Glimpses of World History

by Jawaharlal Nehru

  It is the beginning of winter. Napoleon decides to leave burning Moscow and to return to France. And so the Grande Armée trudges back wearily through the snow with the Russian Cossacks ever by their sides and at their heels, attacking them, harassing them continuously, cutting down stragglers. The bitter cold and the Cossacks between them take toll of thousands of lives, and the Grande Armée becomes a ghostly procession—all on foot and in rags, footsore and frost-bitten, wearily dragging themselves along. Napoleon also marches on foot with his grenadiers. It is a terrible and heart-breaking march, and the mighty army becomes smaller and smaller and almost vanishes away. Just a handful of people return.

  This Russian campaign was a terrible blow. It exhausted France of her man-power. Even more so it aged Napoleon, and made him careworn and weary of strife. But he was not to be allowed to rest in peace. His enemies surrounded him and, although he was still the brilliant commander winning victories, the net drew closer and closer. Talleyrand’s intrigues increased, and even some of Napoleon’s trusted marshals turned against him. Weary and disgusted, Napoleon abdicated from the throne in April 1814.

  A great congress of the European Powers was held in Vienna to make a new map of Europe, now that Napoleon was out of the way. Napoleon was sent to the little island of Elba in the Mediterranean. Another Bourbon, another Louis, brother of the one who was guillotined, was brought out from wherever he had been living in seclusion and was placed on the throne of France as Louis XVIII. The Bourbons were thus back again, and with them came back much of the old tyranny. So this was the end of all the brave doings of five and twenty years since the Bastille fell! In Vienna the kings and their ministers argued and quarrelled among themselves, and during the intervals had a good time. They felt enormously relieved, great terror had been removed, and they could breathe again. Talleyrand, the traitor who had betrayed Napoleon, was popular with this crowd of kings and ministers, and played an important part in the Congress. Another famous diplomatist at the Congress was Metternich, the Foreign Minister of Austria.

  In less than a year Napoleon had had enough of Elba, and France had had enough of the Bourbons. He managed to escape in a little boat, and landed at Cannes on the Riviera on February 26, 1815, almost alone. He was received enthusiastically by the peasants. The armies that were sent against him, when they saw their old commander, the “Petit Caporal”, shouted “Vive l’Empereur” and joined him. And so, triumphantly, he reached Paris and the Bourbon King fled away. But in all the other capitals of Europe there was terror and consternation. And in Vienna, where the Congress was still dragging on, the dancing and the feasting came to a sudden end, and a common fear made the kings and ministers forget all their squabbling and concentrate on the one task of crushing Napoleon anew. So all Europe marched against him, but France was weary of warfare. And Napoleon, although only forty-six, was a tired old man, forsaken even by his wife, Marie Louise. He won some battles, but finally he was defeated at Waterloo, near the city of Brussels, by the English and Prussian armies, under Wellington and Blücher, just 100 days after he landed. This period of his return is therefore called “The Hundred Days”. Waterloo was a hardly contested battle and victory hung in the balance. Napoleon had very bad luck. It was quite possible for him to have won it, but even so he would have had to go down some time later before a combined Europe. Defeated as he was now, many of his supporters tried to save themselves by turning against him. A struggle was hopeless, and he abdicated for the second time, and going to an English ship in a French port, handed himself over to the captain, saying that he wanted to live quietly in England.

  But he was mistaken if he expected liberal and courteous treatment from England or Europe. They were too frightened of him, and his escape from Elba had convinced them that he must be kept far away and securely guarded. So, in spite of his protests, he was declared a prisoner and sent, with a few companions, to the far-away island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean. He was considered “the prisoner of Europe”, and several Powers sent commissioners to keep watch on him in St. Helena, but in reality the English had the full responsibility for guarding him. Even on that far-away island, cut off from the world, they brought quite an army to keep watch on him. This lonely rock of St. Helena was described at the time by Count Balmain, the Russian Commissioner there, as “that spot in the world which is the saddest, the most isolated, the most unapproachable, the easiest to defend, the hardest to attack, the most unsociable . . .” The English Governor of the island was an extraordinarily uncouth and barbarous person, and he treated Napoleon very shabbily. He was kept in the most unhealthy part of the island in a wretched house, and all manner of irritating restrictions were placed on him and his companions. Sometimes he did not even have enough wholesome food to eat. He was not allowed to communicate with friends in Europe, not even with his little son, whom, in the days of his power, he had given the title of King of Rome. Indeed, even news of his son was not allowed to reach him.

  It is surprising how meanly Napoleon was treated. But the Governor of St. Helena was but the tool of his government, and it seems to have been the deliberate policy of the English Government to ill-treat and humiliate their prisoner. The other Powers of Europe were consenting parties to this. Napoleon’s mother, in spite of her old age, wanted to join him in St. Helena, but the Great Powers said no! This shabby treatment given to him is a measure of the terror which he still inspired in Europe, although his wings had been clipped and he lay powerless in a far-away island.

  For five and a half years he endured this living death in St. Helena. It is not difficult to imagine how this man of vast energy and ambition must have suffered, cooped up in that little rock of an island and subjected daily to petty humiliations. He died in May 1821, and even after death he was pursued by the hatred of the Governor, and a wretched grave was provided for him. Slowly, as the news of the ill-treatment and persecution of Napoleon reached Europe (news travelled slowly in those days), there was an outcry against it in many countries, including England. Castlereagh, the English Foreign Minister, who was chiefly responsible for this ill-treatment, became very unpopular because of this and also because of his harsh domestic policy. He felt this so much that he committed suicide.

  It is difficult to judge great and extraordinary men; and that Napoleon was great in his own way and extraordinary there can be no doubt. He was elemental, almost like a force of Nature. Full of ideas and imagination, he was yet blind to the value of ideals and unselfish motives. He tried to win and impress people by offering them glory and wealth. When therefore his stock of glory and power lessened, there were few ideal motives to keep by him those very people whom he had advanced, and many basely deserted him. Religion was to him just a method of keeping the poor and the miserable satisfied with their lot. Of Christianity he once said: “How could I accept a religion which would damn Socrates and Plato?” When in Egypt he showed some favour to Islam, no doubt because he thought this might win him popularity with the people there. He was thoroughly irreligious, and yet he encouraged religion, for he looked upon it as a prop to the existing social order. “Religion,” he said,

  associates with heaven an idea of equality, which prevents the poor from massacring the rich. Religion has the same sort of value as vaccination. It gratifies our taste for the miraculous, and protects us from quacks. . . . Society cannot exist without inequality of property; but this latter cannot exist without religion. One who is dying of hunger when the man next to him is feasting on dainties can only be sustained by a belief in a higher power, and by the conviction that in another world there will be a different distribution of goods.

  In the pride of his strength, he is reported to have said: “Should the heavens fall down on us we shall hold them off with the points of our lances.”

  He had the magnetism of the great, and he won devoted friendship from many. His glance, like Akbar’s, was magnetic. “I have seldom drawn my sword,” he said once; “I won my battles with my eyes, not with my weapons.�
�� A strange statement for a man who plunged Europe into war! In later years, during his exile, he said that force was no remedy, and that the spirit of man was greater than the sword. “Do you know,” he said, “what amazes me more than all else? The impotence of force to organize anything. There are only two powers in the world: the spirit and the sword. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.” But there was no long run for him. He was in a hurry, and right at the beginning of his career he had chosen the way of the sword; by the sword he triumphed, and by the sword he fell. Again, he said: “War is an anachronism; some day victories will be won without cannon and without bayonets.” Circumstances were too much for him—his vaulting ambition, the ease with which he triumphed in war, and the hatred of the rulers of Europe for this upstart and their fear of him, which allowed him no peace to settle down. He was reckless in sacrificing human lives in battle, and yet it is said that the sight of suffering greatly moved him.

  In his personal life he was simple, and never indulged in any excesses, except excess of work. According to him, “However little a man may eat he always eats too much. One can get ill from over-eating, but never from under-eating.” It was this simple life which gave him splendid health and vast energy. He could sleep when he liked and as little as he liked. To ride 100 miles in the course of the morning and afternoon was not an extraordinary thing for him.

  As his ambition carried him across the European Continent, he began to think of Europe as one State, one unit, with one law, one government. “I shall fuse all the nations into one.” Later, chastened by his exile in St. Helena, this idea came back to him, and in a more impersonal form: “Sooner or later, this union [of European nations] will be brought about by the force of events. The first impetus has been given; and after the fall of my system, it seems to me that the only way in which an equilibrium can be achieved in Europe is through a league of nations.” More than 100 years later, Europe is still groping and experimenting with a League of Nations!

  He wrote a last testament in which he left a message for his little son, whom he had called the King of Rome, and news even of whom had been so cruelly kept away from him. He hoped that his son would reign one day, and he told him to reign in peace, and not to have recourse to violence. “I was obliged to daunt Europe by arms; in the present day, the way is to convince by reason.” But the son was not destined to reign. He died in Vienna in his youth, eleven years after his father.

  But all these thoughts came to him during his exile, when he was much chastened, and perhaps also he wrote to influence posterity in his favour. In the days of his greatness he was too much of a man of action to be a philosopher. He worshipped only at the altar of power; his real and only love was power, and he loved it not crudely but as an artist. “I love power,” he said—“yes, I love it, but after the manner of an artist: as a fiddler loves his fiddle in order to conjure from it tone and chords and harmonies.” But the quest for over-much power is a dangerous one, and sooner or later downfall and ruin come to the individuals or nations who seek it. So Napoleon fell, and it was as well that he fell.

  Meanwhile the Bourbons reigned in France. But it has been said that the Bourbons never learned anything and never forgot anything. Within nine years after Napoleon’s death, France had had enough of them and overthrew them. Another monarchy was established and, as a gesture of goodwill to the memory of Napoleon, his statue, which had been removed from the top of the Vendôme column, was placed on it again. And the unhappy mother of Napoleon, blind through age, said: “Once again the Emperor is in Paris.”

  106

  A Survey of the World

  November 19, 1932

  So Napoleon passed away from the world’s stage which he had dominated for so long. More than a hundred years have passed since then, and the dust of many an old controversy has settled down. But, as I have told you, people still differ greatly about him. Probably if Napoleon had been born during some other, and more peaceful, period he would have been just a distinguished general and nothing more, and might have passed almost unnoticed. But revolution and change gave him the chance to forge ahead, and he seized it. His fall and passing out of European politics must have come as a great relief to the people of Europe, for they were weary of war. A whole generation had not seen real peace, and they longed for it. None felt the relief more than the kings and princes of Europe, who had trembled at Napoleon’s name for many years.

  We have spent a long time in France and Europe, and now we are well advanced into the nineteenth century. Let us have a look round the world and see what it was like when Napoleon fell.

  In Europe, you will remember, the old kings and their ministers had gathered together at the Congress of Vienna. The bogeyman was gone, and they could now play at their old game and settle the fate of millions of human beings at their sweet will and pleasure. It did not matter what the people wanted, nor did it matter what the natural and linguistic boundaries of a country were. The Tsar of Russia, England (represented by Castlereagh), Austria (represented by Metternich), and Prussia were the principal Powers; and of course there was Talleyrand, clever and witty and popular, once the minister of Napoleon, now the minister of the Bourbon King of France. These people, in the intervals of feasting and dancing, re-cast the map of Europe, which had been changed so much by Napoleon.

  Louis XVIII, the Bourbon, was thrust back on France. In Spain even the Inquisition was restored. The monarchs at the Congress of Vienna did not like republics. So they did not re-establish the old Dutch Republic in Holland. Instead, they lumped up Holland and Belgium in one kingdom of the Netherlands. Poland disappeared again as a separate country and was swallowed up by Prussia, Austria and chiefly Russia. Venice and North Italy went to Austria. A bit of Italy and a bit of France, between Switzerland and the Riviera, became the kingdom of Sardinia. In central Europe there was a curious and vague German Confederation, but the two chief Powers in it continued to be Prussia and Austria. And there were other changes also. So the wise men of the Congress of Vienna ordained, forcing people hither and thither against their will, making them speak a language which was not their own, and generally sowing the seeds of future trouble and war.

  What the Congress of Vienna of 1814-1815 was especially concerned with was to make the kings quite secure. The French Revolution had given them the fright of their lives, and they thought, foolishly, that they could prevent the new revolutionary ideas from spreading. The Tsar of Russia, the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia even formed what was called “The Holy Alliance” to preserve themselves and other monarchs. Almost it seems as if we are back to the days of Louis XIV and Louis XV. There was suppression all over Europe, including England, of all liberal ideas. How progressive people in Europe must have despaired that the agony of the French Revolution had been in vain!

  In the east of Europe, Turkey had weakened greatly. It was undergoing a process of slow decay. Egypt was supposed to be within the Turkish Empire, but was semi-independent. Greece revolted against Turkish dominion in 1821, and after eight years of war won its freedom with the help of England, France and Russia. It was in this war that the English poet Byron died as a volunteer fighting for Greece. He has written some very beautiful poems about Greece which perhaps you know.

  I might as well mention here two other political changes that took place in Europe in 1830. France, fed up with the repression and tyranny of the Bourbons, drove them out again. But instead of a republic, another king was chosen. This was Louis Philippe, who behaved a little better, and more or less as a constitutional king. He managed to reign till 1848, when there was another and a bigger outburst. In Belgium also there was a revolt in 1830. This resulted in the separation of Belgium and Holland. The big European Powers of course strongly disapproved of a republic. So they presented a German prince to Belgium and made him king there. Another German prince was made King of Greece. The many states of Germany always seem to have had an abundance of such princes, to be had whenever a throne was vaca
nt. The English royal house that is still reigning, you will remember, came from the little State of Hanover in Germany.

  The year 1830 was a year of revolts in many other places in Europe also—in Germany and Italy and especially in Poland. But the revolts were crushed by the kings. There was a great deal of cruel repression in Poland by the Russians, and even the use of the Polish language was forbidden. This year—1830—was a kind of prelude to 1848, which, as we shall see, was a year of revolution in Europe.

  So much for Europe. Across the Atlantic, the United States were gradually spreading out towards the west. Far away from European rivalries and wars, and with unlimited land at their disposal, they were making rapid progress and were catching up with Europe. In South America, however, great changes took place. These were indirectly caused by Napoleon. When Napoleon conquered Spain and put a brother of his on the throne there, the Spanish colonies in South America revolted. Thus, strangely enough, it was the loyalty of the Spanish American colonies to the old Spanish dynasty that led them to independence. But this was the immediate excuse. The break would have come anyhow some time later, for the spirit of independence was growing all over South America. The great hero of South American independence was Simon Bolivar, called El Libertador, the Liberator. The Republic of Bolivia in South America is named after him. Thus, when Napoleon fell, Spanish America was cut off from Spain and was fighting for independence. The removal of Napoleon made no difference to the struggle, and it continued against the new Spain for many years. Some of the European kings wanted to help their brother-King of Spain to crush the revolutionaries in the American colonies. But the United States put a final stop to this interference. Monroe was President of the United States then, and he told the European Powers that if they interfered anywhere in America, North or South, they would have to fight the United States. This threat frightened the European Powers, and since then they have more or less kept away from South America. President Monroe’s threat to Europe has become famous as the “Monroe Doctrine”. It protected the new South American republics from the greed of Europe for a long time, and allowed them to grow. They were protected from Europe well enough, but there was no one to protect them from the protector—the United States. Today the United States dominate them, and many of the smaller republics are completely under their thumb.