Napoleon

by Emil Ludwig

  He has good reason to be on his guard. Uneasy winter weeks are these, during which he collates the data sent in by a hundred spies in London, Vendee, and Paris itself. " Has the time come to strike ? " his agents are continually asking. " Wait," he replies, and quietly goes on gathering information. At length he has all the proofs in his hands. His deadly enemies of the extreme right and the extreme left, the royalists and the Jacobins, have joined forces for the destruction of their great enemy. Pichegru, the friend of the Bourbons, and Moreau, the champion of the republicans who are opposed to the dictatorship, are working together. Both the generals are his rivals. Now is the time to strike.

  When the plot became public property, alarm spread across Europe. The legitimate rulers were amazed at Napoleon's perspicacity, but put their trust in his enemies, whose number must be greater than the " Moniteur " was willing to admit. The English ambassador compromised ! The great Moreau in jail ! —Bonaparte hesitates a long time before arresting Moreau, having high esteem for the man who had shared his laurels. On the day of the arrest, the Consul sends repeatedly for news. Is his memory at work ? Less than four years ago, he himself had a scare that night in Talleyrand's house when he believed his own arrest to be imminent ! The trial is distressing; Moreau's complicity is clearly proved; but Napoleon thinks it better to

  Kidnapping ofEnghien

  pardon the victor of Hohenlinden on condition of withdrawal to the United States. Pichegru is found strangled in prison. Thirteen of the conspirators are executed. A man named Querelle, personally involved in the conspiracy, reveals that one of the Bourbon princes has been privy to the plot. The Consul lends an eager ear. A Bourbon prince ! Talleyrand draws attention to the fact that for a long time the duke of Enghien has been living close to the Rhine frontier—presumably in order to watch through a telescope what is going on in France. Would a man spend his time thus inertly in Baden, simply in order to make love to a cardinal's niece ? The duke of Enghien is a scion of the house of Conde; he is a Bourbon, and is in English pay. Most likely he is the Bourbon prince incriminated in the affair. At any rate, he is in touch with the agents who swarm in South Germany. An example must be made of this suspect of the blood royal. That will put an end to the reiterated attempts on the part of the exiled Bourbons to disturb the peace of France and to trouble the sleep of its master !

  In a lengthy despatch, the Consul orders an attack on the little Badenese town of Ettenheim, just across the Rhine. The number of boats and the soldiers' rations are prescribed with as much care as if the expedition were the siege of Mantua. Three hundred dragoons make a raid into Baden and carry off the duke. Four days later, he is brought in secret to the fortress of Vincennes.

  Two of Napoleon's confidants warn the dictator that no compromising documents have been found among the duke of Enghien's belongings. But Talleyrand, who has ever an eye to his own future, advises court martial and the severest measures, knowing that the moral reprobation thus aroused will, in the end, prove disastrous to Napoleon. Brother Joseph is alarmed at the same thought. He reminds Napoleon of the veneration they had shared for the great Conde during their cadet days; of the verses they had recited about the hero of the seventeenth

  Shot at Dawn

  century. Was the only remaining descendant of that famous man to be slaughtered ?

  " I have made up my mind to pardon him," answers the Consul. " But that is not sufficient. I feel that I am strong enough to have him fighting on my side."

  Joseph returns home, able to reassure Madame de Stael and his other guests.

  The duke, who was two years younger than Napoleon, and who would probably have won renown but for the peculiar political circumstances which had brought Napoleon fame and power, was tried by court martial the same evening. With a brave and knightly bearing, he faced the twelve staff officers who formed the court, while a member of the Council of State, acting as prosecutor, asked the questions that had been drafted by Napoleon.

  " Did you never have any dealings with English agents ? "— " No."—" Was it not your intention, if Pichegru's conspiracy had been successful, to cross the Rhine and invade Alsace ? "— " No."—" Have you been in receipt of an English pension ? "— " Yes."—" Did you wish to enter the English service ? "—" Yes, in order to free my country."—" This means that you placed yourself at England's disposal in order to take up arms against France ? "—" How can a Conde return to his homeland except under arms ? "

  A death sentence follows, and next day at dawn the duke of Enghien is shot.

  In one respect the treatment of the duke of Enghien was definitely illegal. The French had no right to kidnap him in foreign territory and to bring him across the frontier. Once he was on French soil, there was legal warrant for condemning him to death as a person who (according to his own admission) desired by force of arms to overthrow the extant form of State. With the primary reservation regarding the French raid into Baden, of course absolutely indefensible, the condemnation was technically just.

  Consequences of a Blunder

  Nevertheless, as Talleyrand subsequently said of the affair, it was worse than a crime—it was a blunder. In time of revolution, hundreds are put to death who are more innocent than was this prince. Even though he may not have been privy to the plot, he would have hailed with delight the assassination of the usurper, and would, sword in hand (to quote his own words), have joined in the march on Paris to take vengeance on any of the regicides who remained alive. There would have been very little said about the court martialling and shooting of this young officer, had he not been a Bourbon, had he not been a symbol of that prince-ridden Europe whose system had been ended on French soil by the revolution. The shooting of the duke of Enghien was a challenge to a dozen thrones, and to the many millions of Europeans who believed in rule by divine right. It gave the signal for a rallying of forces against the dictator who had had neither part nor lot in the reign of terror, and who during his seven years as military commander and as statesman had never committed an outrage.

  The day after the execution, a few tongue-tied and crestfallen guests were seated at his board. Josephine was doing her best to hide her fears, and Napoleon had been taciturn despite his tumultuous thoughts. Then, suddenly, he broke out: " At any rate, they will know now what we can do. Henceforward, I hope, they will leave us in peace." After dinner, he walked up and down the room, explaining to the silent listeners his reasons and what he thought of it all. Continuing to pace the room, he went on to speak movingly of genius, of statesmanship, and above all of Frederick the Great, for whom he had so profound an admiration:

  " Ought a statesman to indulge in feelings ? Is he not an isolated individual, always alone though always in company ? Policy is his telescope, which must neither reduce things in size nor magnify them. Even while he is attentively watching the course of events, he must be pulling the strings which move them. Often enough, ill-matched horses are harnessed to his

  Napoleon's Defence

  chariot. Do you think he can allow himself to heed some of those feelings which may in other respects be of great importance to the welfare of society ? . . . How often he will have to do things which seem quite out of keeping with the whole ! . . . Try to get outside the limitations of your own epoch, enlarge your imagination instead of being content merely to blame, and you will see that those great personalities you had regarded as violent and cruel, are nothing but statesmen ! They know themselves better than others know them; they are the best judges of their own conduct; if they have true ability, they will even know how to control their passions, for they will be competent to calculate the precise effect of these."

  Suddenly breaking off this monologue, which discloses some of the deepest recesses of his soul, he sends for the documents bearing on the conspiracy and has them read over to him.

  " You see," he says, " we have incontrovertible proof that the conspirators wanted to spread disorder in France, and hoped, through killing me, to slay the revolution ! It was my business to de
fend the revolution, to avenge it! The duke was a conspirator just like another, and had to be treated in the same way as the others. . . . The madmen seek to kill me, though they would gain nothing by it, for a gang of fanatical Jacobins would take my place. . . . These Bourbons ! If they ever do regain power, I will wager that their first concern will be with etiquette. If they were prepared to share in the rough and tumble of the battle-field, with its blood and its grime ! . . . But how can they expect to win back a kingdom with a letter dated from London and signed Louis ? All the same, letters like that will incriminate incautious recipients. ... I have shed blood ; I had to. Perhaps I shall shed more in the future. But always without passion, quite simply, because blood-letting is indicated. I am a statesman : I am the French revolution, and shall know how to protect it ! " Abruptly he dismisses his guests.

  Such is his mood; such are his motives, his views, the

  Improvisation

  undercurrents of his feelings. But his notable inferences are not yet disclosed.

  VII

  A week after the court-martialling of the duke of Enghien a committee of the Senate comes to see the Consul, with a very remarkable twofold request: for the establishment of a State tribunal and the foundation of a monarchy. This is a cautious improvisation, to test the current of popular opinion. Can anything be more logical, or simpler ? To scare the terrorists, to safeguard the head of the State, two things are requisite, a State tribunal and an heir !

  As with all the decisions of his life, so also this premature resolve to become an emperor is an outgrowth of circumstances. In none of the decisive moments of his career, do we find evidence that he had a definite scheme of life, which he systematically endeavoured to realise. When he first invaded Italy, it was not in search of the crown of Milan, and still less in search of the crown of France. But, as he winged his soaring flight, the natural sequence was that wider and ever wider vistas of land and sea should unfold themselves before his eyes. What happened, was a fulfilment of his own guiding principle: " He will not go far who knows from the first whither he is going." Improvisation, which, in amazing fashion, characterises so much of his activity, merely deprives him of the nebular glory of the mystical hero. As far as details are concerned, it leaves him free to make exact preparations, while restoring to him, as a whole, a liberty and a guilelessness which strengthen his genius.

  Was the desire to become emperor a mistake ? What urged him towards the adoption of such a role ?

  First of all, the imaginative side of his nature, which for the second time is blinding the cold reason of the calculator. Thus was it in Egypt, and thus was it to be for a third time in Russia.

  The Imperial Dignity

  His ideal drives him to take this step. He had grown to manhood amid dreams of the antique world ; classical imagery had filled his mind; his dictatorial nature necessarily craved for the forms of Roman imperialism. A poetical temperament which makes him look upon the successive occurrences in his life as phases in the unrolling of a saga, and makes him feel, on the very evening after a battle has been won, that the battle has already passed into the realm of history ; this engine, driven by the power of fantasy ; this eye that looks upward and beyond to see how posterity will crown his deeds with fame—they need a symbol which no one has to-day, but which shone over Europe two thousand years ago.

  Yet the mathematician in him also needs this symbol; the statesman needs it, that he may safeguard his country without perpetual wars. Lastly, and perhaps most passionately of all, the man with strong family attachments needs it; the man who feels he has won nothing, if what he has won be no more than an adventurer's prize that will perish with the winner.

  " The name of king is outworn. It carries with it a trail of obsolete ideas, and would make me nothing more than the heir of dead men's glories. I do not wish to be dependent upon any predecessor. The title of emperor is greater than that of king. Its significance is not wholly explicable, and therefore it stimulates the imagination." Here, in two or three sentences, are compendiously disclosed the impetus and the hot, the cunning and the cold, motives of his soul.

  Does he see the dangers, or does he overlook them ? What are his antitoxins ? " What is a throne ? A piece of wood covered with satin ! " When he has become emperor he will ask the question and answer it thus, more than once. But with this satin-covered piece of wood, as he knows, he can influence grown men, just as he could influence them with the toys of the Legion of Honour. Indeed, the glamour of the throne is stronger, and therefore he will take the establishment of his throne more seriously than he took the foundation of the Legion

  Blindness to Its Dangers

  of Honour. It is an instrument of policy, a means for the management of men. In the real world, where no one can call familiar spirits to his aid, the private person, the poet or the philosopher, can raise his head heavenward without bearing the burden of a crown ; but the statesman needs the insignia of power, for the dull populace cannot believe in the reality of power unless he who wields power wears the insignia.

  Are we to suppose that he, who can calculate all eventualities, does not see the danger that lurks in the symbol of the crown ? Does he not know that for thousands of years people have regarded the monarch as akin to God ? If he is aware of this, how without disaster will he be able to harmonise the illusion with his political cynicism ? If the crown is the gift of his genius, how can he bequeath it without bequeathing the genius ?

  Nevertheless, all his endeavours, like those of the emperors of ancient Rome, are now concentrated upon the bequest of power. He, whose own genius has taught him that genius is always aboriginal and primary ; he who with his own eyes has seen hereditary power perish amid blood and grime, and whose in-most heart said aye to the act of regicide; he, who to-day reproaches the Bourbons, not with their origin, but with the cowardice that keeps them trembling in their mouseholes ; he, Napoleon Bonaparte, who feels himself to be the one man of a millennium ; he, a principle of whose rule it is to grant honour and wealth only to merit and courage and talent; he, who is the symbol of revolt incorporated in human flesh—believes that in the place he has fought and won for himself through the storms of eight years, he will be able to perpetuate his blood for the sole reason that it is his own !

  He knows Plutarch and the story of the Csesars. He has studied the history of the great kings of France and England and Prussia, and has learned to look with contempt upon their decadence. And yet he is ready and eager to restore the hereditary principle for the succession to this, the highest office in the State ! Here, and here only, he wishes to combine the

  Genius and Family Man

  newest of the new with the old, so that, as he says later in a phrase both profound and tragical: "I might achieve that harmony which I regarded as essential for the tranquillity of the world, a solitary man, driven forward by the impetus of my own personality. That is why I dropped sheet-anchors everywhere."

  But side by side with these heroic words, whieh sufficed to class him with the heroes of Plutarch, were housed the simplest feelings of domestic life. For, when his confidant Roederer urged him to seek a new wife, who would bear him a son, Napoleon answered in great excitement:

  " Hitherto I have always ruled justly. It might be to my interest to seek a divorce. But what right have I to put away a good wife merely because I have become a greater man than I was when we married ? She would have followed me into exile or imprisonment. Now I am to divorce her ? I am not strong enough to do that. A human heart beats in my bosom; my mother was not a tigress." After Josephine's death, he would be free to choose a new partner. But, as things are, what will be the best way of solving this problem of the succession ? " My brothers, like myself, were born in petty circumstances, but they did not force themselves upwards unaided as I did. The man who is to rule France must either be born to greatness, or he must be one of those whose inborn strength enables them to distinguish themselves from the herd."

  In this last idea is implicit the disa
strous error which in due time is to lead him to inevitable destruction.

  For the nonce, however, all is done quietly and soberly, just as on two previous occasions. Wishing to be independent of the parties and to stand above them, he again demands a popular vote ; and the very Frenchmen who twelve years earlier had destroyed, not only the king, but kingship, now re-establish both, doing this with even more enthusiasm than when, two years before, they had made Napoleon Consul for life. In a few days, everything is settled. First of all there are votes in the

  Confessions

  Chambers. In the Senate, only three adverse votes, those of personal enemies. In the Tribunate, Carnot is alone in recording his dissent, Carnot who admires Napoleon, but is a far-sighted devotee of the principle of freedom. The result of a plebiscite is overwhelmingly in favour of the adoption of the imperial title with hereditary succession. In May 1804, the new constitution is promulgated. It is short and businesslike, as if it were a mere paragraph modifying an old constitution.

  He never affects to believe that his power has a mystical origin, or even that it really springs from the people. See him, a few days after he has been proclaimed Emperor, seated in a bow window one evening after dinner. He is astraddle on a chair, with his chin resting on the back. For a long time he is silent while Josephine and Madame de Remusat are talking (the latter records the incident). Then he stands up, turns to Madame de Remusat, and, after posing for a while as an easygoing and cheerful man of the world, of a sudden, with that free gesture which always amazed his associates and still amazes posterity, he tore off the veil, disclosed his motives, expounded his thoughts as if he had been writing a predecessor's history :

  " You were all very angry with me about the execution of the duke of Enghien. You seem still to be fond of traditional memories. My own memory goes back only to the time when I began to be something. What is a duke of Enghien to me ? An emigre, more important than the others, and therefore one whom it is all the better to destroy. . . . Two years ago, power dropped into my hands in the most natural way in the world. ... It is true that the duke compelled me to cut the crisis short. I had expected to carry on the Consulate for another two years, although its forms conflicted with the reality of things. France and I could have walked along arm-in-arm for a while longer, for France had confidence in me, and wanted everything that I wanted. But after this conspiracy, which was to set the Continent in motion, it was necessary to show Europe the error of her ways. . . .