Chapter X: Book THREE: The River (1)

One who thoughtfully ponders the centuries,
Surveys the whole in the clear light of the spirit;
All that is petty has vanished from sight;
Oceans and continents alone are of account.—GOETHE.

I

About twenty men are seated round a large oval table. Some are quite young, some middle-aged, some elderly. They are plainly dressed, in accordance with the fashion of 1800, when wigs were no longer worn, and lace was out of date; those of them that are in uniform are not resplendent with gold braid, and they wear no orders. Some have the bold, self-confident look of the man of action; others, the thoughtful mien of the savant. From town and from countryside, from office and from laboratory, they come, but are unified by a common experience and a common aim. For ten years, they have been living through a revolutionary epoch; they meet to bring that epoch to a close. Around them is the chill splendour of the Tuileries, the palace of the last Bourbon kings. The golds and the reds of the rich carpets and the silken hangings are out of keeping with their bourgeois circumstantiality; the silvery sheen of the candles, reflected in rainbow tints from the myriad facets of the candelabras, recalls an era that scintillated with light and glowed with colour.

The Directors before them had been wont to entertain their lady friends in royal halls, but that was in the Luxembourg, the former meeting-place of the peers of France. The Tuileries seemed full of Ghosts. Did not a curse lie upon the place? The dictator had broken the spell. Two months after the coup d’état, he had come with his fellow Consuls to take possession of the palace, which exerted a magical lure upon his imagination. Yet when, seven years after the arrest of the last scion of the royal line, the first of the bourgeois rulers made his formal entry, the affair had a strong flavour of burlesque. The Parisians could not but laugh to see the numbers of the hackney carriages peeping out from beneath the slips of paper which had been carelessly pasted over them. This seemed to symbolise the ludicrous aspect of time’s revenges.

The Consul’s own mood was no less haphazard as he looked round with childlike curiosity. “Well, here we are in the Tuileries,” he said to one of his friends; “let’s see to it that we stay here!”

Several of those now seated at the oval table, had waited here of old—wearing powdered wigs, lace jabots, and pumps—tremulous with eagerness to learn whether His Majesty would receive them, and when. Some of them had sat at a similar table in the Luxembourg. There had been no stability about those deliberations. Laws had come and gone, urgency orders and exceptional provisions; transitional decrees had pushed foregoing decrees out of the way; three constitutions had risen and set, had shot up into the air swiftly and brilliantly like rockets, to vanish like these and to fall like rocket-sticks. The whole decade during which the new ideas had been trying to realise themselves in the concrete, had passed swiftly over Paris like a single night, amid a confusion of flashing lights and rumbling drums. The city had been like an armed camp with no fighting fronts and no battles, but perturbed by the to-and-fro march of armed political parties, deafened by the noisy wrangling between the old order and the new wishes, dazzled by the glare of venturesome ideas, confused by the clamour of disappointed hopes and the clash of warring ambitions—a titanic bacchanal of liberty, equality, and cozenage. Surveying the medley, looking down from the skies, were the shades of the two men whose books had set the whole in motion: Rousseau, with eyes of disgust; Voltaire, with a mocking smile.

But suddenly the tumult had been stilled. That little man at the head of the table had stilled it, the little general in the well-worn green uniform. Not that he, presiding over the Council of State, is in fact presiding over the State; the parties have withdrawn into their caves, satisfied or rancorous, but at any rate silenced. France, weakened by clubs and corruption, by the Terror and the demagogues, is turning back (like an adventuress weary of errant amours) to the arms of a strong man who can master her.

Enough, now, for Bonaparte that he should aspire to fulfil this masterful lover’s role. No longer did he need to fight for the position. The man for whom France was longing, must be a man of order; must be one who had never before held power, who belonged to no party, and who none the less enjoyed popular favour. He must, therefore, be a soldier and a conqueror. Moreau lacked the self-confidence and adroitness needed to make him a successful rival; the other great generals were dead or overshadowed; there were no civilian competitors. After Bonaparte’s outstanding military successes, it was easy for him to win supreme power in the State. He would have won it without a struggle had he not been so stubborn in his desire to observe constitutional formalities.

The attempt to be strictly constitutional had been a ludicrous failure, and had imposed artificial obstacles in his path. Yet this very fact was a token and a guarantee of his political talents. He was a man with a firm grip on the sword-hilt, but he was also a man who clearly understood the limits of the power of the sword. “Do you know,” he said in those days, “what amazes me more than all else? The impotence of force to organise 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.” Napoleon was the greatest military commander of his day, but neither now nor later was it his habit to strike the table with mailed fist, neither in Paris at this juncture nor elsewhere when negotiating a truce or a peace or an alliance. He was a political genius, who prized the sword, indeed, but prized it only as one of the two powers. His ear was never deafened by the clash of arms. As now, so for fifteen years to come, he is ever on the watch for indications of public opinion; always listening to the voice of the people, a voice which defies calculation; a voice which Napoleon, a man of figures, vainly tries to calculate. Precisely because of his failure to do this, the attempt to reckon with public opinion is always alluring to the imaginative side of his nature.

Because Bonaparte believes in the power of the spirit more than in the power of the sword, he strives for order and peace more resolutely than for war and conquest. The history of the next ten years will prove it.

For him, order denotes equality, but not liberty. He adopts into his dictatorship the former of these two gods of the revolution. Except for a few vacillations, he will cherish equality to the end, despite appearances to the contrary. But liberty? What is liberty? “Both the savage and the civilised man need a lord and master, a magician, who will hold the imagination in check, impose strict discipline, bind man in chains, so that he may not bite out of season; one who will thrash him, and lead him to the chase. Obedience is man’s destiny; he deserves nothing better, and he has no rights!” These threatening words of the misanthropist disclose no more than half of his secret thoughts. Through all the phases of his rule, he is ever in search of the efficient man, and to such a man he grants power over thousands; just as he himself, through energy and diligence, through natural and acquired superiority, has won to power over millions. In spite of all, he is the son of the revolution; and in this sense he will remain the son of the revolution, whatever forms his power may assume.

In part, that is the explanation of the mysterious influence he wields. The wider his domain extends, the more plainly do all realise that they are living in a system which promises to every efficient man the gratification of his wishes, and guarantees to every efficient man place and power and wealth; which does these things because the Master has himself risen out of the crowd. He shows this, now, in his very first step. Sieyès has drafted a constitution. There is to be a grand elector, a president who can only represent and sign his name. With soldierly curtness, Bonaparte puts his pen through the item. “Away with this fat hog!” Instead, there is to be a First Consul, with plenary powers, and plenty of work. He is to be war lord and also director of foreign policy; he is to appoint all ministers and envoys, councillors of State and prefects, officers and judges. Thirty nominated senators are to elect their colleagues; but neither the Senate nor the Legislative Assembly nor the Tribunate is to have any power to initiate legislation. These bodies are merely brought into existence to give politicians a platform for their orations, and to provide senators with high salaries and opportunities for a resplendent life.

Although everything was dependent upon the will of one man, that one man insisted that those dependent on him should themselves be men, and not mere names. Neither birth nor pretentiousness nor prominence in a political party could lead to the front in the army or in civil life. Nothing but energy and capacity could ensure promotion. Such was the principle upon which Napoleon chose the members of the Council of State.

This last was a round table of experts, selected by the dictator on his own initiative. Among them was Laplace, whom, to honour the Institute, Napoleon had also appointed Minister for Home Affairs—an appointment the great mathematician held for a time, until he turned back from the mechanics of the State to the mechanics of the heavens. There, too, was Roederer, official and journalist, the most independent man to be encountered by Napoleon during twenty years, and the most valuable recorder of conversations. Tronchet, also, one of the finest jurists of the age, was there. In the council chamber, all alike were citizens, and addressed one another by that plain title. Royalists and Jacobins sat there side by side, under a regime of equality, since reason was enthroned.

When the minutes of the sittings are shown to the citizen-consul, he says: “It is essential to give a full and accurate report of the opinions expressed by legal luminaries, for their words are weighty; but what we soldiers and moneyed men think is of little account. In the heat of the moment I have often said things which an instant afterwards I saw to have been unjust. I do not wish to seem better than I am.” When he noticed that the councillors were simply echoing whatever he said, he was quick to call them to order: “You are not here, gentlemen, to agree with me, but to express your own views. If you do that, I can compare them with mine, and decide which is better.”

The sittings, often enough, do not begin before nine in the evening, for up till then the Consul has been dealing with the urgent affairs of the day. They may last till five o’clock in the morning. The councillors get very tired during the small hours. Perhaps the Minister for War goes to sleep. Napoleon shakes them up, exclaiming: “Do let’s keep awake, citizens. It’s only two o’clock. We must earn our salaries.” He, who presides, is indeed one of the youngest of the company, being now thirty. But in three campaigns he has learned how to watch over the interests of hundreds of thousands. Was not the management of an army which set out from the Alps, crossed the sea, and marched far into the desert—was not this the best school for the study of State administration? There, too, he had to think of money and bread, of rights and laws, of rewards and punishments, of rest and obedience and order.

During the very first night after the coup d’état, he had appointed two committees to draft a legal code; this was the first act of his dictatorship! The prevailing chaos had been the outcome of a lack of law. Down to the outbreak of the revolution, there had been no unified legal system in France. The revolution brought the promise of such a system; but even now, after eleven years, the promise was unfulfilled. That first summer, three great lawyers were set to work; four months later a draft of the Civil Code, subsequently rechristened the Code Napoléon, was ready; then the draft was discussed in the Council of State. In eighteen months the laws were voted. They passed into effect in 1804.

After more than a century, this Code is still the law of France; it was adopted in many of the lands conquered by Napoleon, having great influence on the legislation of Central and Southern Germany, Prussia, Switzerland, and Spain; and its influence spread still farther afield, to Central America and South America. All that is new and morally decisive in the Code Napoléon is revolutionary law. The law-book which the Dictator discussed in all its details for many months, the law-book, many of whose most contentious points were the direct outcome of his decisions, borrowed the fixed principles of reason that had been sketched in the first days of the revolution. Experienced and dispassionate minds, under Napoleon’s guidance, worked them up, purified them, and made them into a new system of the rights of man. In this system, there was no longer a hereditary nobility; all children had an equal share in inheritance; all parents became legally responsible for the maintenance of their children; Jews became equal with Christians before the law; civil marriage was open to all, and was dissoluble.

Concerning this matter, as concerning all matters of family law, his Corsican family feeling persistently influenced his judgments: “We know that adultery is not a rare occurrence, but an ordinary one; that it can happen on any convenient sofa.... Some sort of restraint must be imposed upon these women who commit adultery for trinkets or verses, for Apollo and the nine Muses.”

His sense of order leads him to be a thorough-going supporter of marriage. He even sees to it that women shall follow their husbands into transportation, “for how can we forbid a woman to do so when she is convinced of her husband’s innocence? Or is this conviction of hers to deprive her of her rights as married woman; is she to lose the title of wife, and to become the man’s concubine? Many men have only become criminals owing to their wives. Are we to forbid those who have been the cause of the misfortune from sharing that misfortune?” He also thinks highly of the custom of old Roman days, when, at marriage, the woman was formally described as passing from her father’s guardianship into that of her husband. “That would be excellent in Paris, where women do as they please. It would influence some of them, though not all.”

Therefore, though he favours divorce, it must not be too easy: “What would happen to the most intimate of natural ties if people were suddenly to become estranged? Unless we make divorce difficult, a young woman will be ready to marry a quite unsuitable man, for fashion, convenience, simply to get a roof over her head. The law must warn her against this.... In truth, there are only three valid grounds for divorce: attempted murder, adultery, and impotence.”

Such are the plastic thoughts of this expert in human nature, whose mathematical talents still leave him free to subsume facts under ideas; one who has an intelligence well fitted for the consideration of laws, seeing that it is equally swayed by theory and practice, by energetic activity and sceptical suspense. The conflict of trends within the legislator’s mind is obvious, and it was intensified by his thoughts concerning Josephine’s former infidelity and present faithfulness. (We know that she manifested a lively interest in the drafting of those sections of the Code that related to divorce! Napoleon at this time was already wondering whether, if his wife remained childless, he would not have to divorce her for reasons of State. Her own dread of this possibility led her to use her influence in favour of strengthening the marriage tie, whereas he was driven by self-interest to insist that marriage must not be indissoluble.)

It is a personal feeling, too, which drives him to avoid scandal, to save the honour of marriage. He opposes the interference of the law-courts in conjugal questions; prefers that such matters should be settled by mutual understanding, so that the veil shall not be stripped off. “The desire of both parties for divorce is an indication that divorce is necessary. It is not the business of the court to establish the fact that this mutual desire exists; the court has simply to pronounce the divorce when the desire exists.” His strong family feeling leads him to add that maltreatment, perversion, and adultery should be concealed beneath the formula of mutual desire; the need for divorce is to be settled at a family council, and the judge has merely to confirm this decision.

For the same reason, he introduces a semi-divorce, a judicial separation from bed and board. This is always to be arranged after a mutual private understanding, for it will be a barrier to the possibility of reconciliation if the grounds for the separation have been made public. His aim in all these matters is to maintain family life; he is a champion of order, an anti-revolutionist. His social sense is so strong that he maintains it would be necessary to punish an adulterous woman by criminal procedure unless she were punished by being divorced. Similar considerations regarding the sanctity of marriage lead him to raise the age at which marriage becomes permissible. At the revolution it had been lowered to thirteen for women and fifteen for men; he insists upon fifteen and twenty-one respectively.

For children, the Code promises all the things which the ensuing century is slowly to build up. Under the fatherhood of the man to whom they are born in lawful marriage, they have a secure position even before they enter the world. True, “the father cannot recognise the child as his own if he has been absent for fifteen months”—the figure is specified by Napoleon—“and has fought at Marengo.” But, a man of position as well as a man of the world, he concludes by saying: “I will sacrifice honour to truth, but why should I sacrifice the wife’s honour when no one will gain thereby? If the husband is not sure of his dates, he had better hold his tongue; the child’s interest is paramount.”

When some one proposes to restrict the elder children’s right to maintenance, he rejoins: “Is a father to have the right to drive his fifteen-year-old daughter out of the house? Let us suppose him to have an income of sixty thousand francs, can we allow him to say to his son: ‘You are old enough to tend for yourself; be off with you to work!’ If we limit this duty, we shall tend to make children entertain thoughts of putting their father out of the way.” The suggestion is made that adoption shall be feasible by simple declaration before a notary, with revolutionary speed. He opposes the plan:

“We are not concerned here with a trivial formality. Human beings are controlled through their imaginations; that is what distinguishes them from animals. The main defect of the newer legislation is that it makes no appeal to men’s imaginations. A soldier does not face death in order to earn a few pence a day, or to win some paltry order of merit. None but the man who touches his heart, can stir his enthusiasm! A notary cannot touch our hearts merely because we pay him a fee of twelve francs; that is why we need a legislative act. What is adoption? An imitation of nature, a sort of sacrament. By the will of society, the offspring of one human being’s flesh and blood is supposed to become the offspring of another’s flesh and blood. Could any action be more sublime? Thanks to it, two creatures between whom there is no tie of blood, become inspired by a natural mutual affection. Whence must this action come? Like the lightning, from on high!”

“In these sittings,” says Roederer, “the First Consul manifested those remarkable powers of attention and precise analysis which enabled him for ten hours at a stretch to devote himself to one object, or to several, without ever allowing himself to be distracted by memory or by errant thoughts.”

Bonaparte is filled with respect for the logicality and mental energy of the octogenarian Tronchet; and the old lawyer responds with admiration for the analytical faculty and the sense of justice of the young Consul, who, in the case of every ordinance, asks: “Is it just?” and “Is it useful?” He is never tired of enquiring how predecessors have solved the problems under consideration, paying special attention to Roman law and to the legal institutions of Frederick the Great.

Not only are thirty-seven laws discussed at this table; furthermore, the Consul propounds question after question concerning other matters. How is bread made? How shall we make new money? How shall we establish security? He makes all his ministers send detailed reports, and this is a great tax upon their energies. But he affects not to notice that they are overworked, and when they get home they often find letters from him requiring an immediate answer. One of his collaborators writes: “Ruling, administering, negotiating—with that orderly intelligence of his, he gets through eighteen hours’ work every day. In three years he has ruled more than the kings ruled in a century.” He spoke to every expert in the phraseology of the craft, so that none of them could ever plead in excuse that his questions had not been understood. Even the most hidebound royalists were amazed at the technical accuracy of his enquiries.

His unfailing memory was the artillery wherewith he defended the fortress of his brain. Ségur, returning from an official inspection of the fortifications on the north coast, sends in a report. “I have read your report,” says the First Consul. “It is accurate, but you have forgotten two of the four guns in Ostend. They are on the high road behind the town.” Ségur is astonished to find that Napoleon is right. His report deals with thousands of guns, scattered all over the place, but the chief pounces on the omission of two.

By slow degrees, the huge machine (which for ten years has been standing still or moving backwards) is set in regular motion once more. Throughout the last decade, all the reports from the provinces have been full of complaints regarding the lack of public safety, sanitation, and order; the louis-d’or used to exchange for twenty-four francs, but now the ratio is one to eight thousand; the Directory’s attempt to stabilise the franc has been an utter failure; the newly enriched have bought up the State domains, the Church lands, and the seignorial estates. No one is paying taxes. What is the new dictator going to do about it all?

Within a fortnight after the coup d’état, he had arranged for the establishment of tax-collecting offices in all the departments, for, as he put it: “Security and property are only to be found in a country which is not subject to yearly changes in the rate of taxation.” Two months later, the Bank of France came into being; next year, there were new boards to supervise taxation, the registration of landed property, and forestry. Whereas his predecessors had simply squandered the State domains, he used what was left of them to defray repayment of national debt. The funds rose from 7 to 17; he continued the process of debt cancellation, renovated the Chambers of Commerce, regulated the Stock Exchange, put an end to speculation in the depreciated currency, stopped the frauds of the army contractors and other war profiteers, and by these and similar measures restored manufacturing industry whose productivity had sunk to a quarter or half of its former level.

What was his magical spell?

At the head of affairs was himself, a man of indomitable energy, and incorruptible. Men of the same stamp, energetic, diligent, and bold, were put in charge of the ministries, the departments, and the prefectures. Favouritism was done away with; sinecures were abolished. Preferment was obtainable only by the efficient, and to them it came regardless of birth or party. All officials, down to the mayors, were appointed from above, and paid from above—“a hierarchy, all First Consuls in miniature,” to quote his own words.

There was no political opposition. “No reaction is possible,” he prophesied. “I have not relied upon the credit or upon the strength of a party, and am therefore indebted to no one.—The men of intelligence who, a little while ago, were perpetrating crimes, are now being used by me to upbuild a new social edifice. There are excellent workmen among them but the trouble is that they would all like to be master builders. Typically French, that trait; every one thinks himself competent to rule the country!” Being careful to satisfy all parties, he gives the two most coveted portfolios to two rogues, mutually hostile, but both men of remarkable ability. Having done this, he is able to say: “What revolutionist can fail to have confidence in the social system when Fouché, the Jacobin, is Minister of Police. What nobleman would be unwilling to live under Talleyrand as Minister for Foreign Affairs? I have one of them on my right, and the other on my left. I open a wide road, in which all can find room.”

To all the prefects and all the generals the order went forth: “No more clubs; no more parties. Tell the National Guardsmen and the citizens whenever you can, if a few ambitious fellows still feel the need to hate, that the rudder of State is now in strong hands, accustomed to overcome obstacles.” A few weeks after the coup d’état, he issued a great proclamation, commending the new constitution to the people. It closed with the simple and lofty words: “Citizens, the revolution has returned to the principles with which it began. It is at an end.”

II

It is not war.

“Returning to Europe after eighteen months’ absence, I find that war has broken out once more between the French Republic and Your Majesty. The French people summons me to the first position in the State.” In these terms, shortly after the coup d’état, he addresses the German emperor, just before marching against him. Napoleon writes as proudly as any monarch, as if before the journey he had already been the first man in the State; and he writes with the natural dignity to which, in large measure, he owes his success. That is his way. In this manner he puts his adversary in the wrong. But the emperor is unmoved. Well, Bonaparte’s plans were made long since; he has only to carry them out.

First of all he surrounds himself with a guard, every member of which must have been through four campaigns—as many as the commander, but no more. Then, while he sends Moreau to fight on the Rhine, he makes his own preparations for an adventure in Italy. If he were to come along the coast, as he did four years ago, they would be ready for him. He must find a new plan! At Dijon, in full view of the Austrian spies, he collects from the rawest levies a pitiful reserve corps, and smiles as he reads the mocking comments in the Viennese papers. Meanwhile, he prepares a force of 32,000 men, no more, but the finest soldiers under his command. They are for a bold venture of which no one dreams, any more than they dreamed of his Egyptian campaign. Did not Hannibal cross the Alps, bidding the mountains make way for him? But nowadays a general must get cannon through the passes! Cut down trees, then, and make huge sleighs on which to drag the ordnance over the snows!

Thus in the spring after the coup d’état an army climbs the Great St. Bernard, for the first time in two thousand years. The old monks in the hospice can hardly believe their eyes. The herdsman who guides the commander’s mule, prattling the while about his wishes and his troubles, will soon afterwards learn that he has been talking to a fairy godmother, will be enriched by the gift of a house and a farm. Even the common soldiers seem to realise the epic character of this campaign, and vie with one another in their zeal to drag the guns. They are following their tried and trusted leader; they are returning to that Lombardy whither, four years ago, he had led them as to the Promised Land; these reflections, and the urgency of the occasion, increase the mysterious suggestiveness of the expedition. So little do the Austrians realise what is impending, that their chief, writing to a lady friend in Pavia, tells her she is quite safe there; no need to leave. Twelve hours later, Bonaparte enters the town.

Nevertheless, the great blow seems to him a questionable success. When, in the middle of June, he attacks the Austrians in the plain, the enemy, whose forces greatly outnumber his, drives him back. Where is Desaix with the promised reserves? The affair begins to have the look of a general rout. The commander, by the roadside, flicks the dust nervously with his riding-whip, as he watches the beaten army pass by. “Stand firm! Wait a little! Reinforcements are coming! Only an hour!” But the flight continues. Has fortune, too, been routed? At length Desaix arrives, and hurls himself on the dismayed Austrians; the dragoons charge; the enemy’s lines are broken. The battle of Marengo, which Bonaparte had lost at five o’clock, was won by Desaix at seven—but Desaix fell in the hour of triumph.

Sad at heart, Napoleon remained on the field of battle. The best of his generals was dead; but an even more painful thought was that Desaix, not himself, had won the victory. He himself had been defeated. Maybe he was consoled by the knowledge that he alone had designed the whole campaign, and that he alone was responsible for the plan of battle in accordance with which Desaix had arrived in time to snatch success out of the jaws of failure. Perhaps he realised that this great battle, which opened and closed the campaign, had been won by him no otherwise than the Eighteenth Brumaire. Then, also, he had lost the day, and the crown of victory had been gained for him by another!

Yet in neither case can this judgment be maintained when all the circumstances are reviewed. Only three or four miles from the spot where this evening he dictates to Bourrienne the report of the battle, is the point on the map into which, four months earlier, he had thrust a pin, saying (to this same Bourrienne): “Crossing the Alps at the Great St. Bernard, I shall fall upon Melas, cut off his communications with Austria, and meet him here in the plains of the River Scrivia at San Giuliano.”

This was no time for reminiscences! Statesman as well as commander, he was already parleying with Vienna, acting on the principle: “We must fight and negotiate at the same time.” Now, on the battle-field, he writes again to Emperor Francis:

“The cunning of the English has neutralised the effect which my simple and frank advances must otherwise have had on Your Majesty’s heart. War has become actual. Thousands of Frenchmen and Austrians are no more.—The prospect of the continuance of such horrors is so great a distress to me, that I have decided to make another personal appeal to you.—On the battle-field of Marengo, amid grief and pain, surrounded by fifteen thousand corpses, I implore Your Majesty, it behooves me to give you an urgent warning. You are far from the scene, and your heart cannot be so deeply moved as mine is on the spot. You rule over many States.—Let us give our generation peace and tranquillity. If the men of later days are such fools as to come to blows, they will learn wisdom after a few years’ fighting, and will then live at peace one with another.”

This long letter, of which only a few of the most weighty sentences have been quoted here, is as brilliant as had been his plan for the battle of Marengo, and it was as fruitful as his victory. For the first time it gave plain expression to his longing for peace. In days to come, he will write half a dozen such letters after as many decisive victories. Is Bonaparte, the great military commander, a pacifist after all?

By no means, but he is not a swashbuckler either. His nerves always remain sensitive to the impressions of the battle-field; and he has an unfailing reserve of scepticism as regards successes won merely by the sword. He is fond of camp life, and he has a chessplayer’s love for the great game of war; but, before all, he is a statesman. It was in this very plain of Lombardy that the sense of statecraft first awakened in him. It was there that, with kings and countries as pieces, he began to play that other great game of chess, the diplomatic game. Delight in the use of spiritual force has taken possession of his soul. He will never renounce the sword, will never allow its edge to become blunted. It is as the wielder of the sword that he is acclaimed as the hero of Europe. But he also has the Golden Goblet, and does not wish to risk it anew every year.

He knows, too, that, while France is always eager for glory, an even greater need at the moment is tranquillity. Above all, the country has need of him, personally; but he has enemies in his rear. Before, it mattered little that he should be away for a year or two at a time; but now, when he is dictator, so long an absence would be fatal. These multiple considerations explain his letter to Emperor Francis—surely an unparalleled despatch from a conqueror on the battle-field. As soon as he has written it, he hastens to Milan.

What is Paris saying?

Is the capital satisfied at length? Is it not like Josephine, before whom one can pour out all the treasures of the world—to find only that she takes them as a matter of course, and holds out her hand for more? Paris is by no means enthusiastic about the new master. “For eleven years,” writes Roederer in his diary, “the Parisian’s first thought on waking in the morning had been: ‘When shall we be able to rid ourselves of tyrants?’ Now, the Parisians were saying: ‘Everything seems to be going on well. But these enterprises that are being started, this capital that is being invested, these houses that they are building, these trees that they are planting—what will happen to the lot of them, if the Man should perish?’—His supreme calling was not the general’s, but the statesman’s. His victories, indeed, had made him the cynosure of all eyes; but it was his talent for statecraft that had raised men’s hopes.” Thus the Parisians are uneasy, but wellwishing. One among them, however, foresees the future, and writes to Napoleon at the theatre of war:

“General, I have just returned from the Tuileries, and shall not attempt to describe either the enthusiasm of the French or the amazement of foreigners.... Will posterity believe the miracle of this campaign? Favourable, indeed, are the auspices that preside over your homecoming! Never has there been an empire that was not founded upon miracle. In this instance, miracle has become reality.”

Napoleon smiles, thinking: “In truth, Talleyrand is more than a flatterer; he is a soothsayer! But why does he give a name to my secret thoughts? Would he play the part of the Roman of old, who tempted Cæsar with a crown?”

Here is another missive from Paris. A police report from Fouché, who tells how Talleyrand had recently summoned a few intimates to discuss what had better be done should the Consul have a misadventure, or perchance be defeated. The news of Marengo had come while they were at supper! “So he was alarmed!” thinks Bonaparte. “There were stirrings of what remained of a conscience. Good friends! Fine confidants! Their alleged concern for my safety, is but the mask for their secret longing to rid themselves of their master!”

Is it a mocking smile or is it an expression of pensive anxiety that purses Napoleon’s lips? Certainly, he must be back in Paris as soon as possible! But this evening he goes to the Scala, where the heroine is the lovely Grassini—whose advances he had scorned a year or two back. Now she sings for his ear, has eyes for him alone; and though she may be piqued that his beckoning nod comes so late, the handsome Italian prima donna gives herself to the conqueror of Italy for the asking. She shall go to the Paris opera. As star, or as his mistress? Time will show!

Since in Germany, too, the enemy has been defeated, the subsequent peace of Lunéville is extremely favourable to France, the Rhine frontier being conceded, and the re-establishment of the Cisalpine Republic agreed to. Could more have possibly been achieved by a few weeks’ campaign? His colleagues and other false friends make ready to receive him as hero of the hour; they write to him about plans for a triumph. “I shall make an unlooked-for entry into Paris,” he rejoins, with malicious double meaning; “and I have no desire for triumphal arches or any kind of ceremonial. I have a sufficiently good conceit of myself to scorn such plummery. The only genuine triumph is public content.”

A little later, he writes in a vein that is equally modest, or equally proud: “I accept the offer to erect a monument in my honour and should like a site to be chosen. But I would rather leave the actual building of the monument to future centuries, should these confirm your good opinion of me.” It is as if he could sense the coming storm of iconoclasm, could foresee that in less than twenty years his idolaters of to-day will be rolling his eagles in the dust!

After his return, the dictator devotes all his energies to the consolidation of peace. He outsoars himself: for whereas formerly, by forced marches and crashing blows, he has imposed his will on one country after another, now, by shrewd negotiation, he cements peace with his sometime foes. Within two years of his seizure of power, France is at peace with Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Russia, Naples, Spain, Portugal and even with England.

Nine legitimate and therefore ardently legitimist rulers now recognise the republic which they had been fighting for a decade. France, which two years before had been threatened by disruption from within and by dangerous impacts from without, had become the leading power on the Continent.

It is as First Consul, not as general and not as emperor, that Bonaparte leads the revolution to victory. In a Europe all the rest of which (except for Switzerland) is ruled by kings and princes, he not only establishes peace between the new ideas and the old forces, but also, unchallenged, compels his border States, Holland and northern Italy, to adopt the consular constitution. Neither Austria nor England attempts to interfere when, with a turn of the hand, he extends his grip over Piedmont, Genoa, Lucca and Elba. At the same time, when the compensation of the princes on the left bank of the Rhine is in question, the members of the oldest reigning houses of Germany throng around the great huckster, the man who has robbed them of their lands—thus teaching him to despise birth and heritage, nobles and crowns.

Only one chasm gapes in the structure he is building, but he will be able to close it.

At the opening of the revolution, Reason took the place of Christ. Indeed, this anti-Christian notion became extremely popular. Bonaparte stood almost alone in his rejection of it. Four years earlier, in Italy, he had granted the pope all kinds of things which Paris wished to refuse; and, for reasons of his own, he had always been chivalrous in his attitude towards the clergy. Now he wished to heal the breach that had existed for ten years between France and the Church. He did not do this because he was a believer. “Among the Turks, I was a Mohammedan; now I shall become a Catholic.” He knew that this oldest of the powers could not be conquered either by the sword or by the spirit. He must come to terms with it in order to make use of it. “Catholicism kept the pope in being for me,” he said later: “and, in view of my grip upon Italy, I continued to hope that sooner or later I should be able to bend him to my will. What immense influence I should then wield! What a means to have at my disposal in my dealings with Europe!”

It will be difficult to make Paris accept the rehabilitation of the Church! As a preliminary step, he is actually willing to present himself before the bishops in the guise of a philosopher: “I am aware that in no State can a man be truly virtuous and upright unless he knows whence he comes and whither he is going. Unaided reason cannot tell us these things. Without religion, we grope in the dark. But the Catholic faith throws a clear light upon the origin and the destiny of human beings.” Rome is dumbfounded for a time, when this and similar speeches are reported; but the shrewdest of worldly sages can find his master in the Vatican. When Cardinal Consalvi comes to Paris in order to discuss matters with Napoleon, and, at the first official audience, the consul wishes to browbeat him, the prince of the Church smilingly stands his ground. What a spectacle for Talleyrand, who looks on in silence! Still, agreement is reached on various important points, such as the celibacy of priests, the choice of bishops by Rome, and the re-establishment of the old canon law. But though these concessions are made to the Church, the payment of stipends by the State, which gives the latter decisive influence, is to remain.

A great ceremony in Notre Dame seals the agreement. The Consul, with the other State dignitaries, had wanted only to come for the Te Deum; but he found it expedient, after all, to attend Mass, stipulating that he was not to be expected to take the sacrament, “or to participate in all the rest of the hocus-pocus that makes a man ridiculous.” To his brother, he said on this occasion: “We’re going to Mass to-day. What will Paris say about it?”

“The audience will look on at the play, and will hiss if it does not please.”

“Then I shall have the church cleared by the guards!”

“But what if the grenadiers join in the hissing?”

“They won’t. My old war-dogs will be just as respectful in Notre Dame as they were in the Cairo mosques. They will keep their eyes on me, and when they see that their general is serious and well behaved, they will follow his example, saying to themselves, ‘Those are the orders of the day!’”

III

The ground is still unsteady beneath his feet. His consulship is for ten years only, and there are but eight years more to run. Then a rival may take his place. He is dependent on popular favour, which he must court, and which he despises. What sort of a position is that for the head of a State in his dealings with foreign potentates? They will not take him seriously, any more than if he were an American president. Turning these thoughts over in his mind, he makes a sign to the Senate.

Always compliant (being dependent on his good graces), the Senate now proposes to ensure that the First Consul shall hold office for an additional term of ten years after the expiry of the present term. Put out of humour by this suggestion, he jogs the senators’ thoughts and induces them to propose a lifelong tenure of the consulship. But, prudent as Cæsar, he says that the matter must be referred to the “people,” the source of all power. A plebiscite is taken, and there are nearly four million ayes against a handful of courageous noes. His powers are enlarged. He now has sole authority to sign treaties with foreign States; he alone appoints the senators, who are themselves entitled to dissolve the Chambers; and he is granted the right to appoint his successor. When he compares his position with that of other European rulers, and notices that they all wear crowns, he consoles himself with the naïve sophism: “Henceforward, I am as good as the other sovereigns, for they, likewise, rule for life only!”

By no means all among the millions who have voted for him are his whole-hearted adherents. Even in Paris, when he makes a triumphal entry into the Luxembourg, there is so little public applause that he says afterwards to his Minister of Police: “Why did you not work up opinion beforehand?”

Said Fouché: “We are still the children of the ancient Gauls, of whom it was said that they could neither endure liberty nor tolerate oppression.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Citizen Consul, that, in your last steps, the Parisians fancy they see the loss of liberty, and a tendency towards absolutism.”

“I should not care to rule for six weeks, if I had but the shadow of power, and could not be master!”

“You have only to be humane, strong, and just, at one and the same time,” rejoins the fox (who never showed any of these qualities himself), “and soon you will win all hearts once again.”

“Public opinion is capricious. I shall know how to mend it,” said Bonaparte, turning his back on his interlocutor.

A two-minutes’ talk like this, and Napoleon has made up his mind. He dismisses Fouché, but not because he is afraid of the ex-cleric (whom he despises, rather). He abolishes the Ministry of Police, and transfers its functions to the Ministry of Justice, “for I wish to show Europe that my policy is peaceful, and that the French love me sincerely.” We must get used to such phrase-mongering, in which he cloaks his policy. To keep Fouché quiet, he makes the ex-minister a senator. When, on leaving office, Fouché discloses to the Consul a reserve fund of two and a half million francs, Bonaparte is amazed, and tells him to keep half the sum “as a token of personal regard.” In the anteroom, the departing Fouché grins over his mental arithmetic, adding the undisclosed residue of the reserve to the amount of the First Consul’s gift.

Such are Bonaparte’s methods with a dangerous man who knows too much. As for public opinion, he can take his measures to get that on his side. It is because he is determined not to be indebted to any party or any individual, that he demands a popular ratification of his appointment as Consul for life, just as he had asked for popular approval after the coup d’état. The result gives him assurance that the revolution is over. “This consultation of the people has a twofold advantage. Besides confirming the prolongation of the consular term, it throws light on the sources of my power, which otherwise might have seemed ambiguous.” The phrasing shows that he is aware of his dangerous position betwixt revolution and legitimacy. To the very last, he will be worried by this problem.

Like a Roman imperator, Bonaparte wishes to concentrate all the powers of State in his own hands; but whereas the Roman’s title to power was the commandership of the armies, Napoleon is supreme because of his supreme efficiency. That is why he bases his power, not upon the army, which loves him, but upon the people, to which he is hostile. He wants to be “tyrant,” in the classical sense of the term; but he wishes to be tyrant on a democratic footing, as the outcome of a free popular decision. The people, the source of power, is to transfer power to Napoleon. None knows better than he the weakness of any such fiction, but it is imposed on him by the spirit of the age. After all, Bonaparte can fearlessly quote in his own favour the revolutionary principle that power must go to talent instead of to birth, for where can a more talented man than himself be found? But instead of contenting himself with talent as the source of his power (the talent that has brought him victory in war and in peace, the talent that has enabled him to grasp the reins), he muddies this splendid source by a popular vote, feels morally compelled to do so, and even fancies that he is clarifying the waters by his action. If Bonaparte saves the revolution, he certainly kills the republic.

These ideas are not the outcome of calculating policy, but of the mood which seeks its stimulus in classical life. It is the same mood as that which draws him towards the East; the same mood as that which, on the day of the coup d’état, led him to make a fool of himself before the Councils. “Your place is among the men of Plutarch,” said the first who really understood Bonaparte in early youth. The Consul was not a democrat in the sense that he believed in popular sovereignty. What he lacked was such days as those of classical antiquity, when genius did not need to entrench itself behind representative assemblies, but held sway on its own initiative; or Asia, where, even in modern times, there are monarchs in the literal sense. In his work-room at Saint-Cloud there are two busts, Scipio’s and that of Hannibal’s. No other position than that of Roman emperor or that of caliph was suited to his temperament.

Immediately after the coup d’état, the Bourbons, with a childlike frankness, had made advances to him. The brother of the executed king, now Count of Provence, and in future days to reign as Louis XVIII, asked the son of the revolution to help him to the throne. The demand was thrice repeated, and a handsome reward was offered. The Consul made no answer to the first two applications. To the third he replied as follows:

“Sir, I have received your letter, and thank you for what you are so kind as to say about myself. You cannot seriously wish to come back, for your return would cost a hundred thousand lives. You must sacrifice your personal interests to the peace and happiness of France, and history will thank you for the sacrifice. I am not insensitive to the misfortunes of your family.... I shall be happy to do all in my power to contribute to the welfare and tranquillity of your retirement. Bonaparte.”

Very different is Napoleon’s reception of the Vendée royalists, for he hopes to win them over to his side. At first they fail to understand him when, after a long time of waiting, the man of destiny, wearing his old green coat, and with untidy hair, makes advances to them.

“Come over to my side. Mine will be the government of youth and enthusiasm!... You struck shrewd blows for your princes.... But your princes have by no means covered themselves with glory. Why were they not in Vendée to lead the fight? Was not that their place?”

“They were kept in London by political considerations,” answered the nobles.

“They should have crossed the Channel in the first fishing smack they could get hold of,” he answered passionately, and, so the report runs, “in a voice that seemed to come from the depths of his stomach.” Yes, my fine noblemen, from the depths of his stomach! The phrase carries with it the implications of an incident in universal history which was still recent, still vivid in Napoleon’s memory. That was the tone proper to the bold adventurer who, in a tiny frigate, had made his way across the storm-tost Mediterranean, through the enemy fleet, to reach the coast where power was his for the seizing. Hear how he mingles flattery and threats, the young wizard who has turned the whole continent upside down!

“What would you like to be? General or prefect? You and yours can have whatever you please, if you will come over to my side. Nothing? Would you think it a disgrace to wear the coat that Bonaparte wears?... Unless you will make peace, I will march against you with a hundred thousand men, and burn your towns to ashes!”

“If you do,” answers the count firmly, “we shall annihilate your columns.”