Beacon Lights of History, Vol 9: European Statesmen — Napoleon Bonaparte, Part 2

A _coup d'état_ followed.

Napoleon's soldiers drove the legislative body from the hall, and he assumed the supreme control, under the name of First Consul.

Thus ended the Republic in November, 1799, after a brief existence of seven years.

The usurpation of a soldier began, who trod the constitution and liberty under his iron feet.

He did what Caesar and Cromwell had done, on the plea of revolutionary necessity.

He put back the march of liberty for nearly half-a-century.

His sole excuse was that his undeniable usurpation was ratified by the votes of the French people, intoxicated by his victories, and seeing no way to escape from the perils which surrounded them than under his supreme guidance.

They parted with their liberties for safety.

Had Napoleon been compelled to "wade through slaughter to his throne,"--as Caesar did, as Augustus did,--there would have been no excuse for his usurpation, except the plea of Caesar, that liberty was impossible, and the people needed the strong arm of despotism to sustain law and order.

But Napoleon was more adroit; he appealed to the people themselves, recognizing them as the source of power, and they confirmed his usurpation by an overwhelming majority.

Since he was thus the people's choice, I will not dwell on the usurpation.

He cheated them, however; for he invoked the principles of the Revolution, and they believed him,--as they afterwards did his nephew.

They wanted a better executive government, and were willing to try him, since he had proved his abilities; but they did not anticipate the utter suppression of constitutional government,--they still had faith in the principles of their Revolution.

They abhorred absolutism;

they abhor it still; to destroy it they had risked their Revolution.

To the principles of the Revolution the great body of French people have been true, when permitted to be, from the time when they hurled Louis XVI.

from the throne.

Absolutism with the consent of the French nation has passed away forever, and never can be revived, any more than the oracles of Dodona or the bulls of Mediaeval popes.

Now let us consider whether, as the executive of the French nation, he was true to the principles of the Revolution, which he invoked, and which that people have ever sought to establish.

In some respects, it must be confessed, he was, and in other respects he was not.

He never sought to revive feudalism; all its abominations perished.

He did not bring back the law of entail, nor unequal privileges, nor the _régime_ of nobles.

He ruled by the laws; rewarding merit, and encouraging what was obviously for the interests of the nation.

The lives and property of the people were protected.

The _idea_ of liberty was never ignored.

If liberty was suppressed to augment his power and cement his rule, it was in the name of public necessity, as an expression of the interests he professed to guard.

When he incited his soldiers to battle, it was always under pretence of delivering enslaved nations and spreading the principles of the Revolution, whose product he was.

And until he assumed the imperial title most of his acts were enlightened, and for the benefit of the people he ruled; there was no obvious oppression on the part of government, except to provide means to sustain the army, without which France must succumb to enemies.

While he was First Consul, it would seem that the hostility of Europe was more directed towards France herself for having expelled the Bourbons, than against him as a dangerous man.

Europe could not forgive France for her Revolution,--not even England; Napoleon was but the necessity which the political complications arising from the Revolution seemed to create.

Hence, the wars which Napoleon conducted while he was First Consul were virtually defensive, since all Europe aimed to put down France,--such a nest of assassins and communists and theorists!

--rather than to put down Napoleon; for, although usurper, he was, strange to say, the nation's choice as well as idol.

He reigned by the will of the nation, and he could not have reigned without.

The nation gave him his power, to be wielded to protect France, in imminent danger from foreign powers.

And wisely and grandly did he use it at first.

He turned his attention to the internal state of a distracted country, and developed its resources and promoted tranquillity; he appointed the ablest men, without distinction of party, for his ministers and prefects; he restored the credit of the country; he put a stop to forced loans; he released priests from confinement; he rebuked the fanaticism of the ultra-revolutionists, he reorganized the public bodies; he created tribunals of appeal; he ceased to confiscate the property of emigrants, and opened a way for their return; he restored the right of disposing property by will; he instituted the Bank of France on sound financial principles; he checked all disorders; he brought to a close the desolating war of La Vendée; he retained what was of permanent value in the legislation of the Revolution; he made the distribution of the public burdens easy; he paid his army, and rewarded eminent men, whom he enlisted in his service.

So stable was the government, and so wise were the laws, and so free were all channels of industry, that prosperity returned to the distracted country.

The middle classes were particularly benefited,--the shopkeepers and mechanics,--and they acquiesced in a strong rule, since it seemed beneficent.

The capital was enriched and adorned and improved.

A treaty with the Pope was made, by which the clergy were restored to their parishes.

A new code of laws was made by great jurists, on the principles of the Justinian Code.

A magnificent road was constructed over the Alps.

Colonial possessions were recovered.

Navies were built, fortifications repaired, canals dug, and the beet-root and tobacco cultivated.

But these internal improvements, by which France recovered prosperity, paled before the services which Napoleon rendered as a defender of his country's nationality.

He had proposed a peace-policy to England in an autograph letter to the King, which was treated as an insult, and answered by the British government by a declaration of war, to last till the Bourbons were restored,--perhaps what Napoleon wanted and expected;

and war was renewed with Austria and England.

The consulate was now marked by the brilliant Italian campaign,--the passage over the Alps;

the battle of Marengo, gained by only thirty thousand men; the recovery of Italy, and renewed military _éclat_.

The Peace of Amiens, October, 1801, placed Napoleon in the proudest position which any modern sovereign ever enjoyed.

He was now thirty-three years of age,--supreme in France, and powerful throughout Europe.

The French were proud of a man who was glorious both in peace and war; and his consulate had been sullied by only one crime,--the assassination of the heir of the house of Condé; a blunder, as Talleyrand said, rather than a crime, since it arrayed against him all the friends of Legitimacy in Europe.

Had Napoleon been contented with the power he then enjoyed as First Consul for life, and simply stood on the defensive, he could have made France invincible, and would have left a name comparatively reproachless.

But we now see unmistakable evidence of boundless personal ambition, and a policy of unscrupulous aggrandizement.

He assumes the imperial title,--greedy for the trappings as well as the reality of power; he openly founds a new dynasty of kings; he abolishes every trace of constitutional rule; he treads liberty under his feet, and mocks the very ideas by which he had inspired enthusiasm in his troops;

his watchword is now not _Liberty_, but _Glory_; he centres in himself the interests of France; he surrounds himself, at the Tuileries, with the pomp and ceremonies of the ancient kings; and he even induces the Pope himself to crown him at Notre Dame.

It was a proud day, December 2, 1804, when, surrounded by all that was brilliant and imposing in France, Napoleon proceeded in solemn procession to the ancient cathedral, where were assembled the magistrates, the bishops, and the titled dignitaries of the realm, and received, in his imperial robes, from the hands of the Pope, the consecrated sceptre and crown of empire, and heard from the lips of the supreme pontiff of Christendom those words which once greeted Charlemagne in the basilica of St. Peter when the Roman clergy proclaimed him Emperor of the West,--_Vivat in oeternum semper Augustus_.

The venerable aisles and pillars and arches of the ancient cathedral resounded to the music of five hundred performers in a solemn _Te Deum_.

The sixty prelates of France saluted the anointed soldier as their monarch, while the inspiring cry from the vast audience of _Vive l'Empereur!

_ announced Napoleon's entrance into the circle of European sovereigns.

But this fresh usurpation, although confirmed by a vote of the French people, was the signal for renewed hostilities.

A coalition of all governments unfriendly to France was formed.

Military preparations assumed a magnitude never seen before in the history of Europe, which now speedily became one vast camp.

Napoleon quit his capital to assume the conduct of armies.

He had threatened England with invasion, which he knew was impossible, for England then had nearly one thousand ships of war, manned by one hundred and twenty thousand men.

But when Napoleon heard of the victories of Nelson, he suddenly and rapidly marched to the Rhine, and precipitated one hundred and eighty thousand troops upon Austria, who was obliged to open her capital.

Then, reinforced by Russia, Austria met the invader at Austerlitz with equal forces; but only to suffer crushing defeat.

Pitt died of a broken heart when he heard of this decisive French victory, followed shortly after by the disastrous overthrow of the Prussians at Jena, and that, again, by the victory of Eylau over the Russians, which secured the peace of Tilsit, 1807,--making Napoleon supreme on the continent of Europe at the age of thirty-nine.

It was deemed idle to resist further this "man of destiny," who in twelve years, from the condition of an unemployed officer of artillery, without friends or family or influence, had subdued in turn all the monarchies of Europe, with the exception of England and Russia, and regulated at his pleasure the affairs of distant courts.

To what an eminence had he climbed!

Nothing in history or romance approaches the facts of his amazing career.

And even down to this time--to the peace of Tilsit--there are no grave charges against him which history will not extenuate, aside from the egotism of his character.

He claims that he fought for French nationality, in danger from the united hostilities of Europe.

Certainly his own glory was thus far identified with the glory of his country.

He had rescued France by a series of victories more brilliant than had been achieved for centuries.

He had won a fame second to that of no conqueror in the world's history.

But these astonishing successes seem to have turned his head.

He is dazzled by his own greatness, and intoxicated by the plaudits of his idolaters.

He proudly and coldly says that "it is a proof of the weakness of the human understanding for any one to dream of resisting him."

He now aims at a universal military monarchy; he seeks to make the kings of the earth his vassals; he places the members of his family, whether worthy or unworthy, on ancient thrones; he would establish on the banks of the Seine that central authority which once emanated from Rome; he apes the imperial Caesars in the arrogance of his tone and the insolence of his demands; he looks upon Europe as belonging to himself;

he becomes a tyrant of the race; he centres in the gratification of his passions the interests of humanity; he becomes the angry Nemesis of Europe, indifferent to the sufferings of mankind and the peace of the world.

After the peace of Tilsit his whole character seems to have changed, even in little things.

No longer is he affable and courteous, but silent, reserved, and sullen.

His temper becomes bad; his brow is usually clouded; his manners are brusque; his egotism is transcendent.

"Your first duty," said he to his brother Louis, when he made him king of Holland, "is to _me_; your second, to France."

He becomes intolerably haughty, even to the greatest personages.

He insults the ladies of the court, and pinches their ears, so that they feel relieved when he has passed them by.

He no longer flatters, but expects incense from everybody.

In his bursts of anger he breaks china and throws his coat into the fire.

He turns himself into a master of ceremonies; he cheats at cards; he persecutes literary men.

Napoleon's career of crime is now consummated.

He divorces Josephine,--the greatest mistake of his life.

He invades Spain and Russia, against the expostulations of his wisest counsellors, showing that he has lost his head, that reason has toppled on her throne,--for he fancies himself more powerful than the forces of Nature.

All these crimes are utterly inexcusable, except on the plea of madness.

Such gigantic crimes, such a recklessness of life, such uncontrollable ambition, such a defiance of justice, such an abrogation of treaties, such a disregard of the interests of humanity, to say nothing of the welfare of France, prostituted, enslaved, down-trodden,--and all to nurse his diabolical egotism,--astonished and shocked the whole civilized world.

These things more than balanced all the services he ever rendered, since they directly led to the exhaustion of his country.

They were so atrocious that they cried aloud to Heaven for vengeance.

And Heaven heard the agonizing shrieks of misery which ascended from the smoking ruins of Moscow, from the bloody battlefield of Borodino, from the river Berezina, from the homes of the murdered soldiers, from the widows and orphans of more than a million of brave men who had died to advance his glory, from the dismal abodes of twenty-five millions more whom he had cheated out of their liberties and mocked with his ironical proclamations; yea, from the millions in Prussia, Austria, and England who had been taxed to the uttermost to defeat him, and had died martyrs to the cause of nationalities, or what we call the Balance of Power, which European statesmen have ever found it necessary to maintain at any cost, since on this balance hang the interests of feeble and defenceless nations.

Ay, Heaven heard,--the God whom he ignored,--and sent a retribution as signal and as prompt and as awful as his victories had been overwhelming.

I need not describe Napoleon's fall,--as clear a destiny as his rise; a lesson to all the future tyrants and conquerors of the world; a moral to be pondered as long as history shall be written.

Hear, ye heavens!

and give ear, O earth!

to the voice of eternal justice, as it appealed to universal consciousness, and pronounced the doom of the greatest sinner of modern times,--to be defeated by the aroused and indignant nations, to lose his military prestige, to incur unexampled and bitter humiliation, to be repudiated by the country he had raised to such a pitch of greatness, to be dethroned, to be imprisoned at Elba, to be confined on the rock of St. Helena, to be at last forced to meditate, and to die with vultures at his heart,--a chained Prometheus, rebellious and defiant to the last, with a world exultant at his fall; a hopeless and impressive fall, since it broke for fifty years the charm of military glory, and showed that imperialism cannot be endured among nations craving for liberties and rights which are the birthright of our humanity.

Did Napoleon, then, live in vain?

No great man lives in vain.

He is ever, whether good or bad, the instrument of Divine Providence, Gustavus Adolphus was the instrument of God in giving religious liberty to Germany.

William the Silent was His instrument in achieving the independence of Holland.

Washington was His instrument in giving dignity and freedom to this American nation, this home of the oppressed, this glorious theatre for the expansion of unknown energies and the adoption of unknown experiments.

Napoleon was His instrument in freeing France from external enemies, and for vindicating the substantial benefits of an honest but uncontrolled Revolution.

He was His instrument in arousing Italy from the sleep of centuries, and taking the first step to secure a united nation and a constitutional government.

He was His instrument in overthrowing despotism among the petty kings of Germany, and thus showing the necessity of a national unity,--at length realized by the genius of Bismarck.

Even in his crimes Napoleon stands out on the sublime pages of history as the instrument of Providence, since his crimes were overruled in the hatred of despotism among his own subjects, and a still greater hatred of despotism as exercised by those kings who finally subdued him, and who vainly attempted to turn back the progress of liberal sentiments by their representatives at the Congress of Vienna.

The fall of Napoleon taught some awful and impressive lessons to humanity, which would have been unlearned had he continued to be successful to the end.

It taught the utter vanity of military glory;

that peace with neighbors is the greatest of national blessings, and war the greatest of evils; that no successes on the battlefield can compensate for the miseries of an unjust and unnecessary war; and that avenging justice will sooner or later overtake the wickedness of a heartless egotism.

It taught the folly of worshipping mere outward strength, disconnected from goodness; and, finally, it taught that God will protect defenceless nations, and even guilty nations, when they shall have expiated their crimes and follies, and prove Himself the kind Father of all His children, even amid chastisements, gradually leading them, against their will, to that blessed condition when swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, and nations shall learn war no more.

What remains to-day of those grand Napoleonic ideas which intoxicated France for twenty years, and which, revived by Louis Napoleon, led to a brief glory and an infamous fall, and the humiliation and impoverishment of the most powerful state of Europe?

They are synonymous with imperialism, personal government, the absolute reign of a single man, without constitutional checks,--a return to Caesarism, to the unenlightened and selfish despotism of Pagan Rome.

And hence they are now repudiated by France herself,--as well as by England and America,--as false, as selfish, as fatal to all true national progress, as opposed to every sentiment which gives dignity to struggling States, as irreconcilably hostile to the civilization which binds nations together, and which slowly would establish liberty, and peace, and industry, and equal privileges, and law, and education, and material prosperity, upon this fallen world.

AUTHORITIES.

So much has been written on Napoleon, that I can only select some of the standard and accessible works.

Bourrienne's Memoirs of Napoleon I. ; L.

P.

Junot's Memoirs of Napoleon, Court, and Family; Las Casas' Napoleon at St. Helena; Thiers' History of the Consulate and the Empire; Memoirs of Prince Metternich; Segur's History of Expedition to Russia; Memoirs of Madame de Rémusat; Vieusseau's Napoleon, his Sayings and Deeds;

Napoleon's Confidential Correspondence with Josephine and with his Brother Joseph; Alison's History of Europe; Lockhart's and Sir Walter Scott's Lives of Napoleon; Court and Camp of Napoleon, in Murray's Family Library; W. Forsyth's Captivity at St. Helena; Dr. Channing's Essay on Napoleon; Lord Brougham's Sketch of Napoleon; J. G.

Wilson's Sketch of Napoleon; Life of Napoleon, by A. H.

Jomini; Headley's Napoleon and his Marshals; Napier's Peninsular War; Wellington's Despatches; Gilford's Life of Pitt; Botta's History of Italy under Napoleon; Labaume's Russian Campaign; Berthier's Histoire de l'Expédition d'Egypte.

PRINCE METTERNICH.

1773-1859.