Chapter XVI: Book THREE: The River (7)

Meanwhile the thirty-eight princes have been cajoled or threatened, rewarded or ignored, by the Emperor and his train. “In Erfurt,” writes Talleyrand, “not a man among them was bold enough to face the lion.... On the last day he was surrounded by princes whose armies he had seized or destroyed, whose States and existence he had curtailed, but not one of them ventured even to proffer a request. The only wish of them all was to be seen; and to be seen last if possible, in order to remain in his memory.”

In any case, Napoleon thinks Vienna will believe that to have been settled which unfortunately has not been settled. Fear will achieve what he has failed to secure through a treaty. He does not know that Talleyrand has betrayed him to Metternich, saying: “It rests with you to restore your relationships with Russia to the intimate footing that existed before Austerlitz. Nothing but an alliance between Austria and Russia can save the vestiges of Europe’s independence.” The Austrian diplomat writes exultantly in his report: “At length we have entered a new epoch, in which allies offer themselves to us from within the French Empire.”

Farewells are taken. The Emperor, watched by the princes, exchanges a brotherly kiss with Alexander. All the onlookers are profoundly impressed by this token of friendship in the pair who rule the world. But Talleyrand, hat in hand, smiles inwardly, for over the teacups at the German princess’ he has been able to undermine the foundations of this friendship.

In four years his labours will bear fruit, and the fruit will poison Napoleon.

XX

Brightly, against this dull background of German princelets, shines the torch of the German spirit. “I have gained only one thing here to take back with me to Paris: that you will have a pleasant memory of me.” To the Weimar circle, the Emperor says these words on the evening of his departure, for here and in Erfurt he has spent several evenings among those who are the true princes of Germany—princes who have no ancestors, but only genius. Himself a genius without ancestors, it is solely among them that he feels at home; though, during this fortnight, he experiences so much that increases his misanthropic contempt for his fellow-men, a contempt which has its counterpart in the respect he feels for the German spirit. The works of the masters of German literature are, indeed, unknown to him; but he knows their reputation, he knows the position they occupy in the invisible German and the imperial French Republic. That is why he seeks them out.

Two years before, in Potsdam, he had summoned Johannes von Müller to his presence, and nothing throws a stronger light upon the significance of their conversation than the reserve with which the Prussianised Swiss historian treats the incident. With all the precision of a mind that knew so well how to classify its materials, the Emperor was able, without periphrases, to come direct to the topics which must interest every historian, and were especially interesting to this one. Within three minutes, the pair were deep in the profoundest problems of history.

The Emperor spoke of Tacitus. Then he sketched the main epochs of intellectual life, and waxed enthusiastic concerning the wonderful manner in which Greek culture was renovated by Christianity when Roman culture was decaying. How adroit had been the Greek tactic, when Greece, conquered by the Roman sword, had found a way to reassert her dominance over the things of the spirit. These words, addressed by Napoleon so soon after the battle of Jena to a man of learning in Prussian service, convey both recognition and a challenge. The Emperor showed himself even more affable by going on to advise Müller to write a history of the Napoleonic exploits—advice he had never given to any Frenchman. Then he spoke of the basis of all religions, and of the need for religion. “The conversation was a long one,” writes Müller. “It embraced nearly all lands and nations in its scope.... The more interesting he became, the more did he drop his voice, so that at length I had to come very close to him, and no one else in the room can have heard what he was saying. Much of it, indeed, I shall never disclose.”

From this remarkable conclusion to a bald report, we may infer, not only the discretion of the grave historian, but also the splendid frankness which the Emperor could show when holding forth in monologue to a man of mark.

Now, in Weimar, he pays especial attention to old Wieland, compares him to Voltaire, but asks him rather critically when he mixes up romance and history. “A man of outstanding intelligence, like you, should know how to keep them apart. Running them together is apt to lead to confusion.”

Something more serious than literary criticism is involved, for when Wieland ably defends his misuse of history, and goes on to speak of virtue as an example, the Emperor pulls him up with customary bluntness, saying: “But don’t you know what happens to people who are always expounding virtue in the realm of fable and nowhere else? In the end they come to believe that virtue itself is nothing more than a fable.”

Napoleon turns back to Tacitus, for he always keeps a sharp eye on this Roman historian, as if the man, like Madame de Staël to-day, might still work mischief in Parisian drawing-rooms. As a development of this criticism, speaking in a modern ball-room, Napoleon utters great things concerning the activities of men: “Tacitus has not sufficiently studied the causes and the inner motives of events. His enquiries into the mystery of actions and states of mind have not been sufficiently profound to enable him to hand down an unprejudiced judgment to posterity. A historian should take men and nations as they are, should appraise them as their time and their circumstances have made them.... I have heard him extolled because he would fain make tyrants dread the people, but that would be very unfortunate for the people! Perhaps I am boring you? We did not come here to talk about Tacitus. Look how beautifully Emperor Alexander dances!”

Wieland has been waiting for this moment. In a carefully prepared speech, he defends the old Roman against the new, so that, at the end, the Weimarian dignitaries and any others who are listening cannot restrain their jubilation.

The Emperor has listened attentively. All now look at him, wondering what he will say. Will he politely withdraw from the discussion? Napoleon, as if on the battle-field, has been wondering upon what private information his adversary’s unexpected attack can have been based, and how the onslaught can best be parried. Unquestionably, the speech was not improvised. But how on earth had it entered Wieland’s mind to get up that particular topic? Suddenly the Emperor, who in the interim has talked to hundreds upon hundreds of persons, recalls his conversation with Johannes von Müller two years back.

“I certainly have a strong opponent,” he says, when the old gentleman has finished the harangue. “You make full use of your advantages. Do you happen to be in correspondence with Herr Müller, whom I met in Potsdam?”

Every one in the audience smiles, including Wieland, who is fonder of wit than of himself, and frankly rejoins:

“Yes, Sire, it was he who told me that you do not like Tacitus.”

“Well, I do not admit defeat,” says the Emperor. He returns to his Greek and Christian ideas, develops them further and more boldly, for he sees that the clever old Wieland is a sceptic: “Furthermore,” he says in low tones, shading his mouth with his hand, and coming close to his interlocutor, “it remains an open question whether Christ ever lived.”

Conqueror and poet. One of them is still in his prime, a ruler who has re-established the Christian faith upon the ruins of the revolutionary cult of reason, but is now more or less at odds with the Church. The other is a venerable poet, a pagan whom Napoleon has just coupled with Voltaire, a man who has maintained the cause of reason against the cause of Christ, a member of a conquered nation, and physically so frail that again and again he has to lean on the back of a chair. The former whispers to the latter that it is probable Christ never lived. But the old man has for half a century been justly regarded as the wittiest among the Germans. He will show the Emperor that, in the intellectual world at any rate, a German can courteously exchange thrusts with a Frenchman, and he hastens to reply: “I know that there are foolish people who doubt that Christ lived. But it would be just as absurd to doubt that Julius Cæsar lived; or that you, Sire, are alive to-day!”

Thus with a sally in the French manner Wieland upholds both German courtesy and wit, and the historicity of Christ. The Emperor, without committing himself, is content to drop the subject, and to clap the poet on the shoulder, saying: “Excellent, excellent, Herr Wieland!” Then raising his voice, he talks to his ball-room audience about the value of Christianity as one of the buttresses of the State. But although he was obviously eager to continue his talk with Wieland, the latter showed plainly that he was too tired to stand any longer, and thus the old man’s fatigue put a premature end to a scene which the aid of a couple of chairs might have made even more valuable.

One of the silent witnesses of this conversation was Goethe.

A few days earlier, in Erfurt, the Emperor had had an hour’s talk with Goethe. They were together in a room where, as was Napoleon’s custom when on a journey, he breakfasted, received, commanded, philosophised, and signed documents. Their conversation was a union of two minds, the balancing of counter-poised electrical forces. It was a process of mutual accommodation in which the two greatest men of their day contemplated the world together; a duologue in which most of their thoughts were never uttered, and in which the best elements were an expression of the homage the two paid one another. Goethe, who learned everything from nature, though in the reality of the world of men he could only find the confirmation of his previous imaginings, felt that this conversation was one of the greatest events in his life, and he described it as such. To the Emperor it was less significant.

For Goethe had followed the Emperor’s course for a decade, marvelling all the while; and in his old age he said such profound things about Napoleon that a century after their utterance they have not been excelled. Napoleon, on the other hand, knew almost nothing about Goethe; in especial, he never surmised the poet’s personal admiration for himself, since the German had hitherto confided his feelings only to his intimates, and even now kept his own counsel. Though the Emperor had read _Werther_ several times, the mood that work had aroused was as completely a thing of the past as those youthful feelings which are merely compensatory derivatives for an unoccupied imagination. What this grey-headed poet now signified, was at that time not realised by more than a hundred Germans, and hardly one Frenchman; and, since his name in his own country was little known (and, where known, was unpopular and evoked no enthusiasm), it was natural that the Emperor should know nothing of him save that he had written some wonderful things which were unknown to any except the poet’s immediate circle, and that Goethe, at the time of the battle of Jena, was minister to that Saxon prince who had incurred the Emperor’s displeasure. When Napoleon summoned Goethe to an audience, he had less to expect from the poet than he had expected from Müller and from Wieland.

But such as Napoleon and Goethe need but look in a man’s eyes to know all about him. Napoleon sits breakfasting at a large, round table; on his right is Talleyrand; on his left, Daru. Now he looks up, and, seeing the poet framed in the doorway, invites Goethe to approach. The Emperor is silent, amazed. There stands the sexagenarian, the most beautiful, the halest of old men, Goethe in the calm of his age, at the pinnacle of a strenuously wrought harmony of spirit, a harmony he had never possessed before and was so soon to lose. Napoleon is too full of admiration to speak. Then, more to himself than to his companions, he says:

“Voilà un homme!”

That is the golden shaft which pierces the heart and illuminates the scene: the word of a seer, deeply felt, an impression rather than a judgment—and it is meet that such it should be. For, precisely because the world ruler does not know that a world ruler is now before him, this utterance, the like of which he had never made to or of any one in the past and which he is never to make in the future, shows the godlike kinship of a genius with his brother genius. It is as if two elemental forces hovering on high had recognised each other through a rift in the clouds, and had, despite themselves, stretched out arms to one another until the tips of their forefingers had met; then the mists of time once more rose between them. A fleeting moment in the course of a thousand years; there has been nothing to compare with it since the meeting between Diogenes and Alexander.

Goethe’s discretion prevented him from recording the conversation for many a year, and even then the record was incomplete. Other memoirs provide us with fragments only.

Napoleon praises _Werther_, and adds: “I do not like the end of your romance.”

“I can well believe that, Sire. You would rather that a romance had no end.”

The Emperor calmly accepts this wellnigh threatening epigram. He then continues to criticise the story, saying that Werther’s love was not the only factor of the catastrophe, for ambition was likewise at work. The poet laughs (in two letters Goethe mentions this—a freedom rarely indulged in when the Emperor was present), and admits that the criticism is sound; but he adds that surely an artist may be forgiven for using an artifice which few readers will detect.

(Photograph in the Kircheisen Collection.)]

The Emperor is well content with his little victory in the other man’s domain. Turning now to drama, he makes “very remarkable observations, like one who had studied tragedy with the closest attention, in the spirit of a judge presiding over a criminal trial, and of one who keenly regretted the departure of the French theatre from nature and truth.” He spoke unfavourably of the drama of destiny, saying that it was a relic of less enlightened days:

“What have we to do with destiny now! Politics are destiny!”

As he utters these words, he gives an object lesson in his own fashion, turning to Daru to discuss requisitions, and then speaking to Soult who has just entered. Turning back to Goethe, he manœuvres to get the poet to himself, and asks personal questions. Then he assumes the offensive:

“Does it please you here, Herr Goethe?”

But Goethe, too, knows how to seize political opportunities, and rejoins: “Very much; and I hope these days will also prove advantageous to our little country.”

“Is your people happy?” asks the Emperor, not noticing that he has phrased the question as if he were talking to a sovereign prince—for he must often have used such words in conversation with rulers. Really, he has no interest now in Saxony, and is thinking: “How can this man of genius be useful to me? What a pity he does not write history. But as a novelist he might describe this congress, or he might write a play.—He would certainly do either much better than our folk; and, besides, this would have redoubled value coming from a foreigner.” He therefore says:

“You would do well to stay here for the whole period of the conference, that you may write your impressions of this great drama. What does Herr Goethe think of the suggestion?”

Napoleon ends with this question (so unconsonant with his customary dictatorial manner) almost all his advances to the poet who is so hard to lure out of his reticence. Goethe says cautiously:

“I have not the pen of a classical author.”

“That’s in the political vein,” thinks the Emperor. But what he says is:

“Your duke has invited me to Weimar. For a time he was sulky, but now he is in a better humour.”

“If he was sulky, Sire, the punishment was certainly rather sharp; but perhaps I ought not to express an opinion on these matters. At any rate, we all owe him reverence.”

“Splendid!” thinks Napoleon. “He stands in front of his master, but lets me see he knows that the duke is a donkey. I must get this man to write my ‘Cæsar’ for me! The effect in France would be bigger than that of winning a battle!” His spoken words are:

“Tragedy should be the school of kings and peoples; there is no other field in which the poet can win such laurels. Why do you not write ‘Cæsar’s Death,’ more worthily, more splendidly than in Voltaire’s attempt? This might be the greatest work of your life. The aim of the tragedy would be to show how much happiness Cæsar would have conferred on the human race had he been given time to carry out his far-reaching plans. Come to Paris! I urge you to do so! Thence you will get a wider prospect of the world, and there you will find the most abundant materials for new imaginative creations.”

The poet expresses his thanks for the proposal, and says he would deem himself happy were it possible to accept.

“That is as far as I had better go,” thinks the Emperor, as he had thought recently in his dealings with the tsar; “if I am too insistent, he will fancy I have a strong interest in the matter. It is very strange! He wants nothing from me, not even to shine in my presence. What can charm him out of himself, this incorruptible man? He must come and see the plays we are presenting here; that will stimulate his ambition to write better ones.”

Out loud: “I hope you will come to the theatre this evening. You will find a lot of princes there. Do you know the prince-primate? You’ll see him in his box, fast asleep, with his head pillowed on the king of Württemberg’s shoulder. Do you know the tsar? You ought to dedicate something to him in honour of Erfurt!”

Thus the Emperor gives a third hint. Will Goethe take it? But the poet only smiles civilly, and candidly declares:

“I have never done anything of that sort, Sire, and therefore I have never had occasion to repent it.”

A touch! A touch! The Emperor of the French cannot but feel it! Marvellous to relate, the son of the revolution tries to strengthen his position by referring to the Roi Soleil:

“In the reign of Louis XIV., our great authors held other views!”

“No doubt they did, Sire; but we do not know whether they may not have repented.”

“How true!” is the Emperor’s thought when he hears this sceptical answer, which is really a skirmisher’s attack on the part of the German. Consequently, he makes no attempt to detain the poet when the latter, with a deprecatory gesture, himself closes the interview and bids the Emperor farewell—another breach of court traditions, with which Goethe is perfectly familiar.

Thus the amazing upshot of this uncanny conversation between the two men of genius is that the Emperor, to whom the duologue was merely interesting, had vainly solicited a favour of the poet to whom it was the greatest encounter in his life. The explanation is simple: The Emperor wanted to make use of the poet, whereas the poet did not need the Emperor. Napoleon wanted Goethe to write for him. But to Goethe, Napoleon’s actions were merely the precious material which enabled him to penetrate to the heart of the other’s genius; and he could do this without a journey to Paris.

Although the poet did not respond to the Emperor’s invitation by so much as a poetically worded compliment, years afterwards, in a tragical moment, Napoleon remembered the man whom, by three great words, he had set apart from all contemporaries.

XXI

Two months after this conversation, Napoleon is in Madrid, standing in front of the picture of Philip II. He has been over the palace, and has made a quick transit through the galleries; but here, in front of this conqueror’s image, he stands so long that the members of his suite watch in dumb amazement while the Emperor seems to be holding converse with the king. The man contemplating the picture is unable to say: “Upon my realm the sun never sets.” Perhaps this worldwide empire cannot be achieved without the aid of the Inquisition—which Napoleon has just suppressed, when invading Spain. Has he always been too lenient? Too democratic? Still, he has, in a dozen countries, put liberty in harness, that she may be broken in to dragging the dictator’s chariot. Perhaps the trouble is that he talks and writes too much? Philip, with the unfathomable eyes, was always silent. He does not look happy. But who is happy?

A gloomy and joyless war had led the Emperor to this southern capital, for the intrigues with which the Spanish affair had been begun had wrought their own revenges. The kings and princes with whom he had dealt so high-handedly in the previous spring, had deserved no better fate; but the Emperor had failed to understand the temper of the Spanish people. When these had taken up arms in defence of their injured pride, the Emperor had regarded the insurgents as mere windbags. “They were worthy countrymen of Don Quixote. Ignorance, arrogance, cruelty, cowardice—these made up the spectacle before our eyes. Monks and inquisitors had stolen away Spanish brains.... Their soldiers were like the Arabs, and would only fight from behind the protection of walls; their peasants were no better than fellaheen; their monks were ignorant and dissolute; their grandees were degenerate, and had neither energy nor influence.”

Entangled in this error, he failed to realise that, though he might conquer them to-day, his conquest would be for the day only. To-morrow the Spaniards, supported by England (which here finds its greatest rallying point), will begin to shoot once more from the houses, and who shall hinder them? The Emperor was already willing to admit it to his confidants. To Vincent, who had been a comrade in his earliest campaigns, he said:

“This is the stupidest thing I have ever done in my life! Can you think of any possible way in which I can free myself from the embarrassment?”

“You have simply to withdraw, Sire, and leave the country to itself.”

“Fine words! Remember my position. I am a usurper. To gain this position, I needed to have the best head and the best sword in Europe. If I am to keep what I have won, all must be convinced of this. There must be no falling off in the prestige of my head and my sword. In face of a watchful universe, it is impossible for me to say that I have made a serious mistake, and to withdraw with a defeated army. You must see for yourself that the thing can’t be done. I am still asking for your advice!”

Conviction that he has made a blunder, and that it is impossible for him to retrieve it; crude admissions made to an old companion-in-arms, whose advice he asks; is this young Bonaparte, or Napoleon growing old? In a week, he had beaten Frederick’s famous army. But in Spain, he effects very little in eight months. When he has to deal with armies in a country which can feed his soldiers, a country with roads and towns, he is always victorious; but when he must campaign in trackless regions, such as the desert, the plains of Poland, or the mountains of Andalusia, the tempo is too tedious for his impetuous nature, and the circumstances are too incalculable for his mathematics.

His royal brother, instead of supporting him in this perplexing situation, makes difficulties. King Joseph wants to be a Spaniard, and to win his subjects by kindness. There are scenes between the brothers. With good reason the new king feels that he has made himself ridiculous by having to run away, and because he can only return under shield of the advancing Emperor. But with even better reason does the man of iron complain to Roederer about the king:

“Joseph wants to be loved by the Spaniards, and to make them believe in his affection. Kings cannot inspire affection through tenderness. They must make themselves feared.... He writes that he wants to retire to Morfontaine; at this busiest of moments, he proposes to leave me in the lurch.... He says that he would rather pass the time at his country-seat than in a land bought with blood unjustly shed.... The blood is that of the foes of France! If he is king of Spain to-day, it is because he wanted to be; he could have stayed in Naples had he wished. Support me? I need no family.... My brothers are not Frenchmen, as I am.... The king of Holland, too, talks about going into private life. It seems to me that I, if any one of us three, have the best right to retire to Morfontaine!”

Why does he not break with Joseph? Here is Marshal Soult, commander in Spain, and perhaps the most highly prized among all his generals. Why does he not give Soult a crown, just as he has given one to Murat? “Joseph writes to say that if I value any one more highly than himself, that is the man I had better make king. I certainly did not make Joseph a king because I thought such a lot of him! If I distributed thrones according to merit, I should have made a very different choice! I need my family to stabilise my dynasty, for that is the system on which I am working.”

Now, in Madrid, he issues decrees to establish the new order of things; which is welcomed by few, loved by no one, threatened by England, and detested by the Spanish people. Nothing can restrain him. Only last October he had written to his wife from Weimar, saying that the tsar had been dancing, but he himself would not dance, for “forty years are forty years.” Moreover, he often makes fun of the way in which he is putting on fat. Yet on Christmas Eve, afoot, he crosses the Sierra de Guadarrama in a snowstorm, as if he had still been the general at Lodi. He defeats the English; but on these miry roads, deep in snow, he is no more able to follow them in retreat than he could follow the Russians after Friedland; and he gnashes his teeth when the enemy escapes to the ships. Shall he follow up the other portion of the English forces, away there in the mountains? That would be to withdraw the nucleus of his power still farther from France. Here he is, waiting in the centre of Castille; but what is Paris saying?

He is in camp at Astorga when the courier arrives. Now he will learn what is going on at home. As he is reading one of the letters, he begins to tremble with a dumb wrath. Silently he paces up and down for an hour, without saying a word even to those who are deepest in his confidence. Then he suddenly issues order that the headquarters staff is to return. For his own part, leaving army and generals, he hastens to Valladolid, and thence to the frontier.

“King Philip was right with his unfathomable gaze!” thinks the Emperor as he drives northward in his travelling carriage. “Instead of abolishing the Inquisition in Spain, I should have set it up in France. A conspiracy in Paris, and not one organised by the enemy! Fouché and Talleyrand, whom I could only use because they hated one another, and because each watched the other and told tales, have become reconciled and have entered into an alliance. Murat in it, too!”

The warning letters, which had decided him to return, were from Eugene and from his mother. Letizia is active in spite of her years; active in playing her part when danger threatens, though she withdraws when festivals are the order of the day. She is the Corsican mother, and safeguards her children. The scope of Talleyrand’s treason, and how long he has been playing a double game, can at present only be guessed. That he has advised the Austrian envoy to take the offensive against France immediately, now when the Emperor is busy elsewhere, is not known, for there are no incriminatory documents. Even if such documents were in the Emperor’s possession, how could so great a master have such great servitors arrested? Slowly and invisibly has the power proceeding from himself grown in their hands, ultimately to be turned against him whom they hate. During the fortnight’s journey to Paris the waters of his wrath are rising against these creatures of his making.

Arrived in the capital, the Emperor calls a Council of State composed of many senators and all his ministers, that they may be witnesses to his vengeance. The two delinquents are present. Napoleon loses no time before he begins his attack on Talleyrand: “You are a thief and a scoundrel, for whom nothing is sacred. You would sell your own father! I have showered benefactions upon you, and yet there is nothing that you would refuse to do against me. You it was who advised me to undertake the mad venture in Spain, and now you criticise it to all and sundry. It was you who informed me of the duke of Enghien’s whereabouts and incited me to take ruthless measures against him.... You have intrigued with the dethroned Spaniards who were placed in your charge. To-day, because you consider the Spanish affair a mistake, you have the effrontery to declare that you had always warned me against it.... You shall restore to me the keys of your office as grand chamberlain.... I could break you like glass if I chose; I have the power! But I despise you too much to give myself the trouble!...”

For half an hour, Napoleon holds forth in this fashion. His hearers sit petrified. Silently, Talleyrand bows, and withdraws: “What a pity,” he says smilingly to a friend he meets outside, “that so great a man should be so ill-mannered!” Within the council chamber, the Emperor now proceeds to his attack on Fouché, whom he charges with having failed to work up public opinion, with having supported the enemies of the Emperor....

His hearers sit petrified. Silently, Fouché bows—and remains! The Emperor commands that the higher officials shall renounce all right of criticism; they are to become mere tools of his thoughts. He declares menacingly that doubt is the first step on the road to betrayal, which, in its turn, becomes actual as soon as it takes the form of opposition.

Meanwhile, all Paris is convinced that both the unfaithful servants are to be banished or placed in confinement. But neither is dismissed! Fouché remains, for who could replace the man with a hundred eyes? Talleyrand, smiling as ever, continues to come to court; he has retained his official position; at the Sunday receptions, he always places himself so that his master cannot fail to see him; answers in the stead of his neighbour when the Emperor has put a question to the latter; and, in general, demonstrates the truth of Lannes’ soldierly judgment: when Talleyrand is kicked from behind and one is conversing with him at the moment, not a sign of his feelings can be detected in his face! Ere long he is to be seen once more, limping away from the chill festivities in the brightly lit Tuileries, following in his master’s wake to resume his labours in the Emperor’s study, for “he is the only man with whom I can really talk!”

Weighty matters have to be talked over. Germany has awakened; slowly she is beginning to stir; all eyes are fixed on Austria. The Prussian king hesitates as usual; and an order, dated from Madrid, has banished Baron vom Stein from Prussia. Tyrol is seething with mutiny, like Spain; Austria, now allied not only with England but also with Turkey, is arming for the fifth time. What matters it, then, that Saragossa, after a heroic struggle, should have fallen? Troops cannot be withdrawn from Spain so long as insurrection is rife. How can a war be undertaken, seeing that a vast army of a quarter million men is tied up in Spain? It is precisely on account of this situation that Austria has found courage to take up arms against the Emperor.

The Russian menace is Napoleon’s last hope. When the Russian envoy, Romanzoff, is leaving for St. Petersburg, the Emperor overwhelms him with gifts and with promises. Thinking to make himself agreeable to the tsar, he pledges himself to the evacuation of Prussia; and urges Alexander, for his part, to proclaim the alliance of the two emperors to a trembling central Europe.

But Alexander vacillates; he allows himself to be reassured by Vienna, Berlin, and London; timid and hesitant as he is, he yields to the threats of his grand dukes (who to a man detest Napoleon), and yet cannot make up his mind to go whole-heartedly over to their side; Vienna’s hopes of securing one of the tsar’s sisters as bride for an Austrian archduke are frustrated: the tsar elects to remain neutral!

The Emperor is cut to the quick by his friend’s breach of faith; indeed, it is the unkindest cut of all. He has given too much personal confidence, his pride is wounded, his labour lost. Literally, there remains nothing for him to do but to raise an army out of the very earth: the levies for the following year are now being called up, a year in advance; money must be procured by every possible and impossible means; the funds have fallen to 78, in consequence of the Spanish affair. Still, Austria is ready far earlier than he had expected. When, in April, the semaphore announces that the enemy is on the march, and Napoleon is informed of the news in his bed at ten o’clock that night, he orders the mobilisation of his troops for midnight, and is furious when the unwieldy machine is not ready until four hours later.

When he arrives in Bavaria, he sees the mistakes committed by the Austrians in their advance. He can hardly believe his good luck; it was as if “he grew; his eyes gleamed, and with a delight which his glance, his mood, and his movements all betrayed, he exclaimed: ‘I’ve got them! Their army is lost! A month hence, and I’ll be in Vienna!’” He underestimates the time: he will be there in three weeks! He incites his soldiers to marches of over sixty-five miles in forty hours, and beats his foe in a series of five battles. Later he was to call these five days his finest achievement from the point of view of manœuvring. The last day he is wounded on the foot; and, since fate wills that the legend of his invulnerability (in which the army whole-heartedly believes and to which even he is inclined to lend an ear) shall be exploded, the bullet hits his Achilles’ tendon.

But he speeds away again, and crosses Germany. Napoleon’s carriage is outwardly plain, but within it is comfortably built. The Emperor can sleep in it; by day he can govern from it, just as well as from the Tuileries or from a tent. He is the first to overcome the friction which brings movement to a standstill; and, though he does not travel as fast as we do nowadays, he travels faster than any man ever travelled before. Five days take him from Dresden to Paris. In a number of lock-up drawers within the carriage, he collects reports, dispatches, memoranda; a lantern hanging from the roof lights up the interior; in front of him hangs a list of the different places he must pass through, including where relays of horses are awaiting him. Should a courier reach him, Berthier, or another official who happens to be at hand, must take down the more pressing orders, while the carriage goes jolting on its way. Before long, orderlies are to be seen flying off in every direction.

On the box seat, the Mameluke is enthroned in solitary grandeur. Two postilions whip up the six horses. The carriage is surrounded by a crowd of equerries, pages, and light cavalrymen; when the procession sets forward, the road is all too narrow to accommodate it, eddies of dust and heat envelop it, night and fog encompass it. The peasants stand aside to let the tornado pass; they are agape with wonderment and firmly believe that the devil is hiding inside the great Napoleon. He leaves behind him a trail like that of a paper-chase: for he throws out of the windows of the carriage, not only all the envelopes and other useless paper, but all the reports he does not wish to file (torn into tiny fragments); all the newspapers he has read; and, finally, books, which he glances at when he has a moment to spare, and then consigns to their fate in the mud of the highway.

Wherever he gets out of his carriage, a hot bath is ready for him. Then, at two in the morning, he will dictate till four, snatch three hours’ sleep, and start off again at seven. At his halts, four light cavalrymen surround him in a square, and follow him in all his movements, if, for instance, in the daytime he studies the country through his small telescope. Should he need the large telescope, he uses the shoulder of the page in waiting as a rest. Whether his halt be short or long, in wartime the map is always ready to his hand, in carriage or tent, in camp and by the watch-fire. Any member of his escort who fails to show him in the map the precise point where the halt has been made, the area he now wishes to study, receives a volley of abuse—be it Berthier himself, Prince of Neuchâtel. Through all countries, for the whole duration of his life, the map follows him, pierced with coloured pins, illuminated at night by twenty or thirty candles, and with a pair of compasses lying on it. This is his altar, before which he offers up his prayers. It is the real home of the man who has no home.

Now, without a blow, he takes Vienna for the second time, and occupies the same room as of old in the palace of Schönbrunn; but the war is not over.

For what has meanwhile been happening in his wide realms is unfavourable to him, and encourages the enemy. There is bad news from Spain; in northern Italy, Eugene has been fighting unsuccessfully; and since, at this instant, Murat has to advance from Naples, the Roman Emperor makes as short work of it with Rome as the Hohenstaufen had done many centuries before. Four years ago, at the same writing table, he had penned a decree annihilating the royal house of Naples. Now he repeats the manœuvre with the pope. Since Napoleon, at this juncture, has to strike with his sword in all directions, he no longer troubles himself about moral and political consequences, and ventures this dangerous edict for little better reason than that a junction must be effected between his armies in Italy.

But anger is a contributory cause. When he had been in Spain at the beginning of the year, he had let fall expressions showing how out of humour he was with Rome: “Last year, the pope was impudent enough to neglect sending us the consecrated candles he sent the heads of other States. Write to Rome saying that we don’t want any, not even for the three kings of our house. Say that at Candlemas I always get consecrated candles from my own clerics, and that the value of these things does not depend upon purple or the other insignia of power. In the realm of the shades, there will be priests just as good as the popes! Thus a candle blest by one of my own clergy will be just as holy as one sent by the pope. I won’t have his candles, and none of the princes of my house may accept them.”

In this way he trumped the pope’s trick, like a Protestant, like a revolutionary. Such was Napoleon’s mood, in the slough of the Spanish roads and battles. Now, in Schönbrunn, he bluntly deprives the Holy Father of power as sovereign prince. The pope is relegated to the Vatican, and assigned a revenue of two millions.

Many members of the Emperor’s retinue are shocked, for some of them are good Catholics, and it is only five days from the feast of Pentecost. Is he not challenging God? Those in whom faith becomes intensified into superstition are likely enough, ere long, to find confirmation of their presentiments. In five days, at Pentecost, Napoleon will be defeated for the first time in his life.

Some regard the battle of Aspern-Essling as indecisive; at any rate, no one can consider it a success for Napoleon. When the bridge across the Danube was swept away, this was just as much and just as little due to chance as were all the great happenings whereby at Lodi, Rivoli, Marengo, and on many other occasions, he had, by precisely such improvisations, wrested victory from God. A friend of his youth, Marshal Lannes, is mortally wounded. Napoleon hastens to the dying man’s side, and, so the story runs, his old comrade shows hostility both in word and glance. That evening Napoleon sits long before his untasted supper, silent, and refusing to see any one.

“Conquered? Conquerable?” he muses, staring forth gloomily into the future. “Has Achilles’ heel indeed been hit? That marksman aimed better than Talleyrand. No, it was my own fault. Too hazardous to cross the river in full view of the enemy! Lannes was right; he was already half way over. What is Paris saying? What will be the best way of reporting this in Paris?” In uneasy mood, he goes back to Schönbrunn, a huge, lonely palace in the midst of a hostile land. His Polish mistress! If only he had had the lovely Walewska with him. She is sitting now in a Polish castle, far away, but her thoughts fly towards him. His hopes of a child by her last year had been dashed.

He sends for her.

Strange news from Rome! To Napoleon’s edict of deposition, the pope has promptly replied by a bull of excommunication. Does this alarm the Emperor? He laughs. He laughs at Catholic mediævalism, and the soldier, the self-made man, thinks:

“Is this vengeance for my having, in Notre Dame, snatched from him the crown which the holy man wanted to place on my head with his own hands? And what is holy? It is doubtful if Christ ever lived; the only certain thing is that we can make use of him. But in these enlightened days, none but children and nursemaids are afraid of curses. I have been outlawed twice ere this, on the Nineteenth Brumaire, and in Corsica. Such farces bring good luck!” Much refreshed by these thoughts, he prepares for the counterstroke on the Marchfeld, and at Wagram is again victorious, as in thirty battles, his excommunicated weapons being too much for the pious archduke Charles. Towards the end of his two days’ battle, when all was going well, and the commander was overpowered by fatigue, he made Rustam spread a bearskin for him on the battle-field, told the Mameluke to call him in twenty minutes, lay down, and fell fast asleep for the prescribed period, to awaken fully reinvigorated. The war was finished, and a truce was agreed on. Next day, reporting the new victory to his wife, he adds: “I’ve been burned as brown as a berry.” He has been thoroughly toned up, and his mood is rejuvenated.

Returning to Schönbrunn, he finds Walewska awaiting him. How many lovely women have glided through the secret portals and discreet chambers of this vast palace, to revivify the Habsburgs? Now the adventurer from the Mediterranean sends evening after evening to fetch the countess, who is housed near by; and again and again he warns the groom of the chambers to be careful lest the carriage should be overturned on the rough road. For the second time, the pair live three months together. He had looked forward to this in Finckenstein, and had promised her that it should happen; but the where and the when depended on the course of universal history, and not wholly on himself.

In a few weeks, she knows that she is with child. Will she this time give him the gift that he has been asking from women for twelve years, and has only once received? Thus, the idyll gains a new content; and when, at midnight on August 15th, lying in her arms, waiting for his fortieth birthday to dawn, and thinking how early next morning salutes and bell peals will hail the coming of this day, throughout France, and indeed in all the countries over which he rules,—the day to which the pope had complacently transferred the feast of St. Napoleon—may it not seem strange to him that the first to congratulate him should be this beauty of twenty summers, who can speak but haltingly the two languages in which he is at home, and whose glances convey more meaning than her words? His thoughts may well fly back to that time ten years ago when he sailed homeward from Egypt, hazarding all to the luck of the seas, out of which the great English net could so readily have fished him. Now he is a different man, but not a happier one, for he is the slave of “the nature of things.”

He is different, also, from the man he was two years ago in Finckenstein. Then he was the builder of a world empire, the potentate to whom the kings of the East and the kings of the West paid homage; now, that empire is on the defensive, and even a great victory like that he has just won, can only be turned cautiously to account.

On the day of Wagram, his people in Rome had committed a blunder of which he has only just heard:

“I am very much annoyed at the arrest of the pope. That was an idiotic thing to do! You should have arrested Cardinal ——, while leaving the pope at his ease in Rome.” He had laughed at the symbolic power of the bull of excommunication. “Excommunication” is an empty word, an airy nothing, which the French bishops can blow away; but as statesman he realises instantly that the imprisonment and deportation of the Holy Father are very serious matters. This rash action has put him in the wrong, for a banished pope is morally stronger than a pope fulminating bulls.

Other letters are coming to hand, from Spain this time, telling how England has made good her losses there; and how, in the forest wilds, the visible-invisible Spanish people, allied with England, is standing more stoutly to arms. The news from Paris is that Fouché has overstepped his orders, and has called up the National Guard everywhere; his obvious intention has been to intensify the dread of England throughout the country, and to fan the flames of discontent among the newly levied conscripts.

A difficult and dangerous situation, and one whose difficulties and dangers thicken as the radius widens. The despatches from Rome and Paris are a week old, and those from Spain date from more than a fortnight back. By the time fresh orders from Schönbrunn can reach Valladolid, the whole position will have changed. If only he had the power to issue his commands with the velocity of light, then he would be able to rule the world from this office on the Danube. As things are, he must cut short the negotiations, which Austria, encouraged by England and Hungary, has been protracting for weeks. When, recently, the victor demanded a third of the monarchy, with nine million souls, he was met with a refusal. Now he pursues a different plan. With the splendid frankness which is so baffling to diplomats of the old school, in one of his endless conversations (this particular talk with Count Bubna lasted seven hours), he explains his own difficulties to his opponent:

“I was to blame for Aspern-Essling, and suffered for my mistake: but the confidence of my soldiers remain unshaken.” In broad outline, he sketches his own tactics on the battle-field. “But I will tell you the mistake you are always making.... You draw up your plans the day before the battle, when you do not yet know your adversary’s movements, or what positions you will have to occupy. But for my part, I never issue orders long in advance, and am especially cautious overnight. At peep of day, I send out my scouts, survey the field for myself, and keep my troops in mass formation as long as I am still in doubt.... Then I hurl myself on the enemy, attacking him wherever the ground makes attack most favourable.... You are right when you remind me that my free use of artillery fire causes much bloodshed. But what am I to do? My troops are weary; my men want peace. That is why I have to be sparing with the bayonet, and to use cannon more than formerly.”

Later he comes to the condition of the alliances: “To-day I am sure of the tsar, but what guarantee have I that he will stand by me? As regards Prussia, I have known for a long time that that country is oscillating between you and me.” Suddenly he demands only half of what he had asked before, disavows his minister, and offers an alliance. Needs must, for he has to get back to Paris. A new basis for negotiation! Austria is to lose a fragment to the Confederation of the Rhine, and another to Russia; a pathway to the Balkans has to be left open for Napoleon. Several more weeks pass in negotiation. His impatience is soothed by the bright glances of Walewska.

In October, Napoleon is holding a great review in Schönbrunn. A young man forces his way into the palace. He is arrested. When searched, he is found to be carrying a long knife and the picture of a girl. Examined in the guard room, he refuses to give any information, and says he will only explain himself to the Emperor in person. Soon the lad of eighteen, a fair-haired youth, serious of aspect, frank and courageous but courteous, is confronted with Napoleon. His name is Friedrich Staps, and he is the son of a Tyrolese pastor. Napoleon questions him in French, Rapp acting as interpreter.

“Yes, I intended to kill you.”

“You must be mad, young man, or ill.”

“I am neither mad nor ill, but in the full possession of my faculties.”

“Then why do you want to kill me?”

“Because you are ruining my country.”

“Your country?”

“It is mine, as it is that of all good Germans.”

“Who was the instigator?”

“No one. My heart told me that by killing you, I should do good service to Germany and to Europe.”

“Have you ever seen me before?”

“In Erfurt. Then I believed you would make no more wars, and I was your greatest admirer.”

The Emperor sends for his physician, in the hope that the young fellow will be declared a lunatic; but the doctor, having made his examination, says that Staps is of sound mind.

“I told you so,” says Friedrich.

The Emperor is uneasy. He is loath to make an end of so frank and bold a youth. He has not to do here with a partisan, with a conspiracy, with one who is out to destroy a principle; he has not to do with an ideologue, but with an idealist. Germany has sent forth against him a Brutus with a long knife.

“You are distraught. You are bringing affliction on your family. Ask my forgiveness, and say you are sorry. Then I will grant you your life!”

Never before has Napoleon spoken thus, at any rate to an assassin. The young man remains steadfast. Has Napoleon lost the power of suggestion? “Well?”

“I do not want your forgiveness, and I am not sorry. My only regret is that I have failed.”

The Emperor grows angry.

“The devil! A crime means nothing to you, then?”

“To kill you would not be a crime, but a public service,” says Staps, still perfectly respectful, indeed, thoroughly well bred.

“Hm. Whose portrait is this?”

“The girl I love.”

“Will she approve this attempt of yours?”

“She will be sorry it has miscarried, for she hates you as much as I do.”