Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

A NEW LIFE OF NAPOLEON I.

THE appearance of a new History of Napoleon the First would deserve little attention in the presence of so many already existing, unless it could lay claim either to extraordinary literary merit or to decided originality in the treatment of so trite a subject. While the first volume of M. Lanfrey's history is quite up to the mark in a literary point of view-being written in unpretentious yet clear and forcible style-it is something entirely new to read a life of the first Emperor, written by a Frenchman, which is not only hostile to his memory, but the hostility of which is not illustrated by ebullitions of passion or prejudice, and justifies itself by adducing the clear testimony of historical facts and correspondence, supported by the great man's own memoirs. It is indeed a sign of the intellectual convalescence of the thinking part of the nation when a Frenchman is able, without raising a storm of obloquy, to apply the crowbar of logic with such fatal effect to the national idol, that Dagon tumbles from his pedestal, and only the stump of Dagon is left to him; that mutilated remain der consisting in an admirable calculating machine, galvanised into life and action by the solitary human passion of ambition. With regard to ourselves, it may be said that after sixteen years of alliance and friendly relations with the present French Emperor, we are at length able to regard the image of his famous predecessor with perfectly dispassionate eyes, inclined, if any thing, to put the greater weight into the favourable scale in the estimation of his character. The time is past when he appeared as a mere fiend to the mass of Englishmen, and at worst a kind of fallen angel to a few eccentric Ishmaelites,

like Lord Byron; and we may generally be presumed to look upon him now as a potential senior wrangler who turned his mathematical talents to the subjugation of mankind, and perhaps reconciled his supposed mission to any conscience that he had, by imagining, from what he had seen of them, that such subjugation would be for their good. That a genius with a peculiar bent in the direction of order and subordination, whose youth was nursed in the chaos of the French Revolution, should have sincerely taken up with a cynical and pessimist view of human nature, is intelligible and excusable; and on this point, led astray by his republican sympathies, we do not think that M. Lanfrey is quite just to the memory of Napoleon I. He appears to have taken it too much for granted that the constitution which Buonaparte destroyed in the coup-d'état of the 18th Brumaire was capable of standing on its own legs, and represented a stable Government, forgetting that up to that date there had been a perpetual see-saw of parties since the Reign of Terror, and that a recurrence of the Reign of Terror itself at any moment was by no means improbable. The great French Revolution, it must always be remembered, was much more than a revolution in the commonly accepted sense of the term. It was a deluge which entirely submerged, or swept away, all the old landmarks of society. As the waters subsided some of these had reappeared, but, as it were, polluted with diluvial slime, with all their beauty and prestige gone for ever. A government of centralised force, capable of keeping up dykes to prevent the return of the flood, seemed thus the only one possible for France-indeed, even now it may

'Histoire de Napoléon I.' Par P. Lanfrey. Tome premier. Charpentier, Paris.

be doubted whether any other is possible, since the French have not, with all their political experience, learned the lesson that it matters little under what form of government they live, so that it be righteously administered, and still refuse to understand opposition in any other sense than subversion of the exist ing authority. Under the present regime the English word "selfgovernment," though still printed in italics as foreign, has passed into a sort of Shibboleth among liberal French writers as an expression of national aspiration, they being unable to see the deductions from its excellences which most sensible Englishmen would readily allow; and also that, as a condition of its successful realisation, the individuals who compose a nation must first practise it in their own proper persons in the sense of self-restraint and self-respect-such feelings being intimately bound up with a fear of the consequences of untried theories, a certain love of anomalous institutions which have, on the whole, worked well, and deep regard for the vested rights and liberties of other people. It may, perhaps, be sadly questioned, taking into consideration all the elements of human nature, whether any people is capable of entirely realising self-government. The mass of the nation is governed well or ill by one man, or well or ill by a number of men in the one case the Government taking the shape of a beneficent despotism, a constitutional monarchy, or a more or less aristocratic republic, as in Switzerland still, or in America before the Civil War-in the other case, of a tyranny, an oligarchy, or a democracy, which being the tyranny of the worse many over the better few, is the worst shape in which government can exist at all. In short, in spite of our affection for the term, it would perhaps be best to discard it as illogical, and to pronounce the thing itself as quite impracticable in its application to a nation. We may still allow with

M. Lanfrey, setting aside the question as to whether the Republican Government of France had established its right to exist, that there may be reason to doubt whether General Buonaparte was the very best man who could have been found to supersede the Directory, and agree with him that the means he took to possess himself of the Dictatorship were utterly unjustifiable. With the circumstances of the 18th Brumaire (9th November 1799), which placed General Buonaparte firmly in the saddle in that position of absolute power which, under the names of First Consul and Emperor, he was destined to hold for fifteen years, M. Lanfrey's first volume concludes. As a political study, this is doubtless the most interesting part of the Life of Napoleon I. At the end of the first thirty years of his life he had achieved the work of Philip of Macedon, to prepare himself henceforth to play the part of Alexander. In spite of the proverb, his was certainly an old head placed on young shoulders. M. Lanfrey dismisses the anecdotes of his childhood and youth as more or less apocryphal, merely stating some facts which show that Nature virtually dispensed in his case with childhood and youth altogether. No little Arab of London streets could have developed a more precocious manhood. At school he was one of those quiet boys who give no trouble to masters, but are unpopular with their comrades through not caring about play. At the military school at Paris, to which he passed from Brienne, we find him making the strange complaint in a boy of the laxity of the discipline. At sixteen he passed into the army, where he at once distinguished himself by his studious and ascetic character. Among his papers was found a dialogue on love, in which he says, "Love does more harm than good; and it would be a blessing if some protecting divinity could relieve us of

it, and thus effect the deliverance of mankind." In the 'History of Corsica,' which employed his leisure at this period, he delighted to contrast the pure manners of his native isle with the dissoluteness of French society. His affections clove to the Corsican patriot Paoli, but his ambition soon corrected them when he found that patriotism would not pay. His sentimental sympathies were rather the reflection of his studies of Rousseau than the promptings of his own heart. He soon outgrew any youthful weaknesses, and then the politics of his native island gave him an opportunity of trying his hand at a coup-d'état on a small scale. He was a candidate for the post of "chef de bataillon" of the National Guard of Ajaccio (Corsica baving now been united to France) against several influential competitors, the chief of whom were Marius Peraldi and Pozzo di Borgo. The energy of his canvass against what seemed overwhelming odds was perfectly astonishing; and by dint of flattery, bribery, and intimidation, he soon succeeded in forming a party which was nearly equal to that of his antagonists. But the more important business was to gain the Commissaires of the Constituent Assembly. As soon as these arrived, Murati, the principal man amongst them, became the guest of Peraldi, Buonaparte's most formidable competitor. This clearly-pronounced partisanship stung Buonaparte to the quick. To let things take their course was certain defeat, to resist was decidedly dangerous. After many close conferences with his friends, in which he tried to make inuendoes serve for explicit words, he resolved on action. Towards evening, as the Peraldi family were at table, there was a sudden knocking at the outer door. The instant the door was opened a body of armed men rushed into the presence of the dismayed dinner-party. Murati, however, had flown, but

was

easily caught again, and dragged to the house of his daring kidnapper. Buonaparte, mastering his emotion, and composing his countenance to affability, said to him, "I only wished you to be free, entirely free; you were not so at the house of Peraldi." The Commissary was so astounded by this audacious conduct that he did not even protest or attempt to return to the place whence he had been brought. The next day the poll took place, and Buonaparte was elected" chef de bataillon." Pozzo di Borgo, having raised some objection to the illegality of the proceeding, was seized by his legs from below, thrown down, hustled and trampled, and had to thank Buonaparte himself for interfering to save his life. In the storms of the period the affair blew over, and Buonaparte was allowed to retain his command; but if this episode in his early life had been known to the Five Hundred the day before the 18th Brumaire, the results of that day might have been different. When the Girondins came to power, Buonaparte was found again at Paris in military command. The scenes of the Revolution had by this time thoroughly disgusted him with its spirit, but he was too politic to throw himself at once into the ranks of its adversaries, and still continued to parade the Jacobinical principles that he had learned to detest, because no other party presented a similar opening for his future rise. The siege of Toulon, where he commanded the artillery, first drew upon him the eyes of mankind. He had displayed in that siege, when only twenty-four, all the best qualities of a veteran captain. During the Reign of Terror he was operating with the French army in northern Italy, and his reputation was every day increasing; but he had soon to bear the consequences of acting with the Robespierres, and, when they fell, found himself under arrest, and

cited to appear before the Committee of Public Safety-a summons which in those days was considered equivalent to a sentence of death. The charge brought against him was one resulting from his mission to Genoa, which, it was contended, was made with treasonable intentions. After ten days of terrible anxiety, during which he used every effort to destroy all evidence of his undeniable relations with the Robespierres, he was acquitted on the ground of the utility of his talents to the Republic, rather than because his judges were persuaded of his innocence. He was still under a sort of suspicion, and was removed from the Italian army to take a command in the army of the West, which disgusted him to that degree, that he lingered in Paris, and was suspended from his command for neglecting to go to the post assigned him, so that he had to pass through a period of enforced idleness, the spell of which he attempted to break by negotiating to be employed on a mission in Turkey; but when his mind was set on this scheme, the army of Italy having sustained some reverses, he was refused leave to go, for the honourable reason that his presence was required in Paris, that he might assist in forming plans for the campaign, but really because the Committee of Public Safety wished to keep him in their power. It was thus that, in an evil hour for the English monarchy, Cromwell was prevented from sailing for America. The

plan which he drew up for Kellermann, the commander-in-chief of the army of Italy, was most admirable in a scientific point of view, and superior to that which was carried out subsequently, in that it contained no scheme for conquests and annexations under the pretence of the emancipation of oppressed nationalities. But the principle of drawing up at home schemes of action for a distant theatre, was one which he was the

An

first to repudiate, as soon as he I was able to do so. He was under the eclipse of a temporary disgrace when fortune offered him an opportunity of re-establishing his position in a most signal manner by the events of the 13th Vendemiaire (5th October 1795), when the existence of the Convention was threatened by an insurrection of the reactionary sections. officer named Menou, sent to disperse the meeting of one of the most powerful of these sections, having compromised the position of his troops, parleyed instead of acting, and withdrew the Government force, while the insurgents omitted to fulfil their part of the agreement by separating. At this crisis of danger, Buonaparte, who happened to be in the theatre, hastened to the Assembly to observe what would take place. Menou was voted under arrest, and then the question was raised as to who should be appointed in his place. Buonaparte, still among the audience, heard his own name mentioned, and deliberated, in consequence, for a full half-hour as to what line of conduct he should pursue. Barras was the favourite, and on his recommendation, which Buonaparte appears to have conveniently suppressed in his Memoirs, the latter was joined to him as his lieutenant. The result of Buonaparte's deliberation had been, that the chances of success were chiefly on the side of the Convention, and that, on the whole, it would be politic to do his best to make those chances a certainty. Forty pieces of artillery conveniently disposed about the Louvre and the Tuileries, and, when the time came, vigorously served, enabled the 8000 troops of the Convention to disperse the 40,000 national guards and others of whom the insurgent army was composed, and who thought to carry all before them by numbers and dead weight. A vote of thanks was passed to Barras and Buonaparte, as having de

served well of their country; and the resignation of the latter soon left the field open for the appointment of his colleague as General of the Interior.

The prestige which the 13th Vendémiaire conferred on the name of Buonaparte enabled him to turn his success to good account by enriching himself and his family. The Directory began to wish, finding how indispensable he had become, that he had not been detained at Paris; and his nomination to the command of the army of Italy was partly owing to the general distrust he inspired. It was indeed the most brilliant form of ostracism. Still it is doubted whether such good fortune, so fatal to the State, would have fallen to his lot, had he not been assisted by his marriage with Josephine Beauharnais. The way in which he first became acquainted with this lady was romantic. Some days after the disarmament of the Sections, a child of ten or twelve years old called at the General's quarters, and begged for the sword of his father, a former general of the Republic, who had died on the scaffold. The child was Eugene de Beauharnais. The General acceded to his prayer, and the next day was thanked in person by his charming mother, whom Buonaparte as yet only knew by name, though she was the intimate friend of Barras. M. Lanfrey says, "The silence kept by Buonaparte on the subject of this liaison and of the part which Barras had in the determinations of Madame de Beauharnais, is more easily explained than his forgetfulness of the service rendered him on the eve of the 13th Vendémiaire." But the fact is none the less patent, being established by all the evidence of the time, attested by Josephine herself, who, in her Creole nonchalance, would perhaps have never decided on that marriage, unless Barras had added to the trousseau the command of the army of Italy.

She wrote a short time before her marriage," Barras assures me that if I marry the General he will obtain him the command in chief of the army of Italy. Yesterday, Buonaparte, in speaking to me of this favour, which already causes murmurs among his brothers in arms, although it is not yet granted, said, 'Do they believe, then, that I have need of protection to get on? The day will come when they will be only too glad if I am willing to give them mine. My sword is at my side, and with it I shall go far.'" M. Lanfrey seems to insinuate that there was something more than intimate friendship in the relations between Josephine and Barras. If such was the case, considering the whole character of Buonaparte, and especially his manifest desire to cut a figure in a world that he affected to despise, to suppose that he was in the full confidence of the parties is scarcely conceivable. Having been a student, and being an imitator of Cæsar, he can hardly have forgotten the legend about Cæsar's wife. It is quite certain that he never let pride or self-respect stand in the way of any object he wished to gain, but the meanness of marrying another man's mistress would have been fatal to the ends of his ambition. Besides, as she was an independent widow moving in high society, it is hard to conceive what object Barras could have had in wishing to pass her over to his friend.

Friendship seems to explain the matter better than anything else; but yet there seems to have been a certain levity in Josephine's conduct, especially during the subsequent absence of her husband in Italy, which might have induced him to wish as little as possible said about a transaction which might bear an ugly construction. It is possible that there were other reasons besides her childlessness which prompted the Emperor's final determination to divorce Josephine, but

« AnteriorContinuar »