifling skirmish, he is willing to make peace. He will soon want to use his soldiers in the north. A pope on the run would carry his treasures with him, and what would there be left then for the poor Directors in Paris ? On his own initiative,

  Gospel and Republic

  he actually pardons the French priests who have refused to take the oath of allegiance to the constitution and have sought refuge in Rome. He makes friends everywhere among the clergy, compares a " citizen archbishop " to one of the apostles, and writes as follows in several of his letters to high ecclesiastics: " The teaching of the Gospels is based on equality, and is therefore the most suitable for any republic." What will they say to that in Paris, where Christ has been done away with ?

  Finally, he sends to the pope, who is on the point of taking to flight, an assurance that there is nothing to be afraid of. " Tell the Holy Father that I am not an Attila ; and that even if I were, the Holy Father should not forget that he is a successor of Leo." He thus dresses himself in historical trappings when he is dealing with the oldest of the thrones. But when the nuncio is slow to sign the new agreement, the polished man of the world is suddenly metamorphosed into a soldier, who tears up the draft and throws it into the fire. " We are not discussing terms of peace, Monsignore; there is merely a suspension of hostilities." The other side is alarmed. He doubles his demands, and this time he gets what he wants. Thereupon the pope writes his " dear son " a letter, and gives the child of the revolution his blessing.

  He never wraps up his doings in mystery, as the diplomats of those days were wont to do. An hour after his first truce has been arranged, he discusses recent happenings with the freedom of a historian in the next generation. Talking to the conquered Piedmontese over the dinner table, he says : " My attack on the castle of Cossaria was needless; but your movement of the 17th was a sound tactical manoeuvre."

  At the end of the second campaign, he again shows himself a master in respect of both self-confidence and moderation. He has moved forward out of Lombardy in the beginning of March, and by the end of the month he is already in Styria, a few days' march from Vienna. If the Army of the Rhine follows up his

  First Overtures for Peace

  blow by similar victories, they will be able to dictate peace to Emperor Francis. Yet he chooses to halt, and to offer peace to the vanquished. True, the Army of the Rhine is still a good way off, whilst Austria and Hungary are arming themselves in frenzied haste. To stay where he is as a menace, this is the conqueror's logic.

  Bonaparte, however, is a statesman. The Directors want peace before the elections, and he still has need of the Directors. How would it be if he, he alone, the soldier, were to bring France the peace for which she has been waiting five years ? Is he to share the glory of this achievement with his rivals in the Army of the Rhine ? The fortune of war is uncertain, and none but the foolhardy will tempt it unless they must. Once more he has broken the troops of the Empire, cut off as they are from the Rhenish armies. For a year, Europe has been afraid of the new commander; it will become him now to make a gesture of peace, so that people may lear
n to revere the new statesman. Without courtly periphrases, and as an equal, he writes to the defeated Austrian leader, Emperor Francis' brother :

  " Commander-in-Chief, Sir! Our valiant soldiers are waging war and want peace. Has not the war lasted six years ? Have we not killed enough people ; have we not brought enough suffering upon mankind ? Everywhere there is a reaction towards humaneness, and almost everywhere the enemies of France have laid down their arms. Your nation is the only exception. The omens of this new campaign are sinister. However it may end, each of us will slay a few thousands of the other's soldiers ; and yet, in the end, we shall make peace, for everything comes to an end, even the fiercest hatred. . . . You, who stand so near to the throne, uplifted above the petty emotions of statesmen and governments, are not you disposed to win for yourself the title of benefactor of mankind, saviour of Germany ? I regard it as quite possible for you to save your country by force of arms. But, even then, Germany will be laid waste. If these lines could save the life of but one man, I should

  The Diplomat

  pride myself more upon my civic crown than upon the melancholy renown of the battle-field."

  This letter makes a strong appeal to Archduke Charles. A highly cultured man, declared enemy of all wars, and only acting as commander-in-chief from a sense of duty, with this document in his hand he will be able to make headway against the war party in Vienna and to influence the emperor. For what would happen should they refuse ? Bonaparte would certainly publish his letter and their reply. He would have another chance of parading before Europe the humanist ideals of the republic, and contrasting with them the feudal militarism of the empire. He would lay the country waste with fire and sword, while censuring us before the world for our truculence. He is following up his letter by advancing his troops, and he has already occupied Leoben.