by Paul Johnson
A few, Keats and Shelley among them, continued to recognize in Bonaparte the romantic hero, the man who broke into Egypt like a modern Alexander, or led his army across the Great Saint Bernard Pass like Hannibal. They fell in fact for the propaganda, turned into actual images of the man by Bonaparte’s well-coached teams of portrait and history painters, Gros, David, and the rest. In the twentieth century, this infatuation was to occur time and again: George Bernard Shaw and Beatrice and Sidney Webb falling for the Stalin image, Norman Mailer and others hero-worshiping Fidel Castro, and an entire generation, including many Frenchmen such as Jean-Paul Sartre, praising the Mao Zedong regime, under which sixty million Chinese perished by famine or in the camps. Similarly, the cult of Bonaparte was originally wide, but it did not last. Those in England who clung to it did so more as a criticism of British institutions and ruling personalities than in approval of his doings. Thus Charles Lamb, who detested the prince regent, thought Bonaparte a “fine fellow” and said he would be happy to stand, cap in hand, at his table. Byron came to see that Bonaparte was a flawed hero, but regretted that he did not die at the head of his troops—the campaigns of 1813-14, he wrote, had “pared him away to gradual insignificance.” It was a sad day when he was forced to “abdicate the throne of Europe.” Bonaparte’s one British admirer throughout all his crimes and vicissitudes was William Hazlitt. As an artist and critic, he had found Bonaparte’s plan to gather the world’s art in the Louvre, which he visited during the brief Peace of Amiens, an admirable project. But it was Hazlitt’s hatred of “legitimacy,” the capital sin of the ancien régime, that made him welcome Bonaparte as its enemy. He ignored Bonaparte’s own assumption of the throne and attempts to secure legitimacy by his second marriage. Hazlitt regarded Waterloo as a total disaster: he was so cast down by it that he almost became a hopeless alcoholic, though he survived to write his ten-volume Life of Napoleon, most of it copied from secondary sources, which (I think) few have actually read through, from that day to this.
Many Americans, like the British, continued to sympathize with the Revolutionary aims of the regime, even though they hated the Terror. A few, like Thomas Jefferson, defended it, though in a halfhearted, half-ashamed manner, and when the regime returned to monarchy, France and its amazing despot were pigeonholed as just one more European autocracy. Jefferson never said another word of personal admiration for Bonaparte after he made himself emperor. He said Bonaparte’s policy was “so crooked it eludes conjecture.” British efforts to circumvent Bonaparte’s Continental System, which banned the import or transit of British-owned or -manufactured goods, eventually drove the United States into war with the British Empire, an unhappy conflict that damaged both sides about equally and was ended by a resigned acceptance of the status quo antebellum. Actually, most Americans were less impressed and affected by the war than by the astonishing offer Bonaparte made to sell America the whole of what was then called Louisiana, for what even at the time seemed a paltry sum of money.
The Louisiana Purchase must rate as Bonaparte’s greatest single failure of imagination. “You have made a princely bargain,” said Talleyrand to the Americans, not without a note of sadness. It was true. “Louisiana” comprised 828,000 square miles, subsequently becoming thirteen states. France was paid $15 million, or four cents an acre. If Bonaparte had used France’s legitimate rights to its American territory to explore and create an enormous dominion across the Atlantic, instead of trying to carve out an illegitimate empire in Europe, he would have enriched France instead of impoverishing her, provided scope for countless adventurous young Frenchmen instead of killing them in futile battles, and incidentally inflicted more damage on his British opponents than all his efforts in Europe. He would also have changed the globe permanently, something his career failed to achieve in the end. But he knew nothing of America, and desired to know nothing until it was too late. He feared the Atlantic as a great ocean. He averted his eyes from the entire ship of the world to fasten them exclusively on its European cockpit, and thus in this respect betrayed his narrow, insular Corsican origins. So the United States was the power that permanently benefited most from the Bonapartist epoch.
The German intelligentsia, almost in its entirety, initially hailed Bonaparte as a hero. He was seen not only as the epitome of the romantic spirit of high adventure, in the eyes of the poets, but as the embodiment of the enlightened, all-powerful state, an ideal that appealed strongly to, among others, the young philosopher Hegel, whose exultation of the state opened the road to Bismarck’s blood-and-iron Prussia and, still more disastrously, the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler. Hegel stood in the street, bareheaded, to see the triumphant Bonaparte pass, and sycophantically continued to applaud him even after French soldiers made off with his possessions. Later, as German opinion swung against Bonaparte, Hegel—who was anxious at all costs to be professor of philosophy at Berlin University—repudiated his support of French civilisation, embracing German Kultur instead. It could be said that he fell in love with Bonapartism for the wrong reasons, and out of it for the wrong reasons, too.
By contrast, there was Beethoven, working on his Third Symphony, the huge work that would break the mold of the old symphonic form forever. A friend and eyewitness, Ferdi nand Ries, testified:
In this symphony, Beethoven had Bonaparte in his mind, but as he was when he was First Consul. Beethoven esteemed him greatly at the time [1804] and likened him to the great Roman consuls. I . . . saw a copy of the score lying on his table with the word “Bonaparte” at the extreme top of the title page, and at the extreme bottom “Luigi van Beethoven,” but not another word. . . . I was the first to bring him the intelligence that Bonaparte had proclaimed himself emperor, whereupon he flew into a rage and cried out: “Is he then also nothing more than an ordinary human being? Now he too will trample on all the rights of men and indulge only his ambition. He will exalt himself above all the others and become a tyrant.” Beethoven went to the table, took hold of the title page by the top, tore it in two and threw it on the floor.
Other famous German creators were more circumspect but equally dismissive. At the spectacular meeting of kings and princes at Erfurt in the autumn of 1808, Goethe, as Germany’s leading writer and an important figure in the government of a small Rhineland state, was present. It was an imperial summit meeting, designed to impress. The palace, where the emperor took over, was transformed by a hundred wagonloads of French furniture, Savonnerie tapisseries, Aubusson carpets, Sèvres porcelain, gold and silver, a score of French chefs, and mountains of pâté, cheeses, hams, truffles, and cases of vintage Bordeaux and champagne. Except for the czar, the rulers all had to assemble in good time to greet the entrance of the emperor, when all stood up and bowed, and their ladies curtsied deep. The distinguished men present, from ruling dukes and cardinals to scribblers, waited for the imperial eye to fall on them. Bonaparte announced that Kassel was to be the new German capital. Johannes von Müller, the leading German historian, was to look after the details and write the emperor’s life (as he had already done Frederick the Great’s). Grimm was to be librarian and Beethoven the court musician. Other announcements would follow. (Little came of them.) Then Bonaparte’s glance fell on Goethe, who was summoned for an audience.
He found the emperor gobbling his breakfast, and stood watching him. He noted the green uniform of the Gardes Chasseurs, and Bonaparte’s small feminine hand, hidden inside his waistcoat when not writing. Messengers arrived continually. Talleyrand came in with diplomatic news. General Pierre-Antoine Daru presented a report on the conscripted Prussian levies, now in training and eventually to be frozen and abandoned in the wastes of Russia. Goethe, despite himself, was impressed by the great man, now thirty-eight and getting plump, but ruling the world with a decisive phrase, a curt nod, a quick negative. Eventually he turned to Goethe, with an approving look: “Voilà un homme,” he said to his entourage. Flattery was quickly followed by the usual barrage of questions. How old are you? Have you children? What news of your
duke? What are you writing? Have you seen the czar yet? You must describe this summit and dedicate your pamphlet to the czar, who will be pleased. Goethe: “I have never done anything of that kind.” “Then you should start now. Remember Voltaire.” Bonaparte smiled. “I have read Werther seven times. I took it with me to Egypt, to read under the Pyramids. It is part of the traveling library I keep in my coach. However, I have some criticisms to make.” Goethe listened patiently. “Now, Monsieur Gött, let me come to the point. Come to Paris. I ask you most earnestly, as a personal favor to myself. There is a lack of great plays now. You must write them. Show how a great man, a modern Caesar, can bring general happiness to mankind. Do it in Paris and the Comédie Française will present it with éclat. I implore you. I love the theatre. I would have made Corneille a prince.” And so forth. Goethe listened courteously, bowing often. He made evasive replies. There was much comedy in this scene of the most powerful man in the world supplicating its greatest writer, and getting nowhere. Eventually, Bonaparte tired of his role and turned to a report on Poland. Goethe asked the chamberlain if he might be permitted to leave (he had stood for more than an hour). Bonaparte, without looking up, nodded. The last thing Goethe noticed was the strong smell of eau de cologne, which Bonaparte, as always, had sprayed lavishly over his body.
Bonaparte impressed different people differently, in his own age and ever since. There were natures to whom his busy, efficient, or at least continuous activity appealed, and those it revolted or made suspicious. There is a full-scale verbal portrait of Bonaparte at work, at his best, provided by Pierre-Louis Roederer, a journalist and admirer, a kind of official academic portrait corresponding to the painted ones of Ingres and Gros. It is worth quoting at length because much of it was true, much of the time:
Punctual at every sitting [of the Council of State], prolonging the session five or six hours, discussing before or afterwards the subjects brought forward, always returning to two questions: “Is that just? ” “Is that useful? ” examining each question in itself under both relations . . . next consulting the best authorities . . . Never did the council adjourn without its members knowing more than the day before; if not through knowledge derived from him, at least through the researches he obliged them to make. Never did the members of the Senate and the Corps Législatif, or of the tribunals, pay their respects to him without being rewarded for their homage by valuable instructions. He cannot be surrounded by public men without being the statesman, all forming for him a council of state. . . . What characterized him most of all was the force, flexibility and constancy of his attention. He can work eighteen hours at a stretch on one or on several subjects. I never saw him tired. I never found him lacking in inspiration, even when weary in body, nor when violently exercised, nor when angry.
Roederer wrote that this superman presided at meetings from 9 A.M. till 5 P.M. with a fifteen-minute break “and seems no more fatigued at the close of the session than when it began.” Indeed, “his fellow-workmen break down and sink under the burden imposed on them and he supports without feeling the weight.” Roederer quotes Bonaparte as saying:
Various subjects and affairs are stowed away in my brain as in a chest of drawers. When I want to take up any business, I shut one drawer and open another. None of them ever gets mixed, and never does this incommode me or fatigue me. If I feel sleepy, I shut all the drawers and go to sleep. . . . I am always at work. I meditate a great deal. If I seem always equal to the occasion, ready to face what comes, it is because I have thought the matter over a long time before undertaking it. I have anticipated whatever might happen. . . . I work all the time, at dinner and at the theater. I wake up at night in order to resume my work. I got up last night at 2 A.M. I stretched myself on my couch before the fire to examine the army reports sent to me by the Minister of War. I found twenty mistakes in them, and made notes which I have this morning sent to the minister, who is now engaged with his clerks in rectifying them. . . . There is nothing relating to warfare that I cannot make myself. If nobody knows how to make gunpowder, I do. I can construct gun-carriages. If cannons must be cast, I will see that it is done properly. If tactical details must be taught, I will teach them.
Bourienne wrote: “He had not a good memory for proper names, words and dates, but it was prodigious for facts and localities. ” Another aide, General Daru, recorded that at his HQ on 13 August 1805, he dictated to him the entire campaign for the war against Austria that culminated in Austerlitz:
Order of marches, their duration, place of convergence or meeting of the columns, attacks in full force, the various movements and mistakes of the enemy, all this in rapid dictation, was foreseen beforehand and at a distance of 200 leagues. . . . The battlefield, the victories, and even the very days on which we were to enter Munich and Vienna were then announced and written down as it all turned out.
The modern reader can believe what he or she chooses of Bonaparte’s boasting and the goggling admiration of his clerical staff and other witnesses. It may well be that he remembered the exact position of two cannons at Ostend at a time when the army had 6,000, or that he was able to give a lost platoon its exact line of march to rejoin its battalion in an army of 200,000—two typical anecdotes about his omniscience. But many of Bonaparte’s prodigies of mental effort are no more plausible than the witticisms of royalty are funny. Those who served Bonaparte most slavishly had most need, for their own self-respect, to present him as a colossus. He liked to be surrounded by books and owned a great many at various times—even in straitened circumstances at Saint Helena, he had 3,370 books. But Madame de Remusat testified: “He is really ignorant, having read very little and always hastily.” Stendhal claimed Bonaparte had not read Pierre Bayle’s Dictionary, Montesquieu on the laws, or Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, three works then regarded as indispensable for public men. He himself admitted he preferred to learn, through his ears, answers to the incessant questions he put. Unfortunately, keeping up a rapid fire of queries to impress his audience, he did not always listen to or retain the answers.
What is suggestive about descriptions of his work methods is his preoccupation with detail, which implies an inability to delegate. It was not unusual, in those days, for the man at the top to have to do it all. Wellington learned from bitter experience that there were few of his officers he could trust to do anything efficiently, or indeed at all. Necessity forced him to do all, at times. He grumbled that the British army, for instance, was centrally administered by only 150 clerks, whereas Bonaparte had between 8,000 and 12,000 at the French War Office—hard workers, too, who got in at 6 A.M. But from the accounts we have of Bonaparte at work, he appeared to reduplicate the efforts of these teeming, industrious bureaucrats.
The trouble with the Napoleonic Empire was that it had no natural or even artificial hierarchy. Immediately below Bonaparte, at the very top, were three key men (in addition to Berthier, the chief of staff up to 1814). Talleyrand ran diplomacy and much else. He came from a good family, but his nurse dropped him when he was tiny and he was permanently lamed. That meant he could not serve in the forces, so he was disinherited and put into the church, a career he hated. Made bishop of Autun early in 1789, he leapt at the chance offered by the summoning of the Estates General to join the Revolutionary forces, and thereafter served the new regime in all its many mutations, except during the Terror, when he emigrated to Britain, the United States, the Low Countries, and Germany. He served as foreign minister in 1797, promoted Bonaparte’s interests, helped to organize the Brumaire coup in November 1799, and again served as foreign minister from December 1799 to 1807. He was everything Bonaparte was not: idle, taciturn, needing help with a dispatch or a letter, but immensely thoughtful and with a profound sense of what the nations of Europe were about, what they would stand and what they would not stand. Wellington once remarked of him: “He is not lively or pleasant in conversation, but now and then he comes out with a thing you remember all the rest of your life.” Where Bonaparte thought in the short term,
Talleyrand always thought in the long term, and this made him favor moderation. He wanted a durable peace from which France would emerge enlarged and strengthened, but not an object of intense envy and hatred among the other powers. He saw himself as a servant of Europe, in which France was only one historical unit, albeit the most important one. He helped to organize the various elements in Bonaparte’s empire, especially the new kingdoms he set up. As Talleyrand took douceurs from all participants he became rich, though his profuse spending habits kept him always in need of more. But by 1807 he decided Bonaparte would never accept moderate counsels and was heading for ultimate ruin. Thereafter, while still in Bonaparte’s service, Talleyrand established contacts with the Austrian and Russian courts and with other principalities, serving in effect as a double agent and collecting fees accordingly. Bonaparte knew about his corruption and double-dealing, in general terms anyway, and after the so-called Talleyrand-Fouché conspiracy, in which the emperor’s two chief ministers were detected in a plan to replace Bonaparte by Murat, the emperor subjected Talleyrand to a lengthy and public dressing down in front of an astonished court. His parade-ground language was shocking, as in his tirade to Whitworth—he called Talleyrand “merde en bas-de-soie” (a shit in silk stockings)—and from that day to this, no one knows whether Bonaparte’s loss of temper was deliberate or not. Talleyrand emerged the victor, saying nothing and merely bowing (as he had learned to do at Versailles when royalty was cross) but redoubling his contacts with other centers. The potentates learned to trust him, up to a point, and this was of invaluable service to France when Bonaparte’s military power collapsed, for Talleyrand was the man they preferred to negotiate with. They followed his counsels of moderation, which the dictator had rejected, and so he saved France from a Carthaginian peace.
