by Emil Ludwig
" Tell me your ideas. Freedom of speech, free elections, responsible ministers, freedom of the press ? . . . I am agreeable to all this. Especially the freedom of the press. To try and crush this any longer would be absurd. ... I am the man of the people. If the people really wants freedom, I must give it. ... I am no longer a conqueror; I can no longer be a conqueror. I know what is possible and what is impossible. My sole mission now
Acknowledgement of Democracy
is to set France on her feet once more and to give her a constitution adapted to the temperament of her people. . . .
" I do not hate freedom, although I gave it a wide berth when I met it on my way. I understand liberty; I was nourished on this idea. The labours of fifteen years have been destroyed; if I wished to begin all over again, I should need twenty years and should have to sacrifice two million men. ... I want peace ; I can get it only through victory. I will not fill you with false hopes ; I foresee a terrible war. In order to win through, I must have the support of the people. The people will ask for freedom in exchange for its support. Very well, the people shall have freedom. . . . My situation is a new one for me. I am getting older. At forty-five one is no longer the man one was at thirty. The repose of a constitutional king would suit me excellently. And I am sure that this state of things would meet with the approval of my son."
Such were the basic ideas of Emperor Napoleon on his return from Elba; he was to become king of France. That his ideas are genuine and his intentions pure, is proved by the realism of his motives. We have not to do with a man who pretends to a change of heart; this is no hero who, in commune with his maker upon an island, has become a saint. Here we have the man himself, wishful to rule as circumstances permit; a man who has ever been mindful of public opinion. He recognises that he has to do with a new epoch. If he himself did not inaugurate such an epoch, at least, through his fall, he made its realisation possible. Napoleon feels that a land which has experienced the dictatorship of genius, can no longer revert to the dictatorship of inheritance. If the spirit of the revolution has become petrified into a single huge figure, a new structure must arise from its ruins, and the stone blocks that are used in the building must be so placed as to secure wider levels and a less tapering pinnacle. In very truth, the son of the revolution, even
" We Have to Forget"
when he becomes a tyrant, cannot be succeeded by a king who reigns by God's grace. He can only be succeeded by democracy.
For this reason, the Emperor deals more severely with the emigres than he was wont; he confiscates estates ; he disbands the royal guard; and does at the end of his career what he should have done at the start, namely, he abolishes feudal titles, thus ridding himself of the old nobility whose false compliments had cost him so dear. By these decrees he recreates the revolutionary spirit, and makes it stronger than it has been since his coronation, eleven years earlier. He issues the following declaration to the civil authorities :
" I have returned to-day for the same reason which brought me back from Egypt: because things are not going well with the fatherland. ... I do not want to carry on any more wars. We have to forget that we were masters of the world. ... In those days, I pursued the aim of creating a great United States of Europe, and I was compelled to neglect many points of home policy which would have secured the freedom of the citizens of France. Now I shall work for no other object than for France's consolidation and tranquillity, for the protection of property, for the free interchange of ideas : the prince must be the first servitor of the State." Among the hearers are many who, but a year ago, amid the thunder crashes of the catastrophe, had listened to other words uttered by these selfsame lips: " I am the State." Nevertheless they pin their faith to his new constitution, whose elaboration is entrusted to Constant.
When the constitution is placed before them, they are alarmed. " Additional Act ? " Are we once more to be cheated ? The democrats pour forth a hail of criticism. Simultaneously, news comes from Vienna : the powers declare war on Napoleon ; no harm shall come to France. A signal! For twenty years, so the saying runs through the land, we have desired peace. At last we have got it. Is it once more to come to an end ? " I cannot hide the fact from you any longer," says a
Troubles Thicken
councillor of State to the Emperor; " the women are your declared enemies, and these opponents are always dangerous in France." No one wants any more levies to be made. Instead of two hundred and fifty thousand men, only sixty thousand answer his call.
This decision of the powers is an expression of the mood of the princes, and not of the peoples they govern, for these, just like the French people, are eager for repose. The sentence of outlawry is not so much a political move as an insistence on a point of honour, and the expression of Emperor Francis' desire to exact moral vengeance. But it gnaws at the foundation of Napoleon's power. When he had first come back, France had been in his favour. Since, however, all the other States of Europe are against him, France will make no more sacrifices on his behalf. The funds, which had risen when he reached Paris, fall.
The Emperor is alarmed. An intimate, from whom he has asked news of the recruiting campaign, says to him : " Your Majesty will not be left unsupported." To which the Emperor replies in low tones : " I was almost afraid I should be ! "
His friends find him less active than of yore; he is fatter, his features are lax, he needs many hot baths, and lies in them a long time; he takes a great deal of sleep. " He seemed full of cares," writes one of his circle. " The self-confidence of his speeches, his authoritative tone, had vanished."
Only four weeks ago, at his first advent, he appeared rejuvenated and lively. Why this relapse?
First and foremost, his wife's behaviour has shaken him. A semi-anonymous letter from Vienna, addressed to Lavalette, has fallen into his hands. Herein are described Marie Louise's scorn for the Emperor, her love for Neipperg; and a number of shameful details are added. The Emperor is surprised holding this letter, in his dimly lighted study, crouched over the fire, silent.
When Meneval, who was to have accompanied Marie Louise
A Tragical Dilemma
on her return journey to Paris, comes back from Vienna, he finds the Emperor, in the very midst of these eventful weeks, lying on a sofa, sunk deep in reverie. For many hours that day, and for half the next, the secretary has to give his master a precise account of everything that is happening over there, of all he has observed. The Emperor spoke as though " overwhelmed by a calm sorrowfulness, and seemed so resigned that I was deeply moved. He was no longer confident of victory, and I felt that his belief in his good luck, which had sustained him during the march to Paris, had forsaken him." Meneval has to describe every trait and gesture of the little son. The Emperor, an ageing man, paces to and fro in the garden on this day in May, alone; he has to rely on a stranger's word to know what his boy is like, whether the child is growing up to resemble his father or his grandfather.
These things weigh him down. Tragically, the conflicts within him are renewed. Now that he wishes to be a democrat in response to the spirit of the time, now that his will-to-peace is great, the menace from without frustrates his attempts to establish democracy or maintain peace. If no one in Europe were to lift a finger in order to replace Louis on the throne, Napoleon might content himself with ruling within the boundaries of France, might introduce the freedoms he had promised. But the powers, which have no more lands to reclaim (since they have received back all that was ever taken from them, and now possess what they had had before the revolution), come forward as they had in '92, because the wind blowing from this stormy corner of Europe threatens their inherited calm, and because none of the monarchs can sleep sound o' nights so long as their Bourbon cousin is standing on the English shore of the Channel looking plaintively across the waters towards France, the land of his fathers.
Never had Napoleon taken up arms more reluctantly than he did when this war was forced upon him by the Vienna decree. Never had the rapidity and clear-
sightedness of a dictator or
Ifelilil
■R
(From the " Corpus Imaginum " of the Photographic Society, Charlottenburg.)
Napoleon as Emperor in 1814. Painting by Horace Vernet. Tate Gallery, London.
A Dagger in the Dictator's Heart
the sympathy of public opinion been more necessary to him than in this terrible crisis. Just now, when every one wants peace, he is obliged to arm for war; just now, when he is to bestow liberties on the people, his actions are hampered at every turn. The struggle of the legitimists with this interloper (the upshot of which had been his own legitimisation), the struggle which had placed him on the throne, is resumed when, too late, he is cured of his longing to pose as legitimate monarch. Though he is reaching out towards liberty once more, he is now to sustain his final defeat.
Thus the great renewal gets no further than the Additional Act to the Constitutions of the Empire, which, as earlier with his great decrees, he leaves to the approval of the " sovereign people."
Nevertheless, the sixty-seven articles evolved out of Constant's head contain all the newer democratic elements; they are a great advance upon English constitutional law, and remain as a model for the whole of the subsequent century. No one henceforward can be imprisoned or banished without due form of law; religious belief and the press are to be free. The legislative body is changed into a Lower House, the Senate becomes an Upper House without the former privileges, all deliberations are open to the public, both Houses may initiate legislation and reject the budget, the ministers are to be responsible to parliament, the interpretation of the law devolves upon the Chambers.
A number of new laws, each a dagger in the dictator's heart! Yet he yields in everything save two points which he carries, after a lively debate against Constant: the hereditariness of the peerage, into which " after one or two successful battles," the nobility would again pour; and his right to confiscation, for " without this right I should be defenceless against the party factions. I am not an angel, but a man who cannot allow himself to be attacked without meting out punishment."
These two concessions to him create as bad an impression as the words " Additional Act" had done. Since he will allow no
Champ de Mai
discussion on the matter, but only consents to the empty form of a plebiscite, as he had done in the days when he wished to become consul for life and subsequently emperor, the democrats begin to grumble, and no one is aware how greatly the nation is to be congratulated on this latest work of its leader. Instead of the four million votes he had received of yore, his constitution receives only just over one and a half million votes, for most of the citizens abstain.
A few venture to protest. Honest Carnot says: " Your Additional Act has not pleased the people ; it will not meet with acceptance. Promise me that you will amend it. I must tell you the truth, for your and our salvation hangs upon your tolerance." His tone is upright, but wholly unprecedented. Since the days when Bonaparte was a lieutenant no one had ever spoken thus to him. He makes a gesture of annoyance, and Carnot continues : " This word alarms you, Sire ? Yes, you must show tolerance in the face of the national will."
" The foe is at our gates," answers the veteran soldier. " First of all, help to chase him away. Then I shall have time to occupy myself with your liberal panaceas." Even though he profoundly recognises the demands of the new age, he finds it impossible to deliberate with representatives of the people.
Napoleon knows only how to command !
XVIII
On a bright spring morning, the plain is lively as on days of high festival. The Parisians are flocking in crowds to the Champ de Mai. The whole town has come forth to this revival of the Carlovingian folk assembly. The old troops are there, and the new. The platforms are gaily decorated with tricolours. Six hundred deputies and several hundred peers are waiting for the Emperor, who is to take the oath to the new constitution before starting on his campaign. It is the first time for two or three
Ccesar's Chariot
years that the people of the gay city have had a chance of glutting their lust for merrymaking. Under the king, all had been sober and staid.
Now the procession is coming forth from the town ; from afar can be heard the fanfare of the trumpets, and every one is expecting the hero of the occasion, the warrior Napoleon, to be dressed as beseems the posture of affairs, seeing that within a few days he will be fighting for throne and country at the head of his troops. Rumour has run through Paris saying that he still wears his old green coat, in which people love best to see him.
But what is the pageant which unfolds itself ?
First comes the guard of honour, followed by the eagles and the colours ; then heralds and pages, clad in many-coloured costumes, as if in an allegorical picture; then the Emperor's coronation coach, drawn by eight horses. In it is seated a man picturesquely attired in white silk, almost overshadowed by a hat decked with huge ostrich plumes, and burdened by his vast coronation mantle; a solitary man, glittering with gold. Is this the Emperor ?
The masses are dumbfounded, for they wanted to fraternise with their ruler returned from exile ; they are stupefied by the spectacle of a Csesar whose chill splendours seem to repel the cordiality they would fain exhibit. Painful indeed is the forlorn aspect of this middle-aged man, whose wife has not returned to him and whose son is far away, as he drives among the gaping crowds in his stately chariot.
When, after High Mass, the spokesman of the new Chambers confronts the Emperor, this citizen speaks in tones which ring athwart the plain : " Trusting your pledges, the deputies will sagaciously revise our laws, and harmonise them with the constitution "—the implication being that the representatives of the people are not yet satisfied, but want more than this Additional Act. Then the spokesman of the Chambers and the citizens expresses his hopes of victory, and
Warnings
wishes success to the eagles.
The Emperor has to hide his vexation. He announces the new constitution, and swears to observe it faithfully. Then the soldiers must acclaim the oath. But they can hardly recognise their master in this pompously attired ruler. They want the old green coat; their hero should be wearing the tricolour cockade, not gold and plumes. Their cheers lack enthusiasm An eyewitness writes : " These were not the cheers of Austerlitz and Wagram. The Emperor could not fail to notice it."
A week later, when he opened both Houses with a speech from the throne, he was careful to avoid everything which had put people out of humour at the Champ de Mai. The Lower House promises to devote its energies to the defence of the nation ; but goes on to say : " Even the will of the victorious ruler would not induce the nation to transcend the bounds of defence." The peers in the "Upper House utter a like warning in their address, saying: " The French government will never be led away by the seductions of victory." Napoleon stands there constrained to silence, but trembling with wrath. He would like to sweep them all away, but dares not even give them the lie.
Among the new peers is Lucien. He has come to join his brother after all. A glance and a hand-clasp have reconciled the brothers. For the first time in his life he is styled prince and imperial highness. He is the Emperor's companion, delivers speeches, even gives lectures in the Institute, and receives large sums of money. Louis is ill, and does not come. Jerome is ready and willing. Hortense must replace the missing lady of the house, and her sons have once more become important to the man without a son. Napoleon appears on the balcony with his nephews, to show the crowd, to show France, that the Emperor still has heirs. Unseen, the spirit of irony contemplates this tragical conclusion to the history of his dynastic delusion.
Once he drives with Hortense to Malmaison, but goes alone
Carnot's Advice
into the room where Josephine died, to come forth from it in silence.
Next day he sets out for the war, hoping it will be his last war. It is.
Carnot, to whom at this late hour he divulges his plan, strongly advises hi
m to wait until the army has been reinforced. Neither the Russians nor the Austrians can arrive before the end of July. The English and the Prussians will not venture to attack until their allies have joined them. During these six weeks, Napoleon could double his forces, transform France into an armed camp, fortify Paris on the side whence the onslaught will come. The Emperor shakes his head :
" I know all that. But it is essential that I should win a brilliant victory without waiting so long! " He knows what is at stake. It is his way to assume the offensive. But the master of figures would have done well to wait awhile, and collect his forces. " I must win a brilliant victory soon ! " Is not that the thought of a beaten champion ? Perhaps it is; but the gloomy vaticinations of the ruined Csesar are fortified by the memories of General Bonaparte. Not since his youth has he ventured to do what he now proposes, to advance with a small army, without reserves, mobile, swift. Such, then, is his plan. He will not give his four opponents time to get together. The two that appear to be ready must be separately attacked and defeated. That is the picture which hovers before his mind. What Napoleon, the Emperor, now begins at Charleroi, when his prospective opponents are the Prussians and the English, Bonaparte, the unknown general, had begun at Millesimo, when his prospective opponents were the Austrians and the Piedmontese. His last battle is the parallel of his first.
But during these twenty years, all the commanders of Europe have learned the tactics of the new master of the art of war; and he, during these twenty years, has worn out his machinery. Moreover, swift though his movements are in the days before Waterloo, he no longer possesses the old tempo.
