Whilst Napoleon destroyed successively every barrier of public liberty – while he built new state prisons, and established a high police, which filled France with spies and jailors – while he took the charge of the press so exclusively into his own hand – his policy at once, and his egotism, led him to undertake those immense public works, of greater or less utility or ornament as the chance might be, but which were sure to be set down as monuments of the Emperor's splendour. The name given him by the working classes, of the General Undertaker, was by no means ill bestowed; but in what an incalculably greater degree do such works succeed, when raised by the skill and industry of those who propose to improve their capital by the adventure, than when double the expense is employed at the arbitrary will of a despotic sovereign! Yet it had been well if bridges, roads, harbours, and public works, had been the only compensation which Napoleon offered to the people of France for the liberties he took from them. But he poured out to them, and shared with them, to drown all painful and degrading recollections, the intoxicating and fatal draught of military glory and universal domination. To lay the whole universe prostrate at the foot of France, while France, the nation of Camps, should herself have no higher rank than the first of her own Emperor's slaves, was the gigantic project, at which he laboured with such tenacious assiduity. It was the Sisyphæan stone which he rolled so high up the hill, that at length he was crushed under its precipitate recoil.
The main objects of that immense enterprise were such as had been undertaken while his spirit of ambition was at its height; and no one dared, even in his councils, to interfere with the resolutions which he adopted. Had these been less eminently successful, it is possible he might have paused, and perhaps might have preferred the tranquil pursuit of a course which might have rendered one kingdom free and happy, to the subjugation of all Europe. But Napoleon's career of constant and uninterrupted success under the most disadvantageous circumstances, together with his implied belief in his Destiny, conspired, with the extravagant sense of his own importance, to impress him with an idea that he was not "in the roll of common men,"291 and induced him to venture on the most desperate undertakings, as if animated less by the result of reason than by an internal assurance of success. After great miscarriages, he is said sometimes to have shown a corresponding depression; and thence he resigned four times the charge of his army when he found his situation embarrassing, as if no longer feeling confidence in his own mind, or conceiving he was deserted for the moment by his guardian genius. There were similar alternations, too, according to General Gourgaud's account, in his conversation. At times, he would speak like a deity,292 at others, in the style of a very ordinary person.
To the egotism of Napoleon, we may also trace the general train of deception which marked his public policy, and, when speaking upon subjects in which his own character was implicated, his private conversation.
In his public capacity, he had so completely prostituted the liberty of the press, that France could know nothing whatever but through Napoleon's own bulletins. The battle of Trafalgar was not hinted at till several months after it had been fought, and then it was totally misrepresented; and so deep and dark was the mantle which covered the events in which the people were most interested, that, on the very evening when the battle of Montmartre was fought, the Moniteur, the chief organ of public intelligence, was occupied in a commentary on nosographie, and a criticism on a drama on the subject of the chaste Susannah.293 The hiding the truth is only one step to the invention of falsehood, and, as a periodical publisher of news, Napoleon became so eminent for both, that, to "lie like a bulletin," became an adopted expression, not likely soon to lose ground in the French language, and the more disgraceful to Napoleon, that he is well known to have written those official documents in most instances himself.
Even this deceptive system, this plan of alternately keeping the nation in ignorance, or abusing it by falsehood, intimated a sense of respect for public opinion. Men love darkness, because their deeds are evil. Napoleon dared not have submitted to the public an undisguised statement of his perfidious and treacherous attacks upon Spain, than which a more gross breach of general good faith and existing treaties could scarce have been conceived. Nor would he have chosen to plead at the public bar, the policy of his continental system, adopted in total ignorance of the maxims of political economy, and the consequences of which were, first, to cause general distress, and then to encourage universal resistance against the French yoke throughout the whole continent of Europe. Nor is it more likely that, could the public have had the power of forming a previous judgment upon the probable event of the Russian campaign, that rash enterprise would ever have had an existence. In silencing the voice of the wise and good, the able and patriotic, and communicating only with such counsellors as were the echoes of his own inclinations, Napoleon, like Lear,
"Kill'd his physician, and the fee bestow'd
Upon the foul disease."
This was the more injurious, as Napoleon's knowledge of the politics, interests, and character of foreign courts was, excepting in the case of Italy, exceedingly imperfect. The peace of Amiens might have remained uninterrupted, and the essential good understanding betwixt France and Sweden need never have been broken, if Napoleon could, or would, have understood the free constitution of England, which permits every man to print or publish what he may choose; or if he could have been convinced that the institutions of Sweden did not permit their government to place their fleets and armies at the disposal of a foreign power, or to sink the ancient kingdom of the Goths into a secondary and vassal government.
Self-love, so sensitive as that of Napoleon, shunned especially the touch of ridicule. The gibes of the English papers, the caricatures of the London print-shops, were the petty stings which instigated, in a great measure, the breach of the peace of Amiens. The laughter-loving Frenchmen were interdicted the use of satire, which, all-licensed during the times of the republic, had, even under the monarchy, been only punished with a short and easy confinement in the Bastile. During the time of the consulate, Napoleon was informed that a comic opera, something on the plan of the English farce of High Life Below Stairs, had been composed by Monsieur Dupaty, and brought forward on the stage, and that, in this audacious performance, three valets mimicked the manners, and even the dress of the three Consuls, and especially his own. He ordered that the actors should be exposed at the Grève, in the dresses they had dared to assume, which should be there stripped from their backs by the executioner; and he commanded that the author should be sent to St. Domingo, and placed, as a person under requisition, at the disposal of the commander-in-chief. The sentence was not executed, for the offence had not existed, at least to the extent alleged;294 but the intention shows Napoleon's ideas of the liberty of the stage, and intimates what would have been the fate of the author of the Beggar's Opera, had he written for the French Opera Comique.
But no light, which reason or information could supply, was able to guide the intensity of a selfish ambition, which made Napoleon desire that the whole administration of the whole world should not only remotely, but even directly and immediately, depend on his own pleasure. When he distributed kingdoms to his brothers, it was under the express understanding that they were to follow in every thing the course of politics which he should dictate; and after all, he seemed only to create dependent states for the purpose of resuming them. The oppressions, which, in the name of France, he imposed upon Holland, were the direct, and, in all probability, the calculated means of dethroning his brother Louis; and he had thoughts of removing Joseph from Spain, when he saw of what a fair and goodly realm he had pronounced him king. In his wild and insatiable extravagance of administering in person the government of every realm which he conquered, he brought his powerful mind to the level of that of the spoiled child, who will not be satisfied without holding in its own hand whatever has caught its eye. The system, grounded on ambition so inordinate, carried with it in its excess the principles of its own ruin. The runner who will never stop for repose must at last fall down with fatigue. Had Napoleon succeeded both in Spain and Russia, he would not have rested, until he had found elsewhere the disasters of Baylen and of Moscow.
The consequences of the unjustifiable aggressions of the French Emperor were an unlimited extent of slaughter, fire, and human misery, all arising from the ambition of one man, who, never giving the least sign of having repented the unbounded mischief, seemed, on the contrary, to justify and take pride in the ravage which he had occasioned. This ambition, equally insatiable and incurable, justified Europe in securing his person, as if it had been that of a lunatic, whose misguided rage was not directed against an individual, but against the civilized world; which, wellnigh overcome by him, and escaping with difficulty, had a natural right to be guaranteed against repetition of the frantic exploits of a being who seemed guided by more than human passion, and capable of employing in execution of his purpose more than human strength.
The same egotism, the same spirit of self-deception, which marked Napoleon during his long and awful career of success, followed him into adversity. He framed apologies for the use of his little company of followers, as he had formerly manufactured bulletins for the Great Nation. Those to whom these excuses were addressed, Las Cases and the other gentlemen of Napoleon's suite, being too much devoted to him, and too generous to dispute, after his fall, doctrines which it would have been dangerous to controvert during his power, received whatever he said as truths delivered by a prophet, and set down doubtless to the score of inspiration what could by no effort be reconciled to truth. The horrid evils which afflicted Europe during the years of his success, were represented to others, and perhaps to his own mind, as consequences which the Emperor neither wished nor contemplated, but which were necessarily and unalterably attached to the execution of the great plans which the Man of Destiny had been called upon earth to perform, resembling in so far the lurid and fear-inspiring train pursuing the rapid course of a brilliant comet, which the laws of the universe have projected through the pathless firmament.
Some crimes he committed of a different character, which seem to have sprung, not like the general evils of war, from the execution of great and calculated plans of a political or military kind, but must have had their source in a temper naturally passionate and vindictive. The Duc d'Enghien's murder was at the head of this list; a gratuitous act of treachery and cruelty, which, being undeniable, led Napoleon to be believed capable of other crimes of a secret and bloody character – of the murder of Pichegru and of Wright – of the spiriting away of Mr. Windham, who was never afterwards heard of – and of other actions of similar atrocity. We pause before charging him with any of those which have not been distinctly proved. For while it is certain that he had a love of personal vengeance – proper, it is said, to his country – it is equally evident, that, vehement by temperament, he was lenient and calm by policy; and that, if he had indulged the former disposition, the security with which he might have done so, together with the ready agency of his fatal police, would have made his rage resemble that of one of the Roman emperors. He was made sensible, too late, of the general odium drawn upon him by the murder of the Duc d'Enghien, and does not seem to have been disposed to incur farther risks of popular hatred in prosecution of his individual resentment. The records of his police, however, and the persecutions experienced by those whom Napoleon considered as his personal enemies, show that, by starts at least, nature resumed her bent, and that he, upon whom there was no restraint, save his respect for public opinion, gave way occasionally to the temptation of avenging his private injuries. He remarked it as a weakness in the character of his favourite Cæsar, that he suffered his enemies to remain in possession of the power to injure him; and Antommarchi, the reporter of the observation, admitted, that when he looked on the person before him, he could not but acknowledge that he was unlikely to fall into such an error.295
When Napoleon laid aside reserve, and spoke what were probably his true sentiments, he endeavoured to justify those acts of his government which transgressed the rules of justice and morality, by political necessity, and reasons of state; or, in other words, by the pressure of his own interest. This, however, was a plea, the full benefit of which he reserved to vindicate his own actions, never permitting it to be used by any other sovereign. He considered himself privileged in transgressing the law of nations, when his interests required it; but pleaded as warmly upon the validity of public law, when alleging it had been infringed by other states, as if he himself had in all instances respected its doctrines as inviolable.
But although Napoleon thus at times referred to state necessity as the ultimate source of actions otherwise unjustifiable, he more frequently endeavoured to disguise his errors by denial, or excuse them by apologies which had no foundation. He avers in his Will,296 that by the confession of the Duc d'Enghien, the Comte d'Artois maintained sixty assassins against his life;297 and that for this reason the Duc d'Enghien was tried, convicted, and put to death. The examination of the duke bears no such confession, but, on the contrary, an express denial of the whole of the alleged system; nor was there the slightest attempt made to contradict him by other testimony. He bequeathed, in like manner, a legacy to a villain298 who had attempted the assassination of the Duke of Wellington; the assassin, according to his strange argument, having as good a right to kill his rival and victor, as the English had to detain him prisoner at St. Helena. This clause in the last will of a dying man, is not striking from its atrocity merely, but from the inaccuracy of the moral reasoning which it exhibits. Napoleon has drawn a parallel betwixt two cases, which must be therefore both right or both wrong. If both were wrong, why reward the ruffian with a legacy? but if both were right, why complain of the British Government for detaining him at St. Helena?
But, indeed, the whole character of Napoleon's autobiography marks his desire to divide mankind into two classes – his friends and his enemies; – the former of whom are to be praised and vindicated; the latter to be vilified, censured, and condemned, without any regard to truth, justice, or consistency. To take a gross example, he stoutly affirmed, that the treasures which were removed from Paris in April 1814, and carried to Orleans, were seized and divided by the ministers of the allied powers – Talleyrand, Metternich, Hardenberg, and Castlereagh; and that the money thus seized included the marriage-portion of the Empress Maria Louisa.299 Had this story been true, it would have presented Napoleon with a very simple means of avenging himself upon Lord Castlereagh, by putting the British public in possession of the secret.
It is no less remarkable, that Napoleon, though himself a soldier, and a distinguished one, could never allow a tribute of candid praise to the troops and generals by whom he was successively opposed. In mentioning his victories, he frequently bestows commendation upon the valour and conduct of the vanquished. This was an additional and more delicate mode of praising himself and his own troops by whom these enemies were overthrown. But he never allows any merit to those by whom he was defeated in turn. He professes never to have seen the Prussian troops behave well save at Jena, or the Russians save at Austerlitz. Those armies of the same nations, which he both saw and felt in the campaigns of 1812 and 1813, and before whom he made such disastrous retreats as those of Moscow and Leipsic, were, according to his expressions, mere canaille.
In the same manner, when he details an action in which he triumphed, he is sure to boast, like the old Grecian (very justly perhaps,) that in this Fortune had no share; while his defeats are entirely and exclusively attributed to the rage of the elements, the combination of some most extraordinary and unexpected circumstances, the failure of some of his lieutenants or maréchals, or, finally, the obstinacy of the general opposed, who, by mere dint of stupidity, blundered into success through circumstances which should have ensured his ruin.
In a word, from one end of Napoleon's works to the other, he has scarcely allowed himself to be guilty of a single fault or a single folly, excepting of that kind, which, arising from an over confidence and generosity, men secretly claim as merits, while they affect to give them up as matters of censure. If we credit his own word, we must believe him to have been a faultless and impeccable being. If we do not, we must set him down as one that, where his own reputation was concerned, told his story with a total disregard to candour and truth.
Perhaps it was a consequence of the same indifference to truth, which induced Napoleon to receive into his favour those French officers who broke their parole by escape from England. This, he alleged, he did, by way of retaliation, the British Government having, as he pretended, followed a similar line of conduct. The defence is false, in point of fact; but if it were true, it forms no apology for a sovereign and a general countenancing a breach of honour in a gentleman and a soldier. The French officers who liberated themselves by such means, were not the less dishonoured men, and unfit to bear command in the army of France, though they could have pointed with truth to similar examples of infamy in England.
But the most extraordinary instance of Napoleon's deceptive system, and of his determination, at all events, to place himself under the most favourable light to the beholders, is his attempt to represent himself as the friend and protector of liberal and free principles. He had destroyed every vestige of liberty in France – he had persecuted as ideologists all who cherished its memory – he had boasted himself the restorer of monarchical government – the war between the Constitutionalists and him, covered, after the return from Elba, by a hollow truce, had been renewed, and the Liberalists had expelled him from the capital – he had left in his Testament, the appellation of traitor with La Fayette, one of their earliest, most devoted, and most sincere chiefs – yet, notwithstanding all this constant opposition to the party which professes most to be guided by them, he has ventured to represent himself as a friend of liberal ideas! He has done so, and he has been believed.
There is but one explanation of this. The friends of revolution are upon principle the enemies of ancient and established governments – Napoleon became the opponent of the established powers from circumstances; not because he disputed the character of their government, but because they would not admit him into their circle; and though there was not, and could not be, any real connexion betwixt his system and that of the Liberalists, yet both had the same opponents, and each loved in the other the enemy of their enemies. It was the business of Napoleon in his latter days, to procure, if professions could gain it, the sympathy and good opinion of any or every class of politicians; while, on the contrary, it could not be indifferent to those to whom he made advances, to number among their disciples, even in the twelfth hour, the name of Napoleon. It resembled what sometimes happens in the Catholic Church, when a wealthy and powerful sinner on his death-bed receives the absolution of the Church on easy terms, and dies after a life spent in licentious courses, wrapt up in the mantle, and girded with the cord, of some order of unusual strictness. Napoleon, living a despot and a conqueror, has had his memory consecrated and held up to admiration by men, who term themselves emphatically the friends of freedom.
The faults of Buonaparte, we conclude as we commenced, were rather those of the sovereign and politician, than of the individual. Wisely is it written, that "if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." It was the inordinate force of ambition which made him the scourge of Europe; it was his efforts to disguise that selfish principle, that made him combine fraud with force, and establish a regular system for deceiving those whom he could not subdue. Had his natural disposition been coldly cruel, like that of Octavius, or had he given way to the warmth of his temper, like other despots, his private history, as well as that of his campaigns, must have been written in letters of blood. If, instead of asserting that he never committed a crime, he had limited his self-eulogy to asserting, that in attaining and wielding supreme power, he had resisted the temptation to commit many, he could not have been contradicted. And this is no small praise.
His system of government was false in the extreme. It comprehended the slavery of France, and aimed at the subjugation of the world. But to the former he did much to requite them for the jewel of which he robbed them. He gave them a regular government, schools, institutions, courts of justice, and a code of laws. In Italy, his rule was equally splendid and beneficial. The good effects which arose to other countries from his reign and character, begin also to be felt, though unquestionably they are not of the kind which he intended to produce. His invasions, tending to reconcile the discords which existed in many states between the governors and governed, by teaching them to unite together against a common enemy, have gone far to loosen the feudal yoke, to enlighten the mind both of prince and people, and have led to many admirable results, which will not be the less durably advantageous, that they have arisen, are arising slowly, and without contest.
In closing the Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, we are called upon to observe, that he was a man tried in the two extremities, of the most exalted power and the most ineffable calamity, and if he occasionally appeared presumptuous when supported by the armed force of half a world, or unreasonably querulous when imprisoned within the narrow limits of St. Helena, it is scarce within the capacity of those whose steps have never led them beyond the middle path of life, to estimate either the strength of the temptations to which he yielded, or the force of mind which he opposed to those which he was able to resist.