Book Five

Book Five

THE ROCK

On Judgment Day, before God’s throne, There stood at last, Napoleon. The Devil had his list begun Of crimes the Bonapartes had done, When God the Father, or God the Son, Cut Satan short before God’s throne: “Don’t bore us all to death with reading A German professorial pleading! If you’re bold enough to face him, In your kingdom you may place him.”—GOETHE.

I

The sea spreads out into the vast distance. It is like a mirror of steel. The man on the rock, hands clasped behind, stares across the watery plain. He is lonely, so lonely.

One looking at him from a distance would see a fat man with short legs, a man of uncertain age. He is wearing a green coat, decorated with the star of the Legion of Honour; silk stockings; three-cornered hat in his hands. The head is large; the brownish hair makes a bush at the back; there is no sign of whitening. The short neck springs from powerful shoulders. The features are as if hewn out of stone, with a yellowish tint, like the marble of an ancient statue that has been darkened in the course of the ages; no wrinkles, but the classical profile is somewhat marred by the heaviness of the chin. The only beautiful features are the nose and the teeth. These last are perfect, and he has never lost a tooth. His hands, too, are beautiful. All through his campaigns he was scrupulous in his care for them; and, when correcting the letters and despatches he dictated, he generally used a pencil in order that he might avoid staining his fingers with ink.

The doctors have told us a good deal about his physical condition. “Pulse never more frequent than 62; bosom well padded, almost like a woman’s, and with very little hair; partes viriles exiguitates insignis sicut pueri.” He himself knows much about his body, he has studied his battle-field of his life in order that here, likewise, he may utilise his forces to the best advantage.

“I have never yet heard my own heart beating; it is almost as if I had none,” he says, half seriously. Moderation, he assures us, is the secret of his amazing faculty for work. “Nature has bestowed on me two valuable gifts: the capacity for sleeping whenever I want to; and the incapacity for committing excesses in drinking and eating.... However little a man may eat, he always eats too much. One can get ill from over-eating, but never from under-eating.” The alternation between campaigning and sedentary life enables him again and again to escape from the air of the study, and to fortify his constitution by long rides and drives. “Water, air, and cleanliness are my favourite medicines.”

With a body thus steeled, he can drive without stopping from Tilsit to Dresden, nearly five hundred miles, and be quite fresh at the journey’s end: can ride fifty miles from Vienna to Semmering, breakfast there, and be back at work in Schönbrunn the same evening; can gallop in five hours from Valladolid to Burgos, a distance of about eighty miles. After long rides and marches through Poland, he reaches Warsaw at midnight and receives the new authorities at seven next morning. These are the excesses he practises to restore the balance of his natural forces. After a long spell of sedentary life, he will start off on a ride of seven days, or will go out shooting for the whole day; after great exertions, he will keep his room for twenty-four hours. He believes that his energy has saved his life. He says to Metternich: “Sometimes death only comes from lack of energy. Yesterday, when I was thrown out of my carriage, I thought I was done for. But I had just time to say to myself that I would not die. Any one else in my place would have been killed.”

His muscles are powerful, but his nerves are sensitive. Accustomed to command, he cannot endure anything in the nature of compulsion. If his coat is at all tight, he tears it off; the same with shoes that pinch him in the slightest. On these occasions, he will box his servants’ ears. If he has to wear court dress, they watch out while they help him on with his coat. When his mind is busy (when is it not?) he will push away his breakfast, jump up from his chair, and stride about, talking, issuing orders. His handwriting is nothing more than a series of violent contractions of the hand which cannot keep up with the furious pace of his thoughts; a sort of involuntary shorthand, which in places has not been deciphered after a hundred years of study. He cannot endure the smell of paint or size; he always masks unpleasant odours by using eau-de-Cologne. If his nerves are utterly exhausted, he soothes them in a hot bath. When the war with England broke out, he worked continuously, with four secretaries, for three days and three nights, and then spent six hours in his bath dictating dispatches. This nervous irritability is the antithesis of his slow circulation. He thinks that, the constitution of his nerves being what it is, he would be in danger of going mad, “if it were not that my blood works so slowly.”

But there is no evidence at all that his nervousness ever rose to the pitch of convulsions, that he suffered from epilepsy. This illness usually begins in childhood, and none of his schoolmates have reported that he had fits. Never was any one’s life more closely watched than Napoleon’s; and the documents upon which the assertion that he was an epileptic is based are scanty, confused, and untrustworthy.

As long as his body remained healthy, he was able to endure all the tensions and shocks to which he was exposed. It was when he was approaching forty that he began to show the first symptoms of a stomach trouble which was in those days summarily diagnosed as cancerous. Beyond questions, the tendency to it was inherited. During the last three years of warfare, he was put out of action in decisive hours by paroxysms of gastric spasm. His courage and resolution were practically unimpaired; had it not been for these attacks, the history of his decline would have been different.

II

The soul which governed this body was driven forward by three fundamental powers:

Self-confidence, energy, imagination.

“I am not as other men; the laws of morality and convention cannot be applied to me.” In these cold words, he emphasises the “I” with which he began his first political writing in the days of his youth. They are a plain acknowledgment of a fact, by a man of thirty to whom nothing is more alien than vanity. “I alone, because of my position, know what government is,” he said when he was Consul. “I am persuaded that no one save myself could govern France at this moment. Were I to die, it would be a great misfortune for the nation.” He utters such words seldom, and only when he is with an intimate; but these sayings show with what scientific aloofness he could contemplate the phenomenon, Napoleon. When, during the Russian disaster, he was asked who in spite of all would defend him in France, he replied: “My name.”

His contemporaries and posterity have held this fundamental feeling to be ambition. That view is mistaken. Common ambition distinguishes itself from Napoleon’s self-confidence as a restless, climbing animal does from a bird of prey whose free flight, by a law of nature, assumes wider and wider circles as it swings heavenwards. Napoleon’s aspiration is neither restless nor envious: it is nothing but his natural disposition which, as Consul, he once charmingly explained to his friend Roederer:

“I have no ambition whatever; or if I have, then it is so inborn, so intimately knit up with my very life, that it is as the blood in my veins. It does not incite me to outstrip my associates.... I have never had to fight for or against it; it does not urge me to greater speed than is natural to me, it comes out only when circumstances and my ideas demand.”

Already in the days when he was a general, ideas and circumstances forced upon him the conviction that he was the man predestined to rebuild France. It is nothing other than the conviction of his mission which makes him say to Roederer: “Circumstances have changed. I am now one of those who found States, not one of those who ruin States.” Another time, he speaks of Corneille, but he means himself when he says: “Whence did this man acquire his antique greatness? From himself, from his soul? Very well. Do you know what that is called, My Lord Cardinal? It is called genius. Genius is a flame, which comes from heaven, but seldom finds a head ready to receive it. Corneille is a man whom the world has recognised.” When his interlocutor observed that the poet had not seen the flame, so how could he recognise it, the Emperor answered scornfully: “Precisely for that reason I consider he is a great man!”

He thus, indirectly by anticipation, announces his own genius to the world, just as Goethe had announced his own.

The will-to-power, not as an endeavour or even as a question, but, rather, as simplicity, dwells within him close at hand. He calls interest the key to ordinary deeds; the will to govern the intellect, he describes as the strongest of all the passions: and the artistic urge of genius, he depicts in the following words: “I love power, yes, I love it, but after the manner of an artist: as a fiddler loves his fiddle in order to conjure from it tone, chords, harmonies.”

That is why it is his nature to command. “Wherever I may be, I command, or else I keep silence.” He might have added: “I negotiate,” for he had spent a quarter of his time in negotiating. Even as a young general of twenty-seven, he aroused the respect of all who came in contact with him. He never learned to obey; but to command came to him naturally at the very outset, just as a calf stands and walks in the first hour of its life. Because this power of commanding comes so naturally, he never acquires the art of asking; because he can command as no other, he is denied the gift of being able to ask favours.

His self-confidence confers on him a natural dignity that amazes and angers the legitimist world, which believes dignity to be consonant only with heredity and culture. The friends of his youth stand embarrassed when they recognise him as their commander in the field and yet realise the solitude which his position as leader entails. All his companions-in-arms speak of him with spontaneous homage. One of his intimates writes: “When he speaks, every one listens, for he speaks as an expert; if he is silent, his silence is respected; and no one would venture to say that he was silent because of ill humour. We all felt that between him and us there lived a great thought which was wholly occupying his mind and forbade familiar accost.” This statement is all the more surprising since it was made during a campaign, when tent life usually breaks down barriers. With absolute ingenuousness he once said, while playing and chatting with friends at Malmaison: “I have no sense of the ridiculous. Power is never ridiculous.”

An adept at analysis, the greatest psychologist of his epoch, he knows all about his own qualities, and is therefore able, by degrees, to elaborate these instincts into principles. “The goodness of a king,” he informs his brother Louis, King of Holland, “must always bear a regal stamp and must never be monkish.... The love which a king inspires should invariably be a manly love, wedded to reverence, fear, and esteem. If people speak of him as ‘a good man,’ his rule is a failure.” This love and fear which he himself inspires has the greatest practical results.

Nevertheless, the dignity which holds people at a distance is not assumed, for a leading element in it is a bewildering naturalness, which grows with the years and with his successes. His unsophisticated and frank realism, the sterling simplicity of his character, shows itself in a hundred gestures and words, and in the freshness with which he repeatedly makes fun of his own ardency. He expresses this in a profound saying: “A truly great man will rise superior to the events which he himself has brought about.” The greatest successes, whose fateful origin and consequences he fully grasps, he sums up to his intimates in a schoolboy’s laugh. Many have reported this, for between the boisterous gaiety of a soldier and the most delicate curl of the lip are many shades of good humour; he possesses all.

On the eve of his coronation he exclaims: “Is the result not truly delightful, to be named brother by the kings?” Or he sends his ambassador to St. Petersburg with the words: “Our brother in Russia is fond of luxury and festivity. Very well, then, give him his fill of them!” Sometimes his simplicity of manner infringes etiquette, and the legitimists blanch: “When I was an insignificant lieutenant,” he begins once at table with the kings in Dresden. General consternation! Every one gazes into his plate. Napoleon clears his throat: “When I had the honour of serving as lieutenant in the second artillery regiment at Valence....” Or he is sitting with the tsar in Tilsit, and, since he is ever eager to learn, he asks off-handedly across the table: “How much does your tax on sugar bring in yearly?” We are told that this question places all present in a state of grave embarrassment. Why? Because, as a big man of business, he calls money by its name; whereas the kings never mention it by name, though they are glad enough to reap the harvest!

Since he was not vain, he knew when he had made mistakes. His whole life long he was in the habit of saying that next day he might lose a battle; he frequently consulted his friends and his experts, and was inspired with the feeling of God-given necessity. How well Napoleon could bear to be told the truth, we can learn from Marmont—who, when he praises, is one of the most trustworthy of witnesses, for he wrote his memoirs long after the Emperor had publicly stigmatised him as a traitor. “Napoleon had a strong sense of justice, and would readily forgive an improper word or other sign of anger in one who had good grounds for complaint, provided of course he was alone with the offender.... He made kindly allowance for others’ weaknesses and could never resist the appeal of well-grounded sorrow. One who chose time and place, could say anything to him. He was always willing to listen to the truth. Though it did not invariably influence him, there was no danger in uttering it.”

He saw through the wiles of flatterers, and they gained nothing from him. Byzantine bombast, devoid of political value, infuriated him. “How could you depict the French eagle tearing the English leopard to pieces, at a time when I cannot safely send even a fishing-smack out to sea? Break up your moulds instantly, and never show me anything of the kind again!”

On the other hand, those who fearlessly speak the truth to him, impress him. He praises Chateaubriand, who has attacked him. In the days when he was Consul he was wont, after a sitting of the Council of State, to invite to dinner the man who had most vigorously opposed his wishes. In the Russian campaign, a captive general tells him some home truths about the burning of Moscow. Napoleon dismisses the prisoner in a rage; but presently has him recalled, and shakes the Russian’s hand, saying: “You are a brave man!” Méhul plays a trick on the Emperor, producing his new opera as the work of an Italian composer, and thus earning approbation. Paisiello also plays a trick by introducing into one of his own compositions an aria by Cimarosa, a composer whose work Bonaparte cannot endure. The Consul applauds; and when afterwards told of the deception, he only laughs.

Madame de Staël has been a worry to him for fifteen years, voicing Europe’s call for freedom. He suppresses her books, banishes her from Paris, continues to take measures against her even when he is in Russia, speaks of her as the dangerous driving-wheel which sets the salons in motion; but he pays this enemy the high compliment of dreading her, and acknowledges as much in many of his private letters.

In the Bavarian muster rolls, he comes across the name of a former regimental comrade, a declared royalist. He makes this man his military attaché. They have not met for fourteen years. Now, during the campaign, they meet, and the old companion introduces himself. The Emperor rides with him out of the press, dismounts, and sits down on a convenient stone; the other wishes to hold his horse. “Let be,” says Napoleon; “that’s not your business,” and beckons a chasseur to take the bridle-rein. The Emperor promptly becomes reminiscent: “Do you remember how, at the lieutenants’ mess in Besançon, you flung your table napkin down and shouted: ‘I will not sit beside an officer who belongs to the Jacobin Club!’ That is ancient history, and is of no consequence now.” He beckons his attendant staff and points to his interlocutor, saying: “Look at this fellow. Ability of the old school. He and I worked at equations together.” Then, coming down to practical matters: “Have you plenty of ammunition? What is your artillery like? How soon will you be ready?”

Unique, perhaps, in Napoleon’s life, is the scene at Erfurt in the year of 1813, when von Müller, the Weimar chancellor, braves his anger. Two privy councillors have written letters in cipher. These have been seized at the outposts. The writers have been arrested. Müller has been sent for. The Emperor has stormed at him, threatening to burn Jena, to shoot the culprits. Müller breaks in impetuously: “No, Sire, you will not commit this abomination! You will not tarnish your record for all time by shedding innocent blood!” In his excitement, the German presses so close that the Emperor anticipates a personal attack, and lays his hand on his sword-hilt. Müller is dragged back by a companion. A pause. “You are a bold man, but I see that you are a good friend. Berthier shall look into the matter once more.” The privy councillors are pardoned.

This scene, creditable to both participants, is another proof of Napoleon’s invulnerable dignity. It is invulnerable, unless the arrow is poisoned. A sense of honour is the vulnerable point of self-confidence. “If the French people expects certain advantages from me,” said Bonaparte when First Consul, “it must put up with my weaknesses, and the chief of these is that I cannot endure an affront.” It was he who said: “I am a man whom people may kill, but will not affront.” Bourrienne tells us that from Bonaparte’s earliest days he had no faith in law or morality, but always believed in honour. This compensated for his fundamental amoralism. The power exercised over him by his conception of honour distinguishes him absolutely from the condottieri of the Renaissance, with whom he ought never to have been compared. When he is Consul, betwixt night and morning he breaks off his intimacy with this very Bourrienne, who has been his private secretary for so long, because Bourrienne is involved in an unsavoury financial scandal. Years afterwards, he refuses to admit Bourrienne to the Legion of Honour, saying: “One who worships the golden calf may have money, but not honour.” When a bill signed by King Jerome goes to protest, Napoleon writes: “Sell your diamonds, your silver plate, your furniture, your horses—anything to pay your debts. Honour comes first!”

He was so sensitive on this point that after his coronation he summoned to his presence a notary who had long before advised Josephine against marrying a person of doubtful character; Napoleon wished to rehabilitate himself in this man’s mind. In exile at St. Helena, he remembered how his German teacher in Brienne had always treated him with contempt: “I should very much like to know whether Herr Bauer ever learned how I made good!”

He is a stickler for morality, just as he is for honour. “Nothing can be worse in a ruler than immorality. He makes it fashionable, and it poisons society.” Napoleon does not say this merely because he has been warned by the example of the Bourbons and the Directors. He has an inborn sense of decency, which is part of his dignity. No one has ever recorded having heard Napoleon, the soldier, tell an obscene story. Nor did he ever listen to one complacently. When he becomes First Consul, he forbids Josephine to have anything more to do with friends of hers who are leading gay lives. Years afterwards, when the empress allows Tallien to visit her, Napoleon writes to reprimand his wife, saying: “I can see no excuses for Tallien. I know that some poor devil has married her with her eight bastards, and I despise her even more than I did before. She was an amiable cocotte; now she is nothing more than a common woman.”

Talleyrand, who has had a liaison for many years, is told that he must marry his inamorata or quit Napoleon’s service within twenty-four hours. Berthier is made a prince, but the same condition is imposed on him, Napoleon saying: “This passion of yours has lasted too long, and is becoming ridiculous. You are a man of fifty, but may live to be eighty, and these thirty years are left you for marriage.” The revolution had encouraged nudity in mythological representations, but Napoleon wants nakedness to be draped. When, in one of the squares there is set up a fountain where there is a group of naiads with water spouting from their breasts, he has “these wet-nurses” removed as improper, and decrees that “the naiads were virgins.” His own women friends must not make themselves conspicuous. He lavishes money on them; but if they are actresses, he does not allow his liaison to be used as a reason for promotion. On the other hand, like any bourgeois he boasts of sharing his wife’s bedroom, saying: “It has a remarkable influence upon conjugal life, strengthens the man’s influence, guarantees his faithfulness, promotes intimacy and good morals; a couple will never become estranged if they spend the whole night together. As long as Josephine and I kept this custom, she was familiar with all my thoughts.”

One of the most sublime forms of his egotism is gratitude. This is not ordinary kindness, but the pride of a man who feels he is unique, and overwhelms with benefits any one who has ventured to be useful to him, lest he should possibly remain in the other’s debt. That was the consideration which really underlay his frequently declared policy, that he would never make use of any party, lest he should incur obligations. We must not look upon these things in a romantic light. But it is an actual fact that he was not content to promote only the friends of his youth, his fellow-students at the military academy. As soon as he rose to power, he found for the priest who had been headmaster at Brienne a sinecure at Malmaison as librarian—without any books! The sometime school porter became lodge keeper at his country house. A young lady of noble birth to whom, in his lieutenant days, he had once paid court for a whole evening, and who sixteen years later applied for help to the Emperor, received what she wanted, together with a post for her brother, and a friendly letter. He remembered many of his former associates in his will. Years after his brief intimacy with “Giorgina,” when he hears that she is in difficulties (though she has made no application to him), he provides her with a competency.

Hitherto we have been talking about money, or money’s worth. But the nature of his gratitude is different when he loves, as in the case of Josephine. When we consider his relationships with her, we realise the truth of Marmont’s tribute, which is all the more remarkable as coming from an enemy: “He had a grateful, kind, indeed affectionate, heart.” At the time of the coronation, he says to Roederer: “What right have I to put away a good wife merely because I have become a greater man than I was when we married?... Before all, I am a just man.” A little later, he writes to Josephine: “As far as I am concerned, I deem ingratitude the greatest weakness any one can have.”

III

Napoleon’s self-confidence, his self-esteem, his egotism, lies at the root of his wavering between revolution and legitimacy. Relying entirely upon himself, scorning all whose pride rests upon the accident of birth, he has nevertheless to take the egotism of others into account in so far as this egotism becomes embodied in achievement. And yet he is constitutionally incapable of suffering others to be on an equal footing with himself. For his own sake he has to choose the most capable to fill administrative and other positions, and yet he has to please the masses: he must stand for equality of all, and at the same time bear the individual in mind. These contradictions give rise to a tragical conflict.

Both the weapons he has chosen for his battle of life, namely, the spirit and the sword, he conceives of in a revolutionary sense. “Why is the French army the most dreaded in the world? Because the officers became émigrés; non-commissioned officers replaced them, and became generals. One can lead a people’s army with non-commissioned officers, for they have risen from the people.” For years, Napoleon refused to confer the grand cross of the Legion of Honour upon Metternich and Schwarzenberg. It was only after their gallant behaviour during the fire at Schwarzenberg’s mansion, that the Emperor relented, and conferred the decoration. The orders which his brother, the king of Holland, distributed with so lavish a hand, Napoleon would not allow to be worn in Paris. He sends his brother the following memorandum for kings:

“How can one give this indelible mark of appreciation to a man one does not know, to a person who may before long prove to be a rogue? Learn to know those who gather round your throne! The wish to distribute decorations should not be gratified suddenly, as one can gratify a desire to go out for a day’s shooting. Noteworthy achievements must come first.... You have as yet done nothing to deserve the honour of decorating others with your effigy....”

His egotism makes him emphasise the advantage of the lack of any ancestry to an original or unusual person. When flatterers suggest that one of his Italian forebears should be canonised, he calls the suggestion an idiocy. Metternich lays before Napoleon an ancestral tree manufactured in Vienna from records of the Buonaparte family in Tuscany. The Emperor says: “Take these papers away!” In the official gazette, Napoleon has the following notice inserted: “To all questions as to when the house of Bonaparte began, the answer is simple: on the Eighteenth Brumaire. How can one show so little tact and good breeding for all one owes the Emperor as to stress the question of his ancestry?” Once he is so angry because some one has contradicted him in this matter of his genealogy that he exclaims: “I shall not suffer any one to insult me by treating me as if I were a king!”

Then come transitions in which the cleavage begins to show itself. “I shall be the Brutus of the kings and the Cæsar of the republic:” which saying is certainly ambiguous. “I know of no aristocracy but the rabble which I have allowed to escape; and of no rabble but the aristocracy which I have created:” here there is hardly any ambiguity. “Tacitus is praised because he made the tyrants fear the people—and that was a very bad thing for the people:” which is open to but one interpretation.

No one, in the presence of such a man, can be satisfied with the facile assertion that Napoleon only pretended to believe in the principles of freedom until he attained to power, and then promptly betrayed them. On the contrary, we have here to do with a spiritual struggle. This is the one problem with which the self-confident man had to wrestle; a problem he never solved.

“I am the man of the people: its pulse beats in unison with my own.... The aristocracy remains always aloof, and never forgives.” Such utterances show us the original trend of his character. Inasmuch as he overcomes this trend, never becomes an ideologue, but gets the better of his inborn sympathies, he is a statesman of genius. Of course it is ridiculous when he, who only rewards merit, decorates his baby son’s cradle with the grand cordon of the Legion of Honour; or again, when he has the deposed king of Spain, who addressed him as “cousin,” informed through the intermediation of Talleyrand that the Emperor must be addressed as “Sire.” These weaknesses are grotesque, and yet they are superficial; he himself recognises them and spurns them if the mood is upon him. When he is hesitating whether he shall send Eugene, or perhaps better still Talleyrand (a man sprung from the old noblesse), to prepare the ground for the “imperial diet” at Erfurt, he suddenly, in virile fashion, ceases to bother about the question: “After all, what does it matter to me whether I am criticised? I will show them that I do not care.”

A more serious problem, both for him and for us, is when the origin and the laws of the right of succession to the throne come up for discussion. “It is false to call me a usurper; I have simply taken the unoccupied place which Louis could not keep for himself. Had I been Louis I should have hindered the revolution in spite of the amazing progress which has accrued to thought because of the change.... My strength is in my good luck; I am as new as the Empire.” Yet, in spite of this somewhat confused reasoning, he ventures a step farther, and writes to Brother Louis: “I hold myself responsible for everything that has happened since Clovis’ days down to the days of the Committee of Public Safety; and I shall consider everything that is deliberately said against the governments as an attack on myself.”

Thus we see that his egotism reaches so paradoxical an intensity in the championship of legitimacy, and that he sails so near the serious acceptance of rule by divine right (which is otherwise only used by him as a political formula), that he makes himself responsible for the actions of those very kings whose dethronement has opened the way to his rise!

All his life he restlessly hovered round this question of status. At Kaunitz Castle, during the night after Austerlitz, while at every minute Austrian and Russian colours, captive generals, and dispatches from the beaten commanders, are being brought to him, he thrusts everything aside because the courier from Paris has entered the room. Then he does the same with all the tidings from the capital, in order to read a letter full of gossip from a lady, who tells how the Fronde of the Faubourg has sworn never to put in an appearance at court. He is furious: “Ah! so these people fancy that they are stronger than I? Very well, gentlemen of the old aristocracy, we shall see! We shall see!” This is on the evening after the battle of Austerlitz!

Here we see such hatred as that which a man gradually comes to feel for a woman who stubbornly resists his wooing. He must win over the spirit of tradition, cost what it may. One evening, not very long before the scene just described, he takes Roederer from the drawing-room into the billiard-room, begins knocking the balls about, and then says, apropos of nothing in particular:

“Your Senate has no feelings for the aristocratic, no esprit de corps in favour of the imperial system.”

“Sire, it is devoted to your person.”

“That is not what I want. It must be devoted to my mantle, no matter who wears it. The mantle ought to be enough to guarantee the safety of the wearer. This is the aristocratic spirit, which is lacking to you ideologues!”

The whole problem of hereditary succession is implicit in these considerations; it logically develops therefrom, leading to the second marriage, and thus to the tragical issue. There are only two things which Napoleon cannot create unaided: children and ancestors. He therefore asks the world of legitimate rulers to enter into an alliance with him, which will settle his difficulty as far as offspring is concerned, and will also provide his children with an ancestry. He is not really a man of the people, but a nobleman; and who can complain because he regards himself as such?

“I am in a peculiar position. The genealogists want to trace my pedigree back to the deluge, while there are some who describe me as sprung from the lower middle class. Truth lies between. The Bonapartes are a good Corsican family, not celebrated, but certainly better than these coxcombs who believe themselves entitled to humiliate us.”

This is the tone of the sixteen-year-old lad, scion of the lesser territorial nobility, whom a handful of counts made fun of at the military academy and slighted at the boarding school in Paris. They are the very words which the young man had used in his letters and literary sketches when the noblesse of monarchical France had mortified him. Nothing can expunge the memory of his early mortifications. It may well be that, but for these never-to-be-forgotten affronts suffered at the hands of a few silly young marquises, his whole outlook upon the question of legitimacy would have been different; his court life, his marriage, his destiny, would have been different; and therewith the course of European history would have been other than it was.

His egotism finds expression in the struggle with France, just as it does in the struggle with the noblesse. He does not wholly belong to the high nobility, and therefore throughout life he remains critical of the pretensions of birth. In the same way, though formally he was a Frenchman, he was not French by blood, and he was therefore irritably critical of the French, just as he was irritably critical of the noblesse. He conquered both, but never felt perfectly secure in either of his conquests.

But he had more success with France than with the legitimists. Because he is not really a Frenchman, France never becomes his legitimate spouse; she remains his beloved mistress. He knows this; he wooes, gives himself, renounces; and from the perpetual uncertainty of his relationship to France, he derives the keenest joys of his life. “I have only one passion, only one mistress: France. I lie by her side. She has never been untrue to me; she pours out her blood for me, and lavishes her treasures upon me. If I need half a million men, she gives them!” When he chides his mistress, he does it as a jealous lover; he rules her “with an iron hand in a velvet glove”; he gratifies all her caprices; and he knows better than any one else how to allure her by the glamour of fame and fantasy. That is why she beams on him when he comes home victorious; that is why she gives him her children.

Yet lover and mistress remain critical of one another. Mutual jealousy persists. Neither of them ever forgets the wish to master the other. Hear his exclamation in the tone of a despotic lover: “I swear that I do everything for the sake of France alone! If I do not give her more liberty, it is because she does not need more!” He is standing in the middle of his drawing-room, scrutinising his guests sharply as he speaks to them with raised voice. Among intimates, he will often use harsher words: “Always the same old Gauls! The same frivolity, the same vanity! When, if ever, will these be replaced by a proper pride?”

The French, likewise, remain sceptical. Must they not, in confidential talks, say of this Italian the very thing that he once wrote to his brother Louis? “Since you ascended the throne, you have forgotten that you are a Frenchman, and have strained every nerve to persuade yourself that you are a Dutchman. The foreign environment tickles your fancy, but it is still foreign.” Roederer writes of Napoleon: “He is making a mistake. They are by no means so enthusiastic about him as they were about Lafayette (who did nothing practical for them). At bottom, they merely admire and respect him because he is useful to them.”

Such a liaison cannot fail to end tragically. The mistress discards her lover when he is no longer useful to her.

Tragical, too, is the ending of another embodiment of his egotism, its noblest incorporation. “I wish I could be my own posterity, and read what such a poet as Corneille would make me feel, do, and say.” From boyhood’s days down to the time of his exile, in the island where he was born and in the island where he died, his self-esteem is nourished on historical parallels. History, he said, was the only true philosophy. Had he not had his peculiar feeling for history, Napoleon’s career would have been very different; nay, it would have been impossible. His political calculations are fed from two sources, history and imagination; the first of these streams being intellectual, and the second passionate. It is history alone which gives him alighting places on his flight. In his own age he is unique; he travels alone; nowhere but in history can he find prototypes by whose example he can guide his impetuous progress. With Cæsar, the lieutenant begins to soar. At Rochefort, the Emperor ends the active phase of his existence by trusting too implicitly in the heroic example of Themistocles.

Between the opening and the close, we find numberless indications of the way in which his imagination remains at work, mirroring the great incidents of classical and modern history. Why is he opposed to Tacitus and Chateaubriand? Because they warn the people against tyrants. Why does he blame the assassins of Cæsar? Because he wishes to defend his own sentence upon the duke of Enghien. When he is First Consul, he actually thinks of writing a few chapters of Roman history, to prove “that Cæsar never wanted to become king, and that he was murdered because he wished to re-establish order by uniting all parties.” He goes on to add that Cæsar had been killed in the Senate House, and that in the Senate were forty Pompeians, personal enemies of the dictator. Napoleon’s unexpressed inference is that he must clean up the Senate, and he does so.

In the Roman style, he sketches the ideas for eight splendid bas-reliefs which, on triumphal arches, are to illustrate the doings of his reign; they are to be representations of fact, devoid of self-commendation, and only in a formal sense illustrations of historical egotism. He summons historiographers and imaginative writers from all civilised lands, and converses with them for hours, in order that, through their intermediation, he may win the approval of posterity. When his portrait seems to him too crudely lifelike, he says that Alexander never sat to Apelles; David must paint him “in a tranquil attitude, mounted upon a fiery steed.” It pleases him to write army orders when he is sitting in Frederick the Great’s study; at Sans Souci, to invite the biographer of the former master of the house to dine with him; in Lombardy, to visit the arch of Augustus, in Egypt, the pillar of Pompey, and on these monuments to inscribe the names of those who have recently fallen; in Madrid and Moscow, to study the environment and the habits of Philip and of Catherine. But his pleasure in these things is not purely æsthetic. The hours he devotes to them are heroical; they are Napoleon’s true recompense; they are realisations of his earliest dreams.

With his own hand, he is continually writing his own history. The young general records his first victories in orders of the day; with each new campaign, and after every battle, he adds to the long series; and the work is done with the hand of an artist, is wrought with an eye to immortal fame. When he is offered the crown of Italy, he surveys his own deeds of little more than five years ago as if they had come down in legend: “When, a few years later, we learned on the banks of the Nile that our aims had come to naught, we were bitterly distressed at this evil turn of fortune; but, thanks to the courage of our armies, we were able to appear in Milan at a time when Italy believed us to be still on the shores of the Red Sea.” Actually, in the interim, he had, before the eyes of all the world, trampled on the constitution of France, and even the meanest herd in the Apennines knew of his return from Egypt.

When he is carrying on a struggle with the pope he pens a long letter, and sends it to Eugene for the latter to copy, since ostensibly it is to be a letter from Eugene to the pope; therein Eugene is made to say that Napoleon can only be compared to Cyrus and Charlemagne.

At the height of his career, he says to his Austrian ambassador: “Don’t you make any mistake, I am a Roman emperor, in the best line of the Cæsars. Chateaubriand has compared me with Tiberius, who could only travel from Rome to Capri. A pretty idea! Trajan. Aurelian—that would be another story. They were self-made men, who shook the world out of old ruts. Do you not see the resemblances between my regime and that of Diocletian? The net so widely spread; the Emperor’s eyes everywhere; the civil authority omnipotent throughout an empire that is fundamentally warlike.... A man is born to be a Cæsar.”

This is not a proclamation, not a political letter, not an attempt to seduce any one. The words are spoken lightly, in a drawing-room, without emotion and without ulterior aim, with all the simplicity of a man aware of his own strength.

After victories and successes, this historical feeling for his own personality becomes as objective as the attitude of the chessplayer towards the pieces on his board. We seem to be contemplating a man whose fondness for the game is the only thing which makes him want to win; and who, as soon as he has won, can converse dispassionately with his defeated opponent about the mistakes they have made and the artifices to which they have had recourse. When he is talking to enemy generals whom he has taken prisoner or with whom he is negotiating, he will say: “You ought to have done this, that, or the other. There, you were in an advantageous position. That would have been an excellent move.”

Immediately after his victory at Wagram, he says to Count Bubna: “I am certain that you are damnably strong, for you can deliver shrewd blows. At what figure do you estimate my forces?... You appear to be uncommonly well informed! Would you care to have a look at my army?... No? Well, at least you had better study my position on this map. It was my own fault when I failed to win a victory at Aspern-Essling. I got the punishment I deserved.”

Only with regard to one matter does this detachment fail him—Waterloo. In St. Helena, an English surgeon ventured to say that people in England would be glad to hear his opinion of Wellington. The remark was followed by an embarrassing silence.

Fame is the supreme goal of his egotism; substantially, it is the only goal. All his energies are directed towards this end: his consciousness of his uniqueness; his historic sense; his sense of honour; his dignity; the boy’s dreams, the youth’s plans, the man’s deeds, the prisoner’s unrest. Posterity is the great confused picture which fills his imagination; and the desire of his heart would seem to be rather the Latin “gloria” which thinks of future generations, than the French “gloire” which suns itself in the smile of contemporaries. He is animated by a daimonic being’s eager wish for immortality, although he knows that he must share the fate of all mortal men. “Better never to have lived; than to exist, and pass without leaving a trace.”

He modifies the coronation oath by swearing, not only to protect the realm and the happiness of France, but also to rule for the glory of his people. On one of the battle-fields of Henry IV in Normandy he has a column erected with the inscription: “Great men love the fame of those who resemble themselves.” Frederick’s sword is “more precious than all the treasures of the king of Prussia”; but it is not only when he is campaigning that his thoughts turn towards the future. When he is having houses built for the unemployed, his order to the minister to whom the task is entrusted ends with the phrase: “We must not pass out of the world without leaving traces that will commend us to the thoughts of posterity.” At the close of his career as Emperor, he refuses to make peace on terms that will involve the renunciation of territories upon whose conquest part of his fame depends; and towards the end of his life he utters a melancholy parable, darkly significant, lonely as his own destiny:

“The love for glory is like the bridge which Satan tried to build across chaos in order to make his way into paradise. Glory is a connecting link between past and future, from which an abyss separates him. I leave to my son nothing but my name.”

IV

Energy is the second element in Napoleon’s make-up. How does this quality show itself?

First of all in calculation. Never a trace of the flash of genius; but, rather, continuous weighing, over-elaborating, discarding:

“I have known myself to argue with myself over the thoughts concerning a battle, and have contradicted myself.... When I have drawn-up a plan of battle I am the most pusillanimous of men. I magnify the dangers and the incidents, am in a terrible state of excitement even when I seem cheerful; I am then like a girl who is going to have a baby.” This is the mood of an artist during the conception of his work. He once described these feelings to Roederer in even franker terms:

“I am always at work; I think a great deal. If I appeared to be ever ready and equal to any occasion, it is because I have thought over matters for long before I undertake to do the slightest thing; I have foreseen all eventualities. There exists no guardian angel who suddenly and mysteriously whispers in my ear what I have to do or to say. Everything is turned over in my mind, again and again, always, whether I am at table or at the theatre. At night, I wake up in order to work.”

This constant deliberation builds up something within him which he names “the spirit of things:” the precision, which penetrates he touches; the thinking in numbers, to which he ascribes part of his success and for which he has to thank his mathematical training. There is nothing too small for this brain; for the sum total of millions of details is a plan whose scope is world embracing. If one of his officers writes to say that the Emperor’s instructions have been carried out, Napoleon waives this general statement aside and demands details. Nothing is so small but he wants to know all about it and judge its importance for himself. He writes to Eugene, who is in Italy:

“How is it possible that you are distributing three million seven hundred and forty-seven thousand rations of meat?... I can calculate a similar gross total for dried vegetables, wine, salt, and spirits. But I want calculations according to corps. I am robbed of fifty per cent., even as much as seventy per cent.... How can you allow them to calculate for one million three hundred and seventy-one thousand rations of hay? I should have to provide twelve thousand horses to eat it, not counting the Istrians and Dalmatians! You know I have only seven thousand.... The office charges are insane! Frs. 118,000 for four months! That equals frs. 400,000 a year! Such a sum should suffice for the whole of Italy!”

This is but one example among many. Thousands of such letters, hailing from every corner of the military and civil administration, personally dictated, are to be found in the volumes of correspondence, and must sadly disappoint those who expect to find only ideas and temperament in the letters. He is the man who, in the midst of his wars in Italy, writes home that they must concoct a letter, nominally written by a German patriot and dealing with Austrian politics, and have it circulated throughout Germany; again, in the throes of a campaign, he has to write to Murat, King of Naples, detailing how the latter is to behave at balls or when he visits the theatre, whom he is to invite and whom to exclude from his invitations. While the preparations are being made for the Erfurt gathering, he suddenly remembers that some one must be there to introduce the actresses to the gallant grand dukes. He never demonstrates more forcibly the way he formulates destinies in figures than by the following incursion into social life: “Each household should have six children, seeing that, on the average, three are sure to die. Of the three who survive, two should replace the father and mother; the third will serve for an unforeseen emergency.”

His precision of thought goes to such grotesque lengths!

A third means for expressing this energetic faculty is his tempo. “Activity! Speed!” he writes with his own hand at the foot of an order. The king of Prussia has depicted this peculiarity with especial felicity: “We need but see him ride: he always gives his horse rein, and never troubles about what may be happening in his rear!” But Napoleon negotiated better than he rode, for he never negotiated until after long reflection. “Not a moment must be lost,” is the slogan even when nothing presses for decision. The instinctive impetus of an overburdened but short life drives him forward; it seems as if he could not arrive quickly enough at the end of his career. He writes to Bernadotte, in the course of a campaign: “I have lost a whole day through you, and the fate of the world hangs upon one single day.”

The drive he imposes upon himself has its reaction upon those who serve him. He drives them, not only in the field, but also in circumstances which ordinary governments would take months to decide. He demands a treaty with Russia from Talleyrand, saying it is to be drawn up and ready in a couple of hours. To explain the reasons for his second marriage, he wants a circular letter sent to all his ambassadors and consuls; this is to be drafted “in the course of the day.” One night he is immersed in thoughts concerning the embellishment of Paris. Next morning he says to his Minister for Home Affairs: “I require that Paris shall have two million inhabitants by the end of ten years. I want to do something useful and great for the city. What do you suggest?”

“Provide the town with a good water-supply, Sire,” and the minister expounds a plan whereby the Ourcq water can be conveyed to Paris.

“Your proposal is good. Summon G.; he must send five hundred men to La Vilette to-morrow, in order to start work on the canal.”

Another of his weapons is memory. “I always know my position. I cannot remember a single Alexandrine, but I never forget a figure relating to my military situation.” This is the productive memory. Although he pronounces them abominably, he retains the names of all the important places—important from his point of view—in all the countries where he has fought. The Postmaster General reports that the Emperor is able to mention, offhand, distances which he himself has to hunt up in works of reference. On his way back to Paris from the camp at Boulogne, Napoleon encounters a troop of soldiers who have lost their way, asks the number of their regiment, whence they set out, and when. He tells them their line of march! “Your battalion will be at H. this evening.” At this time, two hundred thousand men were on the march close at hand!

His technique is to arrange things in his head “as in a wardrobe.” He says: “When I wish to put any matter out of my mind, I close its drawer and open the drawer belonging to another. The contents of the drawers never get mixed, and they never worry me or weary me. Do I want to sleep? I close all the drawers, and then I am asleep.”

Among the numerous heraldic emblems which might have tickled the fancy of an upstart—stars, tutelary deities, saints, beasts of prey—he finds none to please him. He chooses the bee, thus emphasising once more his opinion that a man of talent who aspires and works unceasingly, can achieve everything that can otherwise be achieved through what is vaguely spoken of as genius. He declares that genius is industry; meaning, of course, that genius is industry among other things. He says that work is his element, that for which he has been created. Had he left nothing behind him, had all his works perished, still his industry and his glory would have been an emblematic stimulus to the youth of countless generations after he had passed away.

Many witnesses testify to his amazing powers of continued work. Roederer, who was his close companion during the Consulate, writes as follows: “That which especially characterises him is the power and persistence of his attention. He can work for eighteen hours at a stretch, it may be at one piece of work, it may be at several in turn. I have never seen his mind flag. I have never seen his mind without a spring in it, not when he was physically tired, not when he was taking violent exercise, not even when he was angry. I have never seen him distracted from one affair by another, neglecting the matter in hand for one which he is about to work. Good or bad news from Egypt never interfered with his attention to the civil code, and the civil code never interfered with the steps it was necessary to take for the safety of Egypt. No one was ever more wholly immersed in what he was doing, nor did any one ever make a better distribution of his time among all the things he had to do. Never was any one more stubborn in rejecting the occupation or the thought which was not appropriate to the hour or the day; nor was any one ever more adroit in seizing an occupation or a thought when the right moment had come.”

He robbed hundreds of his fellow workers of health and youth, because he demanded too much of them when he demanded from them what he exacted from himself. His private secretary would be sent for at a late hour, and would get to bed at four in the morning; at seven, the poor man would find new tasks ready for him, and would be told that they must be finished within two hours. When Napoleon and his secretary were together all day, one dictating and the other writing from dictation, at meal times the chief would order food for two, and would share with his subordinate at a corner of the work-table, just as he would have shared with his adjutant on a boundary stone. During the Consulate he would sometimes begin a sitting with his ministers at six in the evening and keep it up till five next morning. In the three months at Schönbrunn, his official correspondence comprised four hundred and thirty-five letters occupying four hundred folio pages of print. This was only his political and administrative correspondence; in addition he wrote a great many private letters, and delivered innumerable orders by word of mouth.

These are the main forms of his energy. It is with their aid that he enters upon his duel with the world, availing himself of their interplay, and speaking of his genius as a talent for combination. In his plans and orders, he is fond of the phrase “at the given moment.” He is not hampered by any principle; is always willing to modify his scheme to suit the weather of destiny, to adapt his combinations to the slightest modifications of the situation. This man of iron will had a most supple intelligence. While forcing all those with whom he came in contact to bend before his resolves, he himself showed a wonderful elasticity in compliance with the will of circumstances.

“The weakness of a captain who, instead of forcing his way into port, preferred to let himself be chased on the open sea—this, and some of the trifling defects of our frigates, were the reasons why I failed to change the face of the world. Had Acre fallen, we should have made our way to Aleppo by forced marches, have enlisted Christians, Druses, and Armenians; have speedily reached the Euphrates: thence I should have gone to India, and should have stablished new institutions everywhere.”

Whether these vaticinations were historically tenable, may remain an open question; but his belief that he could have done what he describes, bears witness to his realism. In this world of figures and magnitudes, for Napoleon everything depends upon the individual behaviour of the individual man at his post. Since the failure of any one individual may give the totality of circumstances a new trend, he is always ready to adapt the trend of his own intelligence to changing circumstances. But he does not himself attribute his successes to this, saying that they were due to his having been born at the right moment, and that under Louis XIV. he would only have become a marshal like Turenne.

Napoleon’s energy is very little disturbed by the passions. His self-confidence and his sense of dignity made self-command easy to him, and, being habituated to surprise, he was always fully master of himself. “Since I am used to great events, they make no impression on me at the moment when they are reported; I feel the pain an hour later.” This sometimes makes him appear more stoical than he might wish people to believe him. When Hortense’s boy dies, he tells her to be composed, saying: “To live means to suffer; but the brave man is continually striving for self-mastery, and achieves it in the end.”

Nevertheless, he sometimes loses his temper. The fierceness of his passion is then proportional to his pride, the irritability of his nerves, and the impatience of his creative will—the will of one who needed a thousand hands to complete his work. The stories about his threatening an ambassador with his fist, and similar outbursts of violence, are fabulous; but there is trustworthy evidence as to the terrible moment when Berthier had infuriated the First Consul by his tactlessness. Led on by Talleyrand as Mephistopheles, Berthier, in the Tuileries, had urged upon the Consul the need of assuming the title of king. Bonaparte’s anger flashed from his eyes, his lips twitched, he seized the offender by the throat, and pushed him back against the wall, shouting: “Who put you up to raising my bile in this way? You will pay for it, if you dare to do anything of the kind again!”

Even amid his anger, his faculty for combination is at work, and he realises that the notion cannot have originated in the good Berthier’s mind. In its psychical significance the scene is unique.

Often he is a rough, irritable soldier, who furiously lifts a badly closing window off its hinges and hurls it into the street; lashes a groom with his whip; when dictating a letter, utters curses against the addressee, which his secretary suppresses; even before the vicars-general speaks in an unseemly way, asking, “Which of you leads this blockhead of a bishop by the nose?”

One of these vicars-general, who has been absent from duty for a long time, returns, and comes to report.

“Where have you been, misérable?”

“At home, with my people.”

“How dare you stay away so long when you know that your bishop is such a damned fool?”

More important are the occasions when he simulates anger to gain some political end. Occasionally he gives the show away afterwards. “You think I was in a rage?” he says in Warsaw. “You are making a mistake. While I have been here, my wrath has never exceeded bounds.” One day he is playing with his little nephew and gossiping with the court ladies, in the best of humours. The English ambassador is announced. Instantly his face changes like an actor’s, his features are convulsed, he turns pale, strides towards the Englishman and storms at him for a whole hour in the presence of numerous witnesses. He is genuinely angry with England and he is genuinely annoyed at being disturbed by this visit; but the wrathful mask, the scene he makes, the angry expressions he uses, are political expedients.

The frequency of such incidents made many people believe that Napoleon was a passionate man. Talleyrand has more insight: “He’s a perfect devil. He humbugs us all, even about his passions, for he knows how to act them, though they are really there!”

Self-command and coldness are so dominant in him that he never takes the vengeance that might seem appropriate to his irritable sense of honour and to the extent of his power. He never punished rivals or traitors unjustly. He only banished those whom he had good reason for wishing out of the way; and it was a point of chivalry with him to leave beaten enemies, great or small, unmolested.

Here is a scene with the Badenese envoy. The envoy asks compensation for the duke of Brunswick. The Emperor angrily refuses: not because the duke is supposed to have incited Prussia to make war against France; but because, long before this, during the first campaign against France in 1792, he had issued the famous manifesto of Coblenz, in which he had said that in Paris he would not leave one stone standing on another. “What harm had this city done to him?” fiercely enquires the Emperor two decades later, the man who in those days had been Lieutenant Bonaparte. “This affront must be avenged!”

V

Napoleon’s energy is most conspicuous in his role of conqueror. But in this case it finds a more spiritual expression than one would be led to anticipate from a soldier. “I have seldom drawn my sword; I won my battles with my eyes, not with my weapons.” To gain a knowledge of his soul, it is not important to understand the new forms of his art of war; of importance is to understand the way in which his whole being vibrated before, during, and after a fight. In this, too, he is wholly original.

Even courage, that fundamental virtue of the soldier, assumes in Napoleon a form peculiar to himself. During his youthful days, and again during the last campaigns he displayed so much personal courage that he can venture to say, “no soldier is proof against cowardice”; but such moments of panic fear must be utilised against the foe. What he believes himself almost alone to possess is “two-o’clock-in-the-morning courage”: courage in face of the unforeseen, the sudden; courage which demands presence of mind and power of determination. But he despises the “chivalrous” courage of the duel, which he crushingly describes as “cannibal courage.”—“Since you have both fought at Marengo and Austerlitz you do not need to give any further proofs of your courage. Women are fickle, and so is good luck. Go back to your regiments and become comrades again.”

The commander of armies clearly recognises the line of demarcation between humaneness and coldness. The same man who, in his study, could exclaim to Metternich: “Such a man as I does not care a snap of the fingers for the lives of a million men”; will say on the field of battle: “If the kings of the world could contemplate such a sight as this, they would hanker less after wars and conquests.” Another time he writes to Josephine: “The earth is strewn with dead and bleeding men; this is the obverse of war; the heart is tortured at the sight of so many victims.” Calculation and feeling are at cross purposes in this case, and he excuses himself for the duties imposed by his own craft: “He who cannot look upon a battle-ground dry-eyed, allows many men to be killed purposelessly.” This is what he wants above all to avoid. For the great aim, Europe entrusts him with a million men: his lesser aim, the taking of this trench or that bridge, must be thriftily achieved, for “he who heedlessly allows ten men to be killed where at most two need have died, is answerable for the lives of eight men.”

Since most of his wars are fought from political necessity, and are always conducted without hate, as soon as the fight is finished the foe ceases to exist. He writes from Schönbrunn: “I am appalled to learn that the eighteen thousand prisoners on the island of Lobau are suffering from hunger; this is inhuman and unpardonable. Have twenty thousand rations of bread sent there immediately; a similar amount of flour for the bake-houses.” But when, after the truce, soldiers are still being killed by the embittered Tyrolese, he is furious, and orders that “at least six of the larger villages are to be plundered and burned, so that the mountain folk may not soon forget the vengeance that has been exacted.”

War is for him an art, “the most noteworthy art, one which contains within itself all the other arts.” Like a true artist, he declares that, in the long run, this art cannot be taught: “You fancy that because you have read Jomini you are fitted to be a leader in war?... I have fought in sixty fights, and I can assure you that I have learned nothing from any of them. Cæsar used the same tactics in his last battle as he had used in his first.” In typical artist fashion, he contradicts himself in the definitions of those things in which he is a master. After the Spanish campaigns, he delivers the following lecture to one of his generals: “War is decided far more by the power of strategical calculation than by material forces.” At another time he will maintain that it is the superior numbers or the moral courage of the troops which constitutes the deciding factor. Sometimes he even goes so far as to say that inspiration decides an issue: “The result of a battle hangs on a thread and is mostly the outcome of a sudden thought. One approaches the enemy according to a prearranged plan, one comes to blows, one fights for a while, the critical moment draws near, a spark of inspiration flames up—and a small reserve division does the rest!”

More logically, but not less as the artist, he speaks of the decisive moment which, after a couple of engagements, one can find out for oneself without any difficulty. “Such moments are not more than quarter hours.... In every battle a moment comes when the bravest of soldiers would like to turn tail: it needs but a trifle, but a plea, to put heart into him again.” This power of suggestion has won him many a victory, for soldiers constitute the only mass to which he can speak with effect. The soldier understands him, because Napoleon is simple. The Emperor even describes war as “a simple art like everything that is beautiful.” By this contention he seems to uphold the idea that war is the highest of all arts. “The military profession is a freemasonry ... and I am the grand master of its lodge.”

He draws this personal influence from the history of his own rise, which is known to every soldier. As a young general, he had learned to put up with his dependence on the civil authority; and as emperor he still commiserates his royal adversaries because their generals’ activities are frustrated by civilian control. On the other hand, he knows the dangers of amateurishness, and writes to Joseph: “When the king himself commands, the soldier does not feel commanded. The army applauds him as when a queen is riding by. If one is not oneself a general, one must give the generals full power of command.”

Because he is the only ruler in Europe who has risen from the ranks, from youth upwards he remains familiar with details, and always understands how things look to an officer on the fighting front. “There is nothing connected with the art of war which I cannot do with my own hand: power, siege engines, artillery.” But he does not concern himself with these details unless it is necessary, and laughs at the romantic anecdote in a book where he is said, one night, to have taken over the duties of a sentry who had gone to sleep at his post: “That is a civilian’s idea, the sort of thing a lawyer would think of, and was certainly not written by a soldier.”

But he is a stickler for equality in the army, and in this matter remains true to the revolution until the very end of his career. No one is promoted unless his record in the service justifies the advancement. If Napoleon makes an exception in the case of his brothers, we must remember that after he has made them kings he continues to scold them as if they were subalterns. He writes to Jerome, commenting on a report from Silesia: “Besides, your letter is too clever for my taste.... What a man needs in war is precision, firmness, simplicity.” When Joseph plays the prince in Boulogne, and vies with Marshal Soult in the splendour of his receptions, Napoleon scolds him. “In the army, no one must put the commander in the shade. On review days, it is the general and not the prince who must give a dinner. At a review, a royal colonel is a colonel and nothing more. Discipline can tolerate no exceptions. The army is a whole. Its commander is everything. Keep to your own regiment.”

Nevertheless, a wounded commander-in-chief has become a private soldier. At Eylau, where there have been heavy losses, the Emperor forbids a famous surgeon to go out of his way in order to care for a wounded general: “Your business is to attend to all the wounded, and not to any one in particular.” A German officer reports that after a fight Napoleon would often stand by the wounded and see that they were carefully lifted into the stretchers: “If this good fellow pulls through, there will be one victim the less.”

In all the memoirs, we read how in camp the Emperor would foregather with his men at the bivouac fire, ask whether their food was being properly cooked, and laugh at their replies. When they confided all their troubles to him, and often said “thou” to him, this was not the assumed good fellowship of a condescending monarch, but a genuinely paternal relationship. If he calls them “my children,” to them he is their “little corporal,” meaning the comrade who takes the responsibility. “I have received your letter, dear comrade,” he writes to a veteran grenadier who wishes to re-enter the service. “You need not speak to me of your deeds, for I know you to be the bravest grenadier in the army. It will be a pleasure to see you once more. The Minister for War will send you your orders.”

He never confides his plans to any one; but when it is a question of rewarding merit, he calls in Everyman as adviser. After a fight, he often forms a circle, speaks to the officers, the non-commissioned officers, and the rankers individually, asking who were the most valiant, rewarding then and there, allotting eagles with his own hand. “The officers pointed out, the soldiers confirmed, the Emperor approved,” relates Ségur as eyewitness.

It is true that Napoleon loves war, but as a fine art, just as he loves power. It is true that he laughs incredulously at a traveller who tells him a tale of a Chinese island where there are no weapons.

“What do you mean? But they must have weapons!”

“No, Sire.”

“Pikes, anyhow; or bows and arrows?”

“Neither the one nor the other.”

“Daggers!”

“Not even daggers.”

“But how the devil do they fight there?”

“There has never been a war on the island.”

“What, no war?”

It sounds to the traveller as if the very existence of such people under the sun outrages the Emperor. The thought stirs a soldier’s bile!

All the same, he looked forward to the coming of peaceful days, not with an ardent desire for them perhaps, but with the seer’s vision. He showed his superiority to all the modern commanders against whom he fought, in that he, the greatest soldier of the new times, declared the primacy of the spirit over the sword. When Canova made a statue of him in which he was shown with a threatening mien, he said contemptuously: “Does the man think I achieved my conquests with blows of my fist?” But, more than this, he himself defined a commander as something above and beyond a soldier. When First Consul, he said in the Council of State:

“In what does the commander’s superiority consist? ‘In his mental qualities: insight, calculation, decision, eloquence, knowledge of men.’ But all these qualities are what make a man shine in civil life.... If bodily vigour and courage sufficed the commander, any brave private could be a leader of armies. Everywhere, crude force now yields ground to moral qualities. The man with the bayonet bows before the man who possesses exceptional knowledge and understanding.... I knew perfectly well what I was about when, as the head of the army, I bore the title of Member of the Institute; and the youngest drummer understood what I meant.”

At a later date, he spoke more decisively.

“War is an anachronism. Some day, victories will be won without cannon and without bayonets.... Whoever troubles the peace of Europe, wants civil war.”

Remember that these are the words of Napoleon, the military commander.

VI

His energy is concentrated on human beings. Very rarely does he come into conflict with natural forces; and whenever he does so, he is beaten. But, in general, all he has to do is to compel men to conquer, for him, the mountains and the miles. Human beings are the material in working with which the energy and the imagination of this artist are destined to become weary; them he must overcome if he is to do his work at all. No mortal ever conquered more men than did Napoleon. He subjugated, not only armies and peoples, but something more: individuals, and the best of these.

To achieve his goal, he followed the road of contempt; and used as his means, glory and money. Self-confidence and experience had convinced him that every one acts only from self-interest; that some are driven to grasp at money through love of pleasure, or avarice, or clannishness; that others seek public recognition in order to gratify their vanity, their jealousy, or their ambition. Denying the force of ideal motives, Napoleon relied exclusively upon material means; and if the spur of ambition occasionally assumed the aspect of a desire for eternal glory, this occurred against his will, but the magic of his personality sometimes exercised a more puissant lure than the well-calculated material attractions offered by others. To quote Goethe: “Napoleon, who lived wholly for ideas, was nevertheless unable to grasp the nature of ideal motives; he repudiated the ideal, denied that there was any such thing, at the very time when he himself was eagerly trying to realise the ideal.”

Yet to Napoleon the Mephistophelian conception of men was as alien as it was to Goethe. He said: “Most people bear within themselves the seeds of good and of evil, of courage and of cowardice. Thus is human nature created: upbringing and circumstance do the rest.” Since, for twenty years, he needed this human nature, daily and in quantities of a hundred at a time, the subtlest knowledge of it was a primary condition of his success. Among all the materials which Napoleon bent to his uses, the human heart was the most familiar.

“I am a great friend of analysis.... ‘Why’ and ‘How,’ are such useful questions, that they cannot be uttered too often.” Coldly and clearly as a nerve specialist, he controls all psychical symptoms, utilises every method for the attainment of such control, and trusts especially to physiognomy—for he knows his Lavater. He is fond of reproving people. “According as they react, I discover the pitch of their souls. If I strike brass with a glove, it gives back no tone: but if I strike with a hammer, it rings out.” A person meeting Napoleon for the first time, is gripped by the magnetism of his glance.

By talking and questioning, he makes himself acquainted with the atlas of human types, an atlas he is ever enlarging. He questions so long that a stranger grows embarrassed, confused, and alarmed; he questions until his questions become ridiculous; but he must at all costs get the information he needs, even if he is not negotiating. In what way can the twenty minutes that a doctor sits at Napoleon’s table in St. Helena be put to the best use by the ex-Emperor?

“How many patients suffering from ailments affecting the liver had you on board? How many cases of dysentery? What is the fee for a consultation in England? What is the pension awarded to an army surgeon?... What is death, or how would you define it? When does the soul quit the body? When does a body first receive a soul?”

Another means is monologue. One of his intimates declares that the right of the Emperor to hold forth in monologue was the only real pleasure his high estate awarded him! We have testimonies concerning other men of action: but who ever talked so much as Napoleon! Since he always faces the world alone, he must continually hold forth that he may convey his suggestions to the world. His conversations often lasted from five to eight hours, some of them ten or eleven hours; and during the greater part of them Napoleon took the floor. We must admit that this was more in accordance with the Italian manner than the Roman; Italian, too, were the rapidity of his utterance, and his foreign accent: but he gesticulated little; and only when much moved did he unclasp his hands—generally they were clasped behind his back, as if he wished to throw out his chest against the world.

Upon all who serve him, he lavishes money with oriental profusion. But as far as his personal expenditure is concerned, he is thrifty. During the Consulate he says: “A man who has been through so many wars will have acquired a little property whether he will or no. I have a private income of from frs. 80,000 to frs. 100,000, with a house in town and a country mansion. What more do I need? If I should get out of humour with France, or France with me, I should retire from public life without a qualm.... But every one round me is stealing; the ministers are weak. Some people must be laying by vast sums.... What is to be done about it? France is corrupt through and through. It has always been like that; as soon as a man becomes a minister, he builds himself a palace.... Do you know what they are trying to make me pay for my installation in the Tuileries? Two millions!... It must be cut down to eight hundred thousand. I am surrounded by a pack of scoundrels.”

“Your great operations,” answers Roederer, “must cost you much more than these domestic defalcations.”

“All the more reason why I should watch over my personal expenditure.”

This conversation tells us how the head of the State, a man of thirty, regards money. He needs nothing for himself, and complains of the venality and profusion of those by whom he is surrounded; acknowledges that he has himself made money out of the wars; rails at the tradesmen who want to charge two millions for the equipment of a palace, when, as far as his own taste is concerned, he sees no reason for spending anything at all. Amid the frightful corruption which is a heritage of the revolution, he fights with the army contractors and war profiteers; but as soon as, by drastic punishments, he has succeeded in putting an end to this scandal, he assigns preposterous incomes to his marshals, some of whom receive more than a million francs a year. As Consul, he rids the State of the thieves who are making away with the national property; and then, as Emperor, he burdens this same State with extortionate salaries.

Still, there are a few persons who make money thanks to their relationship with him, though without his aid. “When I have nothing left,” he says to Talleyrand, “I shall turn to you. Tell me honestly, how much have you made out of me?”

“I am not a rich man, Sire, but all that I have is at your service.”

Napoleon’s way of dealing with men is modified by a hundred and one considerations. If we wish to study the variations of his technique, we must class his instruments in groups.

Generals and marshals are the easiest to keep dependent, for they have unceasing opportunities of winning military renown; and, since he pays them so liberally for their services, they grow more and more wealthy. By loading them with money, he gains two ends, spreading effulgence around himself, and keeping his most powerful officers in a state of dependence. It delights him to see these soldiers unused to money spending extravagantly, running into debt, and then turning to him for help in their difficulties. He leads them from profusion to want, and then back to profusion again. At the same time, he gives them little scope for originality, reserving important decisions for himself, so that even the commanders of armies rarely have a chance of proving themselves men of genius. He shrewdly regulates his public mention of them in his bulletins, both in respect of time and form, so that, through their vanity and jealousy, he can get his way with his generals.

The result is that their sentiments towards him are a mingling of hatred and love, whereby they are chained to his service more firmly than if the feeling had been one of pure affection. Perhaps only two of them are wholly devoted to him, Berthier and Duroc, whose love for him he compares with that of a child and a dog. Ney speaks of himself as a loaded musket which is fired when and where the Emperor orders. Napoleon, for his part, has a personal affection for those only who have risen with him, and in his memoirs he pays his tribute to them. He extols Desaix’s mental balance. Moreau has “more instinct than genius”; whereas Lannes has “more courage than sense,” though as time goes on he makes good in the latter respect. Kléber seeks glory only as a means of enjoyment. Masséna is not really courageous until he is under fire. Murat “has not a spark of intelligence, but what dash! He is a duffer and a hero.” Napoleon cannot break away from these witnesses of his rise, although almost all of them have learned the weight of his anger. In his tent, after Wagram, Napoleon thunders at Marmont for having made a mess of things, and a quarter of an hour later appoints him marshal.

Sometimes the Emperor’s misanthropy got the better of him. “In those moods, I begin to distrust even my companions-in-arms; that causes me intense suffering, and I do everything I can to rid myself of such horrible suspicions.” Yet he really knew. Lannes’ death touched him to the quick, but he never really uttered the moving farewell words which he publishes. Indeed, he confided to Metternich: “Lannes hated me. When I heard that, on being wounded, he had called out my name, I knew it was all up with him. He called on me as a dying atheist calls on God.”

The remembrance of friendships formed in youth does not prevent him from scolding the most exalted of his marshals like schoolboys when he considers they have behaved foolishly or have been wanting in courage. He says to Junot: “Your conduct was unprecedented, extraordinarily indiscreet.... You have a strange notion of your military duties. I don’t recognise you!” To a general in Lombardy: “Under your command, there has been very little honesty and a great deal of avarice; but I never knew until to-day that you were a coward. Leave the army, and never let me see your face again!” In Spain, one of his generals capitulated in the open field. Six months later, this man ventured to appear before Napoleon at a review. The Emperor stormed at him in full hearing of the troops; would not be appeased. The witnesses say that the scene lasted a whole hour. “A man may have to surrender a fortress. The fortune of war is uncertain, and defeat is always possible. Any one can be taken prisoner. The thing may happen to me to-morrow. But honour, before all! On the battle-field, a commander’s business is to fight: and if he capitulates instead, he deserves to be shot.... A soldier must know how to die. Have we not all to face death?... As a subject, you committed a crime in capitulating; as a general, a stupid blunder; as a soldier, your action was cowardly; but as a Frenchman, your surrender was dishonourable!”

He alarmed the diplomats of his day by a frankness which none of them trusted. “Tact, and putting all the cards on the table, will do better service in diplomacy than cunning. The tricks of the diplomats of the old school are out of date; all their rogueries have been exposed long since.... Nothing betrays weakness more than the attempt to deceive.”

Just before the renewal of the war with England, he tells the British envoy how many years it will take before France can face England at sea, but he explains how quickly he can increase his army to four hundred thousand. In Schönbrunn, he says to the Austrian negotiator: “That is my last word. If you defeat me, I shall propose more favourable terms; but if I gain the victory, I shall make them harder. What I want is peace.”

He studies every shade of expression when he wishes to influence the envoys of foreign powers. We see this especially when he is adapting his demeanour towards the Austrians with an eye to the Habsburg traditions. He waits for the formal reception on his birthday, and then, faced by the semicircle of the diplomats, he stops in front of Metternich to say: “Well, Monsieur l’Ambassadeur, what does your emperor want? Would he like me to come to Vienna?” This is calculated to intimidate the Austrian envoy, and at the same time to advertise Napoleon’s threatening attitude throughout Europe. But two days later, when Metternich comes to a private interview, the Emperor says: “To-day, we won’t play at being Emperor of the French and Austrian envoy. There is no audience now, so we need not make any fine speeches.”

Shortly before the conclusion of the first peace with Austria, he wishes to avoid meeting the defeated archduke in Schönbrunn, lest he should commit himself prematurely to peace terms. He therefore arranges that the meeting shall take place in a hunting lodge. “I shall spend only two hours there: one of them will be occupied in having dinner, and the other will be devoted to talk about the war and to mutual protestations of respect.” When the First Consul receives Count Cobenzl, he has personally arranged the stage in the Tuileries; writing-table in the corner; no chairs, so that they will have to sit on the sofa; only one lamp, no lights in the chandelier, although it is late in the evening. When Talleyrand ushers in the Austrian, the room seems almost dark, and the Consul, on the farther side of it, is scarcely visible; the stranger is perplexed, and has to sit exactly where his host chooses.

He is even more subtle in his dealings with the princes. During the years of his supreme power, he ceases to pay them visits. In Tilsit, he becomes the host within two days; in Dresden, though he is the king of Saxony’s guest, he plays the master. He avoids having anything to do with queens. When Queen Louise pathetically implores justice, he begs her to sit down. “Nothing interrupts a tragical scene more effectually than this. When people sit down, tragedy becomes comedy.”

In his dealings with the peoples he was less happy, and his only tolerable successes were secured with the French and the Italians. During the Consulate, he said in the Council of State: “My policy is to rule in accordance with the will of the majority. This, I think, implies the recognition of the sovereignty of the people. I became a good Catholic when I wanted to finish the war in Vendée; in Egypt, I was a Turk; when I wished to win over the Italians, I was an ultramontane. If I reigned over the Jews, I should rebuild Solomon’s temple. That is why I propose to talk about freedom in that part of San Domingo where the slaves have been liberated, while maintaining slavery in the other part of the island.”

His policy was not very successful in the negro republic; he did better in Poland, which he tried to win over by festivities and phrases; and better still with the Jews. These had been granted equal rights by the revolution, and on the Rhine many of them were doing harm by the practice of usury. Napoleon, who knew their value as traders, did not have recourse to crude prohibitions. He bethought himself of Jewish laws and customs; summoned to Paris their highest council, the Sanhedrin, which had not met for centuries; left the decision to this body, and was able to arrange that the supreme Jewish authority should forbid usury as sinful. But in Spain he made a complete mess of things, overlooking the risks he was running, and advising Joseph to make himself agreeable to the whole nation “by instilling fear into the rabble.”

The Germans puzzled Napoleon most of all. They had everything he lacked, and none of the things he had. He therefore, even in the midst of his successes, regarded them with a mixture of fear and admiration; they seemed to him uncanny. When he went to Erfurt and wished to influence the German princes by the drama, he told the managing director not to stage any comedies. “No one understands comedies on this bank of the Rhine. Corneille’s Cinna might be played, for therein great interests are portrayed; then a scene depicting royal clemency, which would certainly have a good effect.” He went on to misquote Cinna. Rémusat, having put him right, said: “In this sacred office, to which God’s grace has appointed the king, the past is justified, and the future is free. He who is advanced to this office, cannot be held culpable; whatever he does, he remains invulnerable.”

“Splendid!” exclaims the Emperor, “especially for the Germans, who always cling to the same ideas, and are still talking about the death of the duke of Enghien! We must broaden their moral outlook. That will be good for people with melancholy ideas, the sort of persons with whom Germany is filled.” It is as if he were talking about German music, of which he knows practically nothing; but really he is thinking of German philosophy. The one is as uncongenial to him as the other, for he is fond of Italian arias and the wisdom of Voltaire, but says that “Kant is an obscure writer.” This misconception of his prevents him from foreseeing the possibility that so slow-moving a people may one day become inspired with a passionate enthusiasm.

Perhaps the reason for the misinterpretation lies in the impracticability of understanding the masses of a foreign nation. In northern Italy, he did indeed make headway, for he was a young man, his ideas were naïve, the yearning of the oppressed was still fresh in him; and he was the herald of the revolution. But the dictator could no longer bring a torch to foreign peoples. Nevertheless, he continued to watch the sentiments of the masses. “A ruler should reign for the masses, without asking whether he is pleasing Mr. So-and-So.... Men of mark look from above, and have no party ties; one who belongs to a party, is a slave.” Such were his principles, but his actions told another story.

The masses, even in France, saw a man who made himself dreaded. They feared him for a decade, but became sceptical at his first failure. “A ruler should be dignified in his demeanour towards the people,” says Napoleon. “But he must not flatter the crowd, which will then think itself cheated if he does not give it everything. You ask me why I make threatening speeches? I make them in order to avoid having to do the things I threaten!”

But this severity is, in the long run, out of keeping both with his own simplicity of nature and with the instincts of the crowd. He could not seduce the masses by the offer of fame and money, so he showed them symbols: crowns and coronation ceremonies; courts and splendour and princes: but the people felt the growing distance between them and their ruler, and were not deceived.

When the people of Paris learned that the Emperor, in his theatre, would no longer allow King Henry to say, “I tremble,” but only, “I shudder,” because, though a king (being only a man) may tremble, he may not admit it—the crowd must either feel angry or become derisive. But the crowd did not hear the words in which the Emperor instructed Talma how to play Cæsar:

“When Cæsar utters his long tirade against kingship, saying, ‘for me, in whom the throne inspires nothing but contempt,’ he does not mean a word of what he says. He only talks like that because he knows that his Romans are standing behind him, and wishes to persuade them that the throne is an abomination to him. In reality, it is already the goal of his desire. Consequently those words ought not to be spoken with conviction.”

He wants to use religion, just as he uses the drama, that he may lull the masses to sleep. Here is what the newmade Consul says to the Council of State: “What I see in religion is, not the mystery of the incarnation, but social order. It associates with heaven an idea of equality, which prevents the poor from massacring the rich. Religion has the same sort of value as vaccination. It gratifies our taste for the miraculous, and protects us from quacks; for the priests are worth more than the Cagliostros, the Kants, and all the German dreamers.... Society cannot exist without inequality of property; but this latter cannot exist without religion. One who is dying of hunger when the man next him is feasting on dainties, can only be sustained by a belief in a higher power, and by the conviction that in another world there will be a different distribution of goods.”

Though he knows all this, and though he takes kindly measures for the relief of the poor, he can never free his mind from thoughts of the rabble and the mob. When he turns from contemplating the princes to contemplating the masses, his contempt for his fellows diminishes, but not enough. The masses, like the princes, are to be used for his own ends. He says: “The men of intelligence who have changed the world, have never done so by influencing the leaders, but have always set the masses in motion. He who influences princes is only an intriguer, and his results are second rate; but he who moves the masses, changes the face of the earth.” Democracy came between him and the people; and what he has to say about parliamentarism is not creative but critical:

“The republic is the political form which elevates the soul and contains the germ of great things: but, precisely because of its greatness, it will sooner or later perish; for it needs a unified authority to maintain its power, and this must lead either to despotism or to a patriciate. The latter is the worst of despotisms; Rome, Venice, England, and even France are instances. If the republic wishes to attain greatness, the central authority must be established upon a permanent parliamentary majority; ... but this can be secured only by corruption, which is the cancer of the peoples, and a terrible weapon in the hands of the central authority. The liberals have discovered the expedient of constitutional monarchy. That is a mezzo termine, which has its advantages, but only when the popular assembly, whose business it is to bridle the monarchical authority, is elected by universal suffrage.”

Napoleon recognised the existence of all the problems that confronted the nineteenth century; but he never understood the social problem, with which his own story began.

VII

Imagination, the third element of his personality, is the real driving force of his self-confidence and his energy. Continually at war with the calculating part of his nature, fantasy, in the end, brings this harbourer of opposites to destruction. The imaginative power, which links the poet to the statesman (enabling both unceasingly to dwell in the affective world of strangers as well as in their own), is also the source of his knowledge of men and his guide to the management of men. But always his energy interacts with other qualities. One who, for analytical purposes, would force the living whole of his character into the framework of a system, cannot avoid, from time to time, breaking threads that he may bind other threads together.

“I know not what I do, for everything depends on events. I have not a will of my own, but expect everything from their outcome.... The greater one is, the less can one have a will. One is always dependent upon events and circumstances.” Such words, casually introduced into a letter from husband to wife, express the distantly visible forms of his fantasy; for only the imaginative man, not tied to systems and principles, trusts himself to the movements of the moments, allows his spirit to roam freely, and discovers his course as he goes. In this sense, his whole career is improvisation, though in the converse way from that in which most people improvise. He calculated little things in advance with great precision; whereas his worldwide designs were originated, transformed, improvised, in accordance with circumstances and developments. “One who has become familiar with affairs, despises all theories, and makes use of them only like the geometricians, not in order to move forward in a straight line, but merely to keep heading in the same direction.”

This direction, this fundamental idea of the statesman, was, moreover, only possible in a man whose mind was simultaneously imaginative and mathematical. It is his most ardent vision and his coolest calculation; it is his political aim, his hope, his ambition: Europe. If this vision could be realised only by force of arms, that was because of the fierceness with which the first republic of Europe was again and again attacked by the European princes. We have seen how earnestly he strove for peace. No doubt he chose his means badly, his error being due to the time, the circumstances, and his own domineering character. But his mistakes as to method still leave undiminished the genius of the seer who looked forward towards an aim which was again to become an object of statesmanship a hundred years after his fall.

“There are in Europe more than thirty million Frenchmen, fifteen million Italians, thirty million Germans.... Out of each of these peoples, I wanted to make a united national whole.... That would have supplied the best chance of establishing a general unity of laws; a unity of principles and thoughts and feelings, of outlooks and interests.... Then it would have been possible to think of founding the United States of Europe after the model of the United States of America or of the Greek Amphictyonic League.... What perspectives of strength, greatness, and prosperity this opens up!... For France, unity has been wrought; in Spain, it has proved unattainable; to establish the Italian nation, I should have needed twenty years; to make the Germans a nation, would have required still more patience, and all I could do was to simplify their monstrous constitution. At the same time, I wanted to pave the way for the unification of the great interests of Europe, just as I had unified the parties in France.... The transient mutterings of the peoples troubled me little; they would have been reconciled to me by the result.... Europe would soon have become one nation, and any who travelled in it would always have been in a common fatherland.... Sooner or later, this union will be brought about by the force of events. The first impetus has been given; and, after the fall and the disappearance of my system, it seems to me that the only way in which an equilibrium can be achieved in Europe is through a league of nations.”

Here there is no talk of a dictatorial welding together of different stocks, or of an enthusiastic fraternisation. He speaks only of interests, and of a preliminary unification of these on a national and racial basis. The work of the nineteenth century was to inaugurate the preliminaries by the establishment of the nations. The twentieth century opens with the realisation of the Napoleonic idea.

VIII

The effects underlying his energy and his imagination are dominated by the clarity of his thought. Napoleon hated less, and loved more, than he would have been willing to admit. In this domain, we find the converse of what happens in the matter of his sympathies in war time, when a million men are coldly sacrificed, while one man wounded and bleeding touches him to the heart. Since his fantasy needs enormous masses, he is enraged when Joseph says: “I am the only person who cares for you.” Napoleon rejoins: “Nothing of the sort. I need five hundred million men to love me.” In these icy words glows the volcano which one of his school masters heard rumbling long ago.

Emotionally convinced of his mission to order the affairs of the nations, he deliberately rejects anything that may distract him from this aim, and nothing sustains him but his monomania. Even in the drama, he objects to the interweaving of love stories, saying: “Love is a passion which should only be the main theme of a tragedy, and never a subsidiary motif.... In the days of Racine, it was the whole content of a human life. That happens in a society where no great deeds are being done.”

If love becomes intrusive, he annuls it. “I have no time to be bothered with feelings and to repent them like other men.... There are two motives to action: self-interest and fear. Believe me, love is a foolish blindness!... I love no one, not even my brothers—Joseph a little, from force of habit, and because he is the elder. I am fond of Duroc, too; he is serious and resolute; I believe the man has never shed tears in his life!... Let us leave sensibilities to women. Men should be firm of heart and strong of will, or else they should have nothing to do with war or governance.” Another time: “The only friend I have is Daru; he is unfeeling and cold; that suits me.” Last of all, in St. Helena: “A man of fifty has done with love.... I have an iron heart. I never really loved; perhaps Josephine, a little; but then I was only seven-and-twenty. I incline to the view of Gassion, who once said to me that he did not love life well enough to give it to another being.”

Always half ashamed of his feelings; ever ready to make excuses for them; “perhaps,” “a little.” Yet this is the same man who said: “I am the slave of my way of feeling and acting, for I value the heart much more than the head.” This very feeling is his fantasy.

One in whom egotism is supreme, will be more inclined to jealousy than to love. His first letters to Josephine show him devoured by jealousy. Years later, as Consul, when he is inspecting his new bridge in course of construction across the Seine, he has to step aside with his companions for a moment to let a carriage pass. In the carriage sits Hippolyte, his sometime rival. That was long ago; everything has been condoned; the man’s name is never mentioned in his presence. But now, at a chance encounter in the street, Bonaparte grows pale and confused, and takes a little while to recover composure.

From time to time, he shows an involuntary kindliness. On one of the Italian battle-fields, he sees a dog howling over the dead body of its master. “The poor beast seemed to be asking for an avenger, or begging help. I was profoundly moved by the dog’s suffering, and at that moment I should have been very much in the mood to grant quarter to an enemy. I understood why Achilles surrendered Hector’s body to the weeping Priam. Such is man; so little can he count upon his moods. Impassively I had sent my soldiers into the battle; dry-eyed I had watched them marching past in an advance where thousands of them would meet their fate; then I was shaken to the depths by the howling of a dog.”

Affectionate tones are to be heard in many of his letters. To Cambacérès: “I am so sorry to hear that you are not well. I hope it is only a passing trouble. If you did not take so much medicine, you would be better already.... But anyhow, you must do your utmost to get well, if only because of my friendship for you.” To Corvisart: “Dear Doctor, I wish you would see to the arch-chancellor and to Lacépède: the former has been ailing for a week, and I am afraid he is in the hands of a quack; Lacépède’s wife has been ill for some time. Give them the benefit of your advice, and cure them as soon as you can. You will save the life of a man of note, and one who is very dear to me.”

Chénier, who has written against him for years, is assisted by him in poverty and given a secure position. Carnot, for ten years an enemy of the Emperor, is heavily in debt; Napoleon learns this, settles the debts, and refuses to hear of being given a note of hand; reckons up the pay which Carnot would have received as general in active service, makes this calculation the basis of a large pension; and when Carnot says he would like to do some work for his money, Napoleon commissions him to write a military treatise, lest his pensioner should have to undertake duties that might go against the grain.

During the Hundred Days, learning that some of the Bourbon princes are greatly distressed for lack of money, he sends them large sums anonymously. On one occasion his secretary is asleep, and he himself has nothing particular to do; he looks through a pile of begging letters, and writes in the margin of each the amount of an allowance which is to be given to the sender. Hundreds of officers whom, in fits of anger, he has sworn to have shot, remain at their posts—to forsake him in the end. When he orders Jerome to get a divorce, he is alarmed at his own harshness. After he has written to enforce his command with threats he sends a letter to his mother saying that she had better write to Jerome at once and get his sisters to write as well, “for if I have passed judgment on him, nothing can alter it, and his life will be spoiled.”

From his few friends, he demands blind devotion. Never is the self-centred nature of Napoleon more plainly shown than in the words the exile speaks to Montholon, from whom he has been temporarily estranged: “I love you like a son, for I believe that you love me only; otherwise you could not love me at all. According to my way of feeling, it is not in our nature to love several persons at once. People deceive themselves in these matters; they cannot even love all their children with the same intensity. For my part, at any rate, I want to be the supreme object of affection in the case of those whom I love and honour with my confidence. I cannot bear partings. They stab me to the heart, for my disposition is too sensitive; spiritual poison affects the body more powerfully than arsenic.”

Logically enough, he dislikes western views concerning the enlightenment of women. He always hankers after the East, and in this matter he is an oriental. “Nature intended women to be our slaves; and it is only because of our distorted outlooks that they venture to describe themselves as our rulers.... For one who can influence us in a good direction, there are a hundred who will only lead us into follies.... What a mad idea to demand equality for women! They are our property, we are not theirs; for they give us children, but we do not give them any. They belong to us, just as a tree which bears fruit belongs to the gardener.... In this difference, there is nothing degrading; every one has his privileges, and every one his duties. You, ladies, have beauty, attractiveness; but also dependence.”

IX

Throughout life, the imagination of this creator was troubled by the thought of the Creator. This ruler of men was greatly disturbed that there should be no one who ruled all men. It was not that he ever regarded himself as divine; he laughed at all mystical interpretations of his own power: but there was one great power which remained uncoercible—no matter whether it were called God, destiny, or death. How do self-confidence and fantasy escape from this snare?

First of all by the rejection of dogma. “My firm conviction is that Jesus ... was put to death like any other fanatic who professed to be a prophet or a Messiah; there have been such persons at all times. For my part, I turn from the New Testament to the Old, and there I find one man of mark, Moses.... Besides, how could I accept a religion which would damn Socrates and Plato?... I cannot believe that there is a god who punishes and rewards, for I see honest folk unlucky, and rogues lucky. Look at Talleyrand; he is sure to die in his bed!... How could I have remained independent if I had been subject to the influence of a confessor to threaten me with the pains of hell? Think what powers a confessor who is a rascal can exercise!...”

In this matter he is consistent; from childhood, when he would not go to Mass, until the end of his life, he rejected (for himself) all the religions. The man who, in his own life, would not recognise the existence of miracle, and ascribed everything that he was able to achieve to the working of the healthy human understanding, boldness, power of combination, knowledge of men, and imagination, could not possibly believe in the miracles recorded in the Bible. He was perfectly logical when he told one of his subordinates it was impossible that two million men could have quenched their thirst at the Wells of Moses.

Even more uncongenial to him is any dread of a great assize. He does not talk about morality; or at most, he does so with some political end in view. Only towards the last, on the island, he says once in an evening conversation with his intimates: “How happy should we be here if I could confide my troubles to God, and could expect from him happiness and salvation! Have I not a just claim to it? I, who have had so unusual a career, have never committed a crime, and need not fear to step before God’s judgment seat and await his sentence. Never has the thought of committing a murder entered my mind.”

For these reasons, he does not falter in the days of misfortune. Five years before the end, he expresses the hope that he will die without a confessor, but adds that no one can be certain what he will do in his last hours. In fact, this heart of steel was steadfast to the end.

Nevertheless, his ideas as to the nature of the creation developed, and just as the revolutionist became a legitimist, so the materialist became a theist. But these developments were not transformations; there was simply a broadening of the basis of his thought. Throughout life, he had a sense that things had come into existence by a natural process: “When out hunting, I had the deer cut open, and saw how like the beast’s internal organs were to those of a human being. Man is merely a more perfect creature than a dog or a tree. The plan is the first link in a chain whose last link is mankind.” It should be remembered that the Emperor had not read Goethe’s Zur Morphologie, or Lamarck’s Philosophie zoologique. He had actually refused to receive Lamarck.

Still more remarkable are his deductions concerning psycho-physical processes. In a Christmas discourse at St. Helena, he expresses his doubts as follows: “How can any one understand that God should sanction the caprices of a ruler who sends thousands of men into battle that they may die for him?... Where is the soul of a child; or that of a madman?... What are electricity, galvanism, magnetism? In these lies the great secret of nature. I am inclined to believe that man is a product of these fluids and of the atmosphere; the brain sucks them in and imparts life, and the soul is composed of them. After death, they return into the atmosphere, whence they are sucked up again by other brains.” After giving utterance to these Goethean motifs, he is alarmed at his own temerity. Breaking off suddenly, he says, as a soldier among soldiers: “Oh, well, my dear Gourgaud, when we are dead, we are simply dead.”

Side by side with this scepticism, there exists and expands a theism. To Laplace, who denies the existence of God, he says: “You should be more ready than any one else to admit that God exists, for you, more than most, have seen the wonders of creation. If we cannot actually see God with our own eyes, this is because he did not wish our understanding to reach so far.” On another occasion: “We believe in God because everything around us testifies to his existence.” In St. Helena: “I have never doubted the existence of God, for, even if my reason were incompetent to grasp him, still my inner feelings would convince me of his reality. My temperament has always been in harmony with this feeling.”

How shall such a spirit come to terms with destiny? Since his self-esteem makes it impossible for him to believe that any man can have beaten him, he is forced to ascribe his defeat to fate. But this sense of the workings of destiny is present in his mind before the final overthrow; it accompanies him throughout life, and appears to be an equivalent for the reverence, devotion, and faith by which other men live. With the aid of his belief in destiny, Napoleon wages a heroic struggle. In his strongest moments, he feels that he wears armour of proof: “I have a soul of marble. The lightnings were unable to destroy it, but broke on it in vain.” Once he expresses his defiance even more poetically: “Should the heavens fall down on us, we shall hold them off with the points of our lances!”

But these defiant moods are rare. In general, he is resigned to fate. There are hundreds of his sayings to bear witness to this. Here are three: “All that happens, is written; our hour is fixed, and no one can postpone it.... No one can escape his fate.” To the duchess of Weimar: “Believe me, there is a providence which guides all. I am merely its instrument.” To Johannes von Müller: “Fundamentally, all things are linked together, and are subject to the unsearchable guidance of an unseen hand. I have only become great through the influence of my star.” In such tropes we see awareness of God and a sense of dependence welded into pride in his own mission. At these times, a prophetical effulgence seems to radiate from him, but is obscured again and again by the self-confidence of his iron energy.

Yet Napoleon was far from believing in his star as another man may believe in a god or a talisman. He could not bear to have the greatness of his deeds minimised by insistence on his good fortune. He was, therefore, far less superstitious than other men of his type. Louis brings him a valuable knife, but hesitates to give it to him; Napoleon snatches it from his brother’s hand, saying: “Don’t bother, it won’t cut anything but bread!” He scolds Josephine because she consults fortune-tellers; but then, being curious, asks her to tell him all about the hocus-pocus. He wants to have the signing of the peace of Pressburg postponed for a few days, that it may take place after the reintroduction of the prerevolutionary calendar; but he does not order this, being content to use the unwonted phrase, “that would please me very much.” Schwarzenberg’s death, in 1820, is a great relief to him; for when a fire broke out in the Schwarzenberg mansion at the ball given in honour of Napoleon’s second marriage, the Emperor had interpreted this as a bad omen for himself; now Schwarzenberg’s death is a derivative for his own uneasy forebodings!

Apart from these trifles, in a life so packed with important happenings, we do not hear of a single day during twenty years on which he forms, postpones, or modifies a resolution on superstitious grounds. But he makes an adroit use of his “star” and his “destiny” for political or rhetorical purposes. Since he wishes to pose before Europe as the Man of Destiny, he tries to work upon suggestible minds like Alexander’s by such turns of phrase as the following: “It is wise and politic to do what fate commands, and to march on the road along which we are led by the irresistible course of events.” His mind is fond of playing with the kindred notions of destiny, circumstance, and chance; and while he regards destiny as involved in more or less obscurity, he believes himself able to calculate the chances of a coming battle with almost mathematical certainty. “In these matters one must be careful not to make a slip, for an overlooked fraction can modify the whole result.... To people of mediocre intelligence, chance will always remain a mystery; but to the clear-sighted, it becomes a reality.”

Sometimes he lumps them all together—talents, destiny, and power,—and shows himself an energetic fatalist when he says: “Against attempts on my life, I trust in my luck, my good genius, and my guards.”

In this virile spirit, he strides resolutely along betwixt life and death.

A modern tragedy depicts a man who wishes to die. Napoleon says that the portrait is well limned, but unnatural: “A man must wish to live, and must know how to die.” That is why, from youth upwards, he opposes suicide; first, in an essay; then, in an order of the day; then, with the reiterated argument that suicide is cowardice, especially in hours of misfortune. A careful study of the documents shows that the story of his having attempted suicide just before the first abdication is apocryphal. The leading memoirs make no reference to the matter, and such accounts as we have are at second hand and untrustworthy. There is no doubt that during his last battles Napoleon deliberately sought a soldier’s death; but he never tried to poison himself.

Yet it was not only in those last days at Fontainebleau, and after Waterloo, that he suffered from tedium vitæ. The weariness recorded in the diary of the lad of sixteen, and in the letter which the man of thirty wrote from Cairo to his brother, were little in evidence during the most energetic years of febrile activity. Those who trouble to ask whether persons of genius are happy, will have to agree that this man of genius, who was not fitted by nature for happiness, enjoyed during the climax of his career, hours of content, and even sublime moments. But there were periods of doubt:

“For the tranquillity of France,” says Bonaparte at Rousseau’s tomb, “it would have been better if this man had never lived.”

“Why, Citizen Consul?”

“He paved the way for the revolution.”

“Surely you are not the man to deplore the revolution?”

“Time will show whether it would not have been better for the peace of the world if neither Rousseau nor I had lived.”

Gradually these doubts fade. But what he never loses is the sense of daimonic loneliness, which increases as his soaring flight leads him to chillier altitudes. “There are times when life is hard to bear.” Since the sea has always been unfriendly to him, there is only one place where he really feels at home—the desert, which to him is the image of the infinite. The desert is the sublime vacancy which expands before him when the myriad-faceted pictures of ordinary life sink from sight.

But never was Napoleon more perfectly freed from the tyranny of his thoughts, never was he happier, than when seated alone in his box at the theatre, watching a tragedy being enacted.

Nothing else could restore his inner peace of mind; for, since he loved less than most, he was doomed to a tragical loneliness, the price he had to pay for his egotism. “There is neither happiness nor unhappiness,” he said. “The life of a happy man is a picture showing black stars on a silver background. The life of an unhappy man is a picture showing silver stars on a black background.” But it is not these heroic images which best characterise the loneliness of a soul. Even more poignant voices reach us from the familiar arena of the daily struggle:

“Don’t you understand, Caulaincourt, what is going on here? The folk I have got together want to enjoy themselves; the poor devils don’t realise that a man has to fight before he can get the repose he longs for. What about myself? Have not I a palace, a wife, a child? Do I not weary myself to the utmost with every possible kind of tension? Do I not day by day give my life to my country?”

He gives his life to his work, for that is what he means when he talks of his country. A human note, gently plaintive, and fraught with the lofty irony of the finale, sounds when he says on the island:

“The whole time I was bearing the world on my shoulders. ’Tis rather a tiring job!”

X

A volcano made the island, which was flung up from beneath the waters thousands upon thousands of years ago. Forth from the midst of the sea, projects the gloomy mass of rock. Steep, black, and deeply furrowed are the walls of lava that run down from the heights into the waves. The chasm above the harbour looks like the gate of hell to one who first sees it from a ship; and the traveller fancies that these dark ramparts must have been built by the hands of demons. Nothing betrays the work of man but the cannon placed among the rocks. When the voyager lands, the ground crunches softly beneath his feet, for the soil is made of disintegrated lava. He is treading the road of death.

An extinct volcano in the Atlantic Ocean, two thousand miles from Europe and nearly a thousand from Africa, guarded by British guns—such is the rock of St. Helena, on which this limitless life might have ended like a tragedy of Æschylus. But, owing to the mendacity of a moralising century, the malice of English oligarchs, and the dry spitefulness of a colonial governor, the island becomes the stage for a tragi-comedy.

The diligence of a few farmers and the energy of the East India Company had made the place pleasant enough. Hundreds of frigates had, by degrees, brought garden mould, building stone, and timber. But since no one would stay long on the rock unless under compulsion, there were twelve hundred negro slaves and Chinese to serve the five hundred whites who dwelt there for a few years at a time.

No one can stay there. On this island, no one reaches the age of sixty, and very few live to be fifty; the climate is deadly. We are in sunless tropics, where the fierce heat of the equator is variegated with cloud bursts, and where within an hour a damp sultriness may give place to a cold downpour. The skin of those who, just before, were dripping with sweat, is suddenly chilled by the storming south-east trade wind, whose vapours are arrested by the rock. One who, after a burning day, ventures abroad in the evening, will pant for breath as he walks. Those who stay for a year, suffer from dysentery, giddiness and fever, vomiting and palpitation. Above all, they suffer from liver disease. Whenever England tried to station a squadron at St. Helena, the sailors died by hundreds; the ships had to put out to sea, and to keep under sail. The officials and the planters fall sick. Unless they have the luck to live in one of the four or five sites protected from the wind, they and their families are soon compelled to seek some healthier place of residence.

The inhabitants will tell you that one of the most unwholesome regions is a chilly tableland seventeen hundred feet above sea level; a lonely place, on the windy side of the island, made specially insalubrious by the persistence of fogs. There grow sparse gum trees, blighted by the trade wind, gnarled and twisted, leaning away from the prevailing blast. The St. Helenians call the region Deadwood. Here is Longwood. That is the place selected by England as the one in which the sick foe can most certainly be killed. It was not a temporary asylum, chosen hastily and in an emergency; it was not originally intended for the Emperor; it was made ready for him while he was living elsewhere on the island, in poor case, but still in fairly good health.

Till yesterday, Longwood had been a stable, built fifty years before, and only at the last moment transformed into a dwelling-house. Negroes, and the carpenters of the “Northumberland,” fixed a wooden floor over the mud of the interior, neglecting to clear away the cattle dung. Soon after the Emperor’s entry, the planks rotted and broke, the stinking damp soaked through the flooring, and he had to move into another room. For himself and his followers, a home has been made out of a cow-shed, a wash-house, and a stable. In his bedroom, a dark and narrow corner, the brown nankeen which covers the walls is stained with saltpetre; smells from the kitchen invade it. In this last point it resembles the lodging he had in a café thirty years ago when he was lieutenant in Valence. But in that earlier abode his books kept dry; here they are attacked by mould. The dining-room is lighted through a glass door; the drawing-room is furnished with a worm-eaten mahogany suite; the servants’ quarters are flooded by the rain, for the roof here is made of roofing-felt.

The Emperor lives in two small rooms, each about fourteen feet by twelve, and ten feet high. The bedroom boasts a threadbare carpet, muslin curtains, a fireplace, painted wooden chairs, two small tables, a wash-hand-stand, and a sofa. The work-room has a bare table, under which two chairs are tucked; rough shelves closely packed with books, and an extra bed where he would rest sometimes in the daytime or which he would use on the nights when he was restless and sleepless. The bedroom contains some trophies rescued from his ruin; the little camp-bed he had used at Austerlitz, hung with green silk curtains; a silver lamp; and, on the wash-hand-stand, magnificent silver ewers and basins.

These rooms, and indeed the whole premises, swarm with rats, which kill the fowls, gnaw the leg of a sick horse, bite General Bertrand in the hand, and spring out of Napoleon’s three-cornered hat as he takes it from the sideboard.

Who lives in the house besides the rats? Three counts and one baron with their families (all of them officers, and accustomed to court life), two valets, and the rest of the Emperor’s staff with their dependents; nearly forty persons in all, when they first land. After six years, at the end of Napoleon’s life, the number has been reduced by half.

Las Cases and his young son hold out for a year. Marquis and émigré, older than the Emperor, a sprig of the Faubourg, count of the empire, it was not until the Hundred Days that Las Cases became one of Napoleon’s close associates. He was a man of the world, author of some works on geography; later he was to write his Memorial of St. Helena, which is said to have brought him thousands of pounds. He was shorter than the Emperor, and as lean as General Bonaparte had been. He was cultured, pleasant of temper, always ready to serve: certainly the most agreeable companion and secretary the prisoner had. He entertained the Emperor with witticisms the Parisians had made at Napoleon’s expense, thereby unfolding the comic obverse of a tragic career. Las Cases taught the Emperor English, thus widening the scope of the exile’s reading. When the two men exchanged notes in English, the count would underscore the Emperor’s mistakes. Las Cases, under various pretexts, finally abandoned the island, and left a vacant place which during the last years of the Emperor’s life was never to be filled.

For Bertrand, sometime governor of Illyria, and devoted to the Emperor, is touchy, and is too proud to write from dictation; in other respects, he observes a faultless passivity, except when he shows fear of offending his wife. This lady, a beautiful creole, half-English with the head of a young lord, had been loath to share Napoleon’s exile. At Plymouth, she had tried to throw herself overboard; she is miserable, thinks of Paris, and weeps over her youth; consorts much with the enemy. One day her place is empty at the Emperor’s board. Napoleon says that his house is not an inn; Bertrand is aggrieved at the reproach, and does not put in an appearance next day. Then the Emperor is so unhappy that he cannot eat, and pushes his plate away, saying softly and with deep melancholy: “If, in Longwood, they are going to fail in their respect for me, my lot is bitterer than if it had happened in Paris.”

Gourgaud is unbearable. The young general had been through the last campaigns as Napoleon’s adjutant. His affection for his chief has made him accompany the Emperor to St. Helena; but he is quite unable to overcome his feelings of wonder at his self-sacrifice. After a few weeks’ sojourn on the island he meets a charming lady, and writes in his diary: “O liberty, why am I a prisoner?” He is useful to the Emperor because of his erstwhile position on the general staff; he is conversant with the science of strategy, understands maps and mathematics. Not a day goes by, however, but Gourgaud is offended. Innate vanity and jealousy are increased a thousandfold by the narrowness of the circle; he becomes the incarnation of the grotesque, which, from the first day on the island, begins to encompass the Emperor about. Gourgaud has the temperament of a snarling dog; he cannot allow Las Cases to take precedence; Napoleon vainly tries to smooth the young man’s ruffled plumes, and only by resorting to command is he able to prevent a duel. “You followed me here in order to comfort my life, so you are brothers. Am I no longer here to care for you? And are you not aware that the eyes of strangers are upon you?”

The Emperor learns patience upon the rock. He also learns considerateness, especially where Gourgaud is concerned. A dozen times and more, he speaks to the young man in fatherly fashion; tries to persuade him to bear with his companions; cajoles him with the promise of a wealthy and beautiful Corsican bride. Another time he sends the general to a little festivity in the town: “You will meet the Baroness Stürmer there, and see Lady Lowe. At your age, it is always agreeable to consort with pretty women. You will go to sleep filled with pleasant thoughts, and by to-morrow morning you’ll feel fit for work once more. We’ll talk over the Russian campaign....” A voice from Tartarus! But next day Gourgaud again takes offence because in a picture of the group which has been painted by one of the valets, he appears in civilian dress. A few days later he reminds his master of an episode near Brienne: Gourgaud saved Napoleon’s life by cutting down a Cossack who was about to attack the Emperor. The Emperor pretends to have forgotten; Gourgaud is outraged, saying that all Paris was buzzing with talk of the incident. Napoleon smiles: “You are a brave man, but amazingly childish.”

Las Cases’ servant steals a diamond cross belonging to Gourgaud; in order to secure peace, the Emperor has to put the cross in his own pocket, and, later, present it to Gourgaud with the assurance that he had taken it himself. Again, Gourgaud complains that he is short of money and has not enough to keep his mother in comfort. The Emperor writes: “General! We are here on a battle-field. He who runs away because he does not receive enough money, is a coward!... I do not owe you any thanks. If you had remained in France you would have been executed, for you had a command in the ’15 campaign!” In rare moments only, does the rage in his heart find such vent. Napoleon does, indeed, tell Gourgaud that he is free to leave any day he pleases. But immediately afterwards the Emperor turns the conversation on to cannons, gun-carriages, and cartridges. Next day he says:

“My dear Gourgaud, how glum you look! Have a cold rub down; that’ll do you good. One must curb one’s imagination, otherwise one is liable to go mad; it is like the Danube: at the source of the river one can cross it in a bound.... When I die, I shall leave no family behind me but you. I am no longer wealthy, but I have a few million still. In addition you will inherit my writings. I know what I owe you. But, while we are here, I want my friends to cheer me, and not to make me sadder by pulling long faces.... Do you fancy that I have no terrible moments? At night I wake up and think of what I was and to what I have come.”

When such poignant words are uttered at the table of this tiny court, all sit silent and tremble. Each one feels that from this room, this house, this island, an echo like a belated rock-fall from the volcano must surely find its way to Europe’s shore. For a few days thereafter, intrigues are discontinued and enmities subside. But next week, over a trifle, the quarrels break out anew. Gourgaud can stand life on the island no more. He leaves at the end of two years. He makes friends with the English, and, when he bids farewell to Emperor and island, he sails away with letters of introduction from the governor who is the deadly foe of his master.

Count Montholon is the most loyal of the exile’s companions. As a youngster of ten he had been instructed by Captain Buonaparte in mathematics. Later, he had served in two score battles under his master, and was much at the Emperor’s court. Many decades after Napoleon’s death, he proved his fidelity to the House of Bonaparte; for, just as now he offers up six years of his life to live with his exiled master on this rocky site, so, too, he devotes six further years to Napoleon’s nephew, sharing the third Napoleon’s captivity in a fortress. The only drawback in St. Helena is that the count’s wife does not get on with Madame Bertrand. One day the countess declares in the hearing of all that the Bertrands’ latest born is puny because the mother’s milk is good for nothing.

Meanwhile Madame Bertrand is reckoning that her eldest is sure to be made grand marshal as soon as Napoleon II ascends the throne. How much jealousy rages in these breasts because, meanwhile, under Napoleon I, Bertrand remains “grand marshal,” while Montholon superintends culinary affairs and Gourgaud attends to the Emperor’s stable. Besides, none of them have enough to do. Their duties cannot occupy more than two hours of the endless day. At last things come to such a pass in this ramshackle palace that the members of the little court can only communicate with one another in writing. Even Countess Montholon and her children have in the end to forsake the Emperor and the island.

Who is really loyal, loyal in his heart of hearts?

Three servants. Marchand, the valet, who has attended the Emperor for the last four years; and two Corsicans who, in the hurry of departure, Napoleon had pressed into his service, thereby linking up the island of his birth with the island of his latter days. These servants never have any dealings with the English foe, who would gladly draw their secrets from them. Cipriani has a special reason for his reticence: as sergeant he had seized Capri from the governor of Capri who to-day is governor of St. Helena. Santini occasionally asks for a day off in order to go shooting. But his sport is soon stopped when the fact gets known that he intends to shoot “that monster, the governor,” and then to put a bullet through his own head.

The Emperor sternly forbids his man to contemplate any such deed, for who in Europe would not immediately cast suspicion on himself? But when the servant has withdrawn, the master thinks indulgently: “We Corsicans are all like that!”

XI

A lean, middle-aged man with restless movements, red-haired, freckled, with a large brown patch on the cheek; his throat is stringy; he has pale golden eyebrows shading eyes which can look no one in the face; he is clad in a British uniform—such is the governor of the prison.

He lives in a fine country house, in the most sheltered part of the island, with a garden which is the oldest and most luxuriant in St. Helena. When he pays his first visit to Longwood, the Emperor says: “Execrable! A real hang-dog face, like that of a Venetian sbirro. He glared at me with the eye of a hyena caught in a trap. Perhaps he is my executioner.”

It was not Sir Hudson Lowe’s position which made him seem so obnoxious to the prisoner, who was on excellent terms with two or three army officers and with the admiral. But Lowe had been an English Fouché on the small scale, had been chief of the spy service in Italy, and had taken over his present delicate task in Fouché’s spirit. It was true that the peace of Europe depended on his watchfulness; and since, in Europe, people loved sleep more than greatness, one section of the public was hounding Lowe on to be brutal.

The English press was describing the prisoner in atrocious terms. One of the most noted of English journals pilloried him as the murderer of the Jaffa prisoners, described his sisters as whores, and spoke of Murat as a waiter; a special law was passed to make any attempt at freeing him a capital offence, with the proviso that the offender would be denied spiritual consolation on the way to execution; the prince regent was said to have “besmirched his name” by presenting some fowling-pieces to Napoleon. The honour of England is saved only by the Whigs; and by the formal protest of two members of the House of Peers, the duke of Sussex and Lord Holland. Lady Holland ventures to send the Emperor books and fruit; another noblewoman, who in earlier days had wanted to raise a corps of amazons against him, now boldly espouses his cause in London; a great English lawyer writes twenty-one theses to prove that Napoleon’s detention after peace has been signed is illegal; Thomas Moore and Lord Byron save England’s credit before the tribunal of history. Germany’s good fame is rescued by the fierce attacks upon Lowe in the German press, attacks that go on for years.

The governor is attacked because he has turned the whole island into a prison. He has issued regulations arranged in twenty-four paragraphs, informing the captains and crews of vessels that touch at St. Helena about all the things that are forbidden, under penalty; posters in the streets of Jamestown prohibit contact with the French; no one may approach Longwood without a written permit. Every movement of the prisoners is watched through a telescope; for six long years British officers keep their eyes riveted on the place of detention, but can rarely see anything more noteworthy than the lizards on the roof. Semaphores keep the governor informed as to all that is going on. They report: “General Bonaparte is out of bounds.”—“He is accompanied.”—“He is alone.”—One flag was kept in reserve for a terrible emergency, to announce the news that General Bonaparte had vanished. This blue signal was never hoisted.

The “bounds” are a twelve-mile ring round Longwood, subsequently restricted to an eight-mile ring; at 9 p.m. (or, when the restrictions are increased, at sunset), a cordon of sentries at fifty paces’ interval is posted. If Bertrand, who lives at Hutt’s Gate (a small villa about a mile away), is summoned by the Emperor after nightfall, he is escorted to Longwood by two soldiers with fixed bayonets—these bayonets, so runs the order, “must point at the Frenchman’s heart.”

The Emperor, who has for thirty years been accustomed to horseback exercise, may not go out of bounds unless accompanied by a British officer. He protests, “Not because I object to the red uniform more than another; after their baptism of fire, all soldiers are alike. But I refuse to do anything which involves the acknowledgement that I am a prisoner.” When in high spirits, as he was sometimes in the early days of his captivity, he would defy the regulations. Once he gave the English officer the slip, rode across country with Gourgaud, burst into a private plantation, saying to the owner: “Don’t let any one know that we have been here!” But during the latter part of his stay at St. Helena he kept within bounds, and, indeed, rarely left the grounds of Longwood. Sometimes he would order his horse for a ride; and then, when all was ready for the start, overwhelmed with bitterness at sight of the officer who was to accompany him, he would countermand the order and re-enter the house.

The result of this lack of outdoor exercise is that his health suffers more and more. The climate alone would have brought premature death, but confinement to the house quickens the pace of his maladies. For lack of movement, his legs swell. Furthermore, while Sir Hudson Lowe is giving dinner parties, for weeks at a time Napoleon cannot get even fresh water or milk. His stomach trouble grows much worse. The sick man would like a wider bed, but there is no room for one; he must content himself with rigging up a sofa beside his camp bed.

He and his companions have been deprived of their money. The letters he writes to France asking for funds are intercepted. Being positively in want, he has some of his silver plate put up to auction. When this is reported to the governor by semaphore, the inhabitants are forbidden to buy; Lowe himself purchases the articles at knock-down prices through an agent. Six months later, when the governor reads in the newspapers what Europe thinks of his conduct, he is greatly incensed, makes the regulations stricter than ever, supplies Longwood with uneatable meat and sour wine.

Like the villain in the folk-tale, Lowe is continually on the lookout for new ways of mortifying his prisoner. On the anniversary of Waterloo, he holds a great review close to Longwood. He invites “General Bonaparte” to Plantation House on the prince regent’s birthday. Another invitation is “to meet the countess” (Lady Loudoun, wife of the governor general of India). When the mail brings him a new lampoon against Napoleon, the governor sends it to one of the Emperor’s companions; but when a bust of the king of Rome, modelled by an admirer, arrives, he proposes to impound it, for documents may be hidden in its interior. He intercepts a letter from Napoleon to the prince regent, in which the prisoner begs for news of his wife and child; refuses to allow a Viennese traveller who has seen the little boy to visit Longwood; and when, through the kindly thought of a nurse and the loyalty of a valet, a lock of the boy’s hair at length reaches the Emperor by devious channels, Lowe sends home a detailed report concerning the obvious dangers of a conspiracy to liberate the caged eagle.

To begin with, the gaoler sees the prisoner a few times. “Throw away that cup of coffee,” says the Emperor after one of these interviews; “the man was near it.” From the first, Lowe does his utmost to shorten Napoleon’s life. When the Emperor’s vital energies begin to flag, the governor deprives him of the services of the English surgeon in whom Napoleon has confidence because this man, O’Meara, has refused any information beyond medical bulletins. O’Meara is one of those on whom Lowe has to keep a wary eye. It is not enough to surround Longwood with spies; the whole island is beset with them; they watch all the officers; and when they have nothing better to do, they watch one another. Soon a network of intrigue envelops the little house, whose interior is hung with yet another network—that of the jealousies which of old had been so rife in the Tuileries.

In the third year of the captivity, O’Meara reports to London that the Emperor’s liver trouble has been greatly aggravated by the climate, the dampness of his dwelling, the lack of exercise, and the vexations to which the prisoner is subjected. It is amazing that the illness does not advance with more rapid strides. This would happen, were it not for the energy with which the patient bears up, and were it not that his body has not been weakened by any excesses.—Since this report is shown to the British Minister for Foreign Affairs, and presumably to the prince regent as well, and since in spite of it the Emperor is kept for three years more at St. Helena instead of being sent to the Azores or some other suitable place, the bad faith of Napoleon’s custodians may be taken as proved—and Lowe was a worthy interpreter of his instructions.

The man’s animus, and the craftiness of his designs, are well shown by a passage in one of his reports. Lowe says he will arrange matters so that Napoleon will be able to resume horse exercise. Otherwise the prisoner might die of apoplexy, and that would be extremely inconvenient. Death from some lingering disorder would be better, for then the British doctors would have no difficulty in certifying that death was due to natural causes.

In the early days at St. Helena, the Emperor compiles a long official protest (it occupies twelve pages of print); it contains all his grounds of objection, and he has a private copy made upon silk, hoping that he will be able to smuggle it away to Europe. In this document he reiterates his refusal to allow himself to be addressed as “General Bonaparte,” for that implies a disavowal of his position as popularly elected Consul and Emperor. He remarks that he had proposed, as a reasonable compromise, to name himself Duroc or Muiron, after one of his two dead adjutants; but that England had refused to concede to him this “privilege accorded to persons of sovereign rank.” The governor had even attempted to address him as General “Buonaparte.”

In this tragi-comical fashion, after bearing seven names, he returns with the eighth, to the first name by which he had been known.

Soon there are actual hostilities. The lust of battle glows once more in the prisoner. He displays a vigour of hatred which in former days he had hardly ever shown in words, for then he had simply annihilated the objects of his wrath. Longwood, too, inaugurates a system of signals, though a less conspicuous one than that of the British, who use flags and semaphores. When the governor approaches, the Emperor, warned by his vedettes, hastens indoors, and tells his servants to say he is “not at home.” Once, however, he is taken by surprise in the garden; Lowe bluntly tells him that his establishment is too costly, and asks him to cut down expenses. The soldier flames in the Emperor.

“How dare you talk to me of such matters? You are nothing but a gaoler. You have only commanded brigands and deserters. I know the name of every English general who has won distinction. All I have ever heard of you is that you were one of Blücher’s quilldrivers, and a robber captain who never had the honour of commanding real soldiers.—Don’t send me any more food! I will take meals with those brave fellows of your 35th, over there; not one of them will refuse to share his rations with an old fellow-soldier. You can dispose of my life as you please, but not of my heart. That is still as proud on this rock as it was when all Europe was awaiting my orders.—You would stick at nothing. You would poison me if you had the courage, or were sent orders to do so!”

Without a word, the governor turns on his heel, mounts his horse, and gallops away. The Emperor compares past and present. “In the Tuileries, I should have blushed at such a scene.”

For ever, the governor remains on the watch, negotiates about details with the Emperor’s companions, but does not see the living Napoleon again. One day, however, Lowe makes another attempt, persists in spite of a refusal to admit him, wants to see with his own eyes that “General Bonaparte” is still there. The servant announces this importunacy. Then the governor hears the Emperor shout through the door:

“Tell him he can bring his executioner’s axe if he likes. But if he wants to enter my room, he must do so over my dead body. Give me my pistols!”

Lowe was able to satisfy himself as to the general’s presence when Napoleon lay dead.

XII

The Emperor rises as late as possible, so that the day may seem shorter. He rings; Marchand enters; Napoleon asks about the weather, slips on his white morning gown, and retains his headgear—a red chequered Madras kerchief he has been wearing all night. The red kerchief seems to be a whimsical parody of the turban he once dreamed of donning! Cold douche and rub—but of eau-de-Cologne, alas, there is none! Then Dr. O’Meara pays a visit. He speaks Italian with the Emperor, and gossips over the ludicrous happenings on the island. Sometimes there is no sugar to sweeten the coffee. Has the mailship come to port with fresh newspapers? Nothing as yet. Gourgaud arrives and writes from dictation. Where were we? The pyramids? The Emperor paces to and fro in the narrow room; a map of Egypt lies spread on the table.

He breakfasts with Gourgaud since the young man chances to be there. The talk is of artillery fire, and means of defence against it. In the afternoon, lounging on the sofa in the bedroom, he reads. The old home on the other island was certainly more comfortable. A couple of bound volumes of the “Moniteur” pass the hours. If he wearies of reading, his book will sink on to his knees, and his gaze will wander to Isabey’s portrait of wife and child. Nearby, on the white lacquered shelf, are two eagles, candlesticks, from Saint-Cloud. Between them is the marble bust of his son; and, hanging to the faded gilt frame of the mirror, four miniatures of the boy. There is also a picture of Josephine; and the gold watch of Rivoli, suspended by a chain made from the fair plaited hair of Marie Louise, hangs to the wall. There hangs also the silver alarum clock of Frederick the Great. Jetsam from the past, adorning his last, tiny bedroom!

He dressed for dinner in the old green coat; sported the decoration of the Legion of Honour; wore white silk stockings, and shoes with golden buckles. He was waited on at table by his Parisian servants in their rich liveries of green and gold. The table in his fusty dining-room was set with a dinner service of Sèvres depicting Napoleon’s battles, branched candlesticks, glass globes crowned with eagles. Cipriani carved for His Majesty and served his master with great ceremony. Conversation was usually carried on in monosyllables; it concerned the cost of various things in Paris; the price of the throne and the sceptre. After dinner, the company would pass into the drawing-room for a reading of Corneille; the same plays over and over again; the Emperor read with too much feeling to read well. Sometimes his hearers would nod: “Madame, you are asleep!” or, “Gourgaud, wake up!”

“At your orders, Sire.”

Occasionally he plays chess with Bertrand or reversi with Montholon. Then it is time to withdraw.

“What o’clock is it?”

“Eleven, Sire.”

“Another victory over time. One day the less!”

Thus passed more than two thousand days and nights. His campaigns in Italy and Egypt and his coup d’état had taken half the time!

The best way of getting through the weary hours is by reading and dictating. For five-and-twenty years he had had no time for reading; in earlier days he had devoured and annotated a whole library of books. What is he reading to-day?

The things which the young man had not had an opportunity of reading. In those days, standing outside the closed portals of the world, he gathered materials from all sides, went to first-hand sources: a practically minded student. Now, standing on the further side of the portals of the world, which have now closed behind him, he surveys the material: a sceptical philosopher. In those days, he searched history; now, he searches the poets, and especially relishes those passages from the poets which apply to his own case. An epic lies behind him; in the epics of others, he tries to find his prototype.

First of all, the Iliad. He sometimes browses over this till midnight. “Now, at length, I understand Homer. He is, like Moses, a child of his epoch: poet, orator, historian, lawgiver, geographer, theologian.... I am specially struck by the rough manners of the heroes as compared with their lofty thoughts.” Napoleon finds ease of heart in Homer. He cares less for the Odyssey. This seems to him no more than the story of an adventurer: he himself is more than that. Next in order of preference come Sophocles’ Œdipus, a tragedy of banishment; Æschylus’ Agamemnon; Milton’s Paradise Lost; the Bible. Corneille and Racine depict, in the French style, the heroes of antiquity, who for thirty years have been his models: unending are his readings of Cinna and Philoctète. Ossian rises out of the roar of the Atlantic: this he reads in an Italian translation. In addition, the satirists of the social life of Europe: Molière, whom in the ardent years of conquest and success the Emperor had scorned; and Beaumarchais’ Figaro and the Barbier de Séville. Finally, all the latest publications, whether memoirs or pamphlets, and, preferably, anything against himself.

The golden day for him was when the ship arrived with cases of books. In the course of his stay, he collected three thousand volumes; they were ranged on the bare damp shelves. Unfortunately, he reads so fast that a book hardly lasts him an hour, and the servant is kept busy carrying away armfuls of finished books which only a day before had been brought from the shelves. As soon as a book is read (or rejected) the Emperor flings it on to the floor.

In the early days on St. Helena, Napoleon’s actions were performed at his erstwhile speed, a speed which was many times faster than that of any of his associates. He forgot that now it was expedient to go slower. The consequence was that the few duties the prisoner imposed upon himself came to an end too quickly.

When, on taking leave of the imperial guard, he had promised that, during his reign in Elba, he would record their deeds, this had only been thought of as a way out of the threatened idleness. In the days of his first exile, he had begun no such record. Now, during the first year of his second exile, he dictates the whole of his memoirs. This work too, like all else in his life, is begun on the inspiration of the moment. Some pamphlets have arrived. In one of them, his landing at Cannes in the year ’15 is falsely described. He tells his doctor the true sequence of affairs; paces up and down, declaiming; motions to Montholon while continuing his tirade, and dictates, without a pause, the whole chapter dealing with his return from Elba. Separated from his archives by five thousand miles and more, lacking documents, from his unerring memory, and with an inspiration unsurpassed in the days of his greatest activity, he dictates the story of the Hundred Days. Then, suddenly, he breaks off. What’s the use of it all?

Another day, the report of an incident in the Lower House excites him: he thereupon dictates for fourteen hours without a rest. Those who take down his words, collapse, and replace one another at the task. Napoleon laughs them to scorn, and continues his dictation. Or, again, he sends for Montholon in the middle of the night to pen his recollections of more recent times.

Since he loves above all to dwell on his early victories, his friends at first advise him: “Perhaps Your Majesty might set about describing the Italian and Egyptian campaigns, and the days of the Consulate?” Set about describing! No one seems to notice, and least of all the Emperor, that these events are being spoken of as one might speak of the Thirty Years’ War. And just as, in those days, the man in whose heart and brain these things first took birth had projected his thoughts to the ends of the earth and had commanded his legions, so now, to the last instruments in his service, he communicates the details of his early campaigns, and in a few weeks describes how he conducted the wars from 1796 to 1799. Up and down, up and down, the Emperor paces, noticing nothing, wholly absorbed. Without, doors bang, people talk; the amanuensis is disturbed by these noises; not so Napoleon.

Las Cases, after taking down the description of the battle of Arcola, exclaims: “That’s finer than the Iliad!” The Emperor makes a wry face, and laughingly rejoins: “Bah! You still fancy yourself at court! I shall rewrite that chapter twenty times ere I shall be satisfied.” This expostulation is only a defence against flattery, for he has no intention of writing the chapter again; all he does is to make certain emendations when it is read over to him.

On the other hand, he dictates the events of Waterloo over and over again. Since, in spite of his historical objectivity, he cannot understand the result of this battle which undid him, he is always searching for new formulations. When, through the good offices of some sympathetic Englishmen, an opportunity occurs for smuggling documents to Europe, he works laboriously at the battle of Waterloo in order to dim England’s glory in the eyes of the European continent. But, he avers: “this task always makes me sad.”

In these memoirs, there are errors here and there. They are not due to lapses of memory, but to the author’s desire to emphasise his own place in history. Such errors are not more serious than those to be found in Cæsar’s works, are not serious errors at all. When he erroneously records that in his lieutenant days he received the gold medal from the academy of Lyons for his solution of a problem, and states that the money prize was of great use to his mother; when telling the story of his battles he ascribes to himself certain deeds which, in reality, had been performed by his generals (at Marengo, for instance); when he invents a treaty in which the tsar, before the Russian campaign, is made to propose the division of Europe we have inaccurate statements regarding the individuals concerned, but the broad facts are correct. It is true that, in accordance with his conception of the hero, he formally idealises the hero’s deeds; but he seems to us to lose more than he gains thereby. Since he is describing the period of his rise to power, he cannot materially falsify the facts: the immeasurable consequences of his first victory were bound to give rise, on the one hand, to a certain boastfulness, and, on the other, to detraction. But these volumes, which deal for the most part with the exploits of the commander, furnish but little real knowledge of Napoleon. Where we have to seek for the true Napoleon is in the memoirs of those who had the privilege of recording his conversations in exile.

Soon, indeed, his pleasure in dictation evaporates. Though he had intended to dictate in a few weeks the campaign of 1800 which had lasted but that amount of time, he postpones this labour, and tells Gourgaud to collect material bearing upon the Russian campaign. Then the young general, who had himself participated in the campaign of 1812, sets to work to read—not a Russian work dealing with the campaign, but an English work dealing with the life of the Emperor who is there, three rooms away, and could probably furnish full particulars!

Napoleon, the movement of whose mind was from events to ideas, and very rarely from thought to deed, is still true to type. When he reads news from Paris, he dictates rejoinders which demonstrate his expertise, and he compiles financial schemes. From his rock, from his little room, he answers the sounds coming from the outer world, although the sounds are no summons and his answer dies away into the void. He often proposes to write a treatise on the art of war, but he gives the notion up, “for the generals who in days to come get beaten will blame me, and say they were following my principles.... I could instruct them, for I am a good teacher; but I cannot have my principles of warfare set down in print.” He mistrusts every systematisation, for he is essentially a man who has learned by experience, by the unexpected. But if an isolated problem crops up in the course of a book he is dictating, then he deals with it in the precisest of terms. Thus, he makes Gourgaud calculate how much water a fire hose can deliver, for he wants to introduce the fire hose to combat the consequences of artillery fire.

Congenial society occasionally shortens the day. Or visitors come to see the Emperor. English travellers, men of learning, colonial magnates, are admitted to audience. On their return to Europe, they bear witness to his mental alertness. Napoleon himself desires such reports to be spread abroad, for they can do nothing but good to his cause now that Las Cases’ diary has aroused fresh sympathy for his plight.

“Scatter your complaints throughout Europe! I myself do not complain.” And he adds the orphic saying:

“I command, or else I hold my peace.”

His visitors tell him interesting things. An English admiral, whose vessel had been lying off the coast during the battle of Waterloo, assures the Emperor that Wellington had already given orders to ship the English army because Blücher did not arrive. When his companions inform him of the enthusiasm with which the enemy officers were filled after their interview with the Emperor, he says, assuming the role of the revolutionary: “Of course, these people belong to us. They all come from England’s third estate, and are the natural foes of their haughty aristocracy.”

All the men in the services are on his side. English sailors, on shore leave for a day or two, will prowl round the place all night. At the first opportunity, they pounce upon him, stuttering incoherent words, presenting him with flowers. The Emperor claps them pleasantly on the shoulder. When the garrison is changed, he receives the members of the officers’ corps, exactly as though they had been Frenchmen and he their army chief. They form a semicircle; he asks, “How many years’ service; how many wounds? I was greatly pleased with the 53rd regiment. I shall always be delighted to hear of good strokes of luck coming in its way. You are sad, Admiral Bingham, that these brave soldiers are leaving you. To comfort your heart, My Lady must bear you a little Bingham!” The army men laugh. The admiral blushes. When, next day, the transport hoists sail, the men give the prisoner three hearty cheers. A few months later, all Europe is agog with the anecdote.

On another occasion, he sees a medal displayed on the chest of a captain, half raises it, and reads: Victory at Vittoria. The Emperor allows the decoration to slip from his fingers, and passes without a word to the next visitor.

Each of England’s allies sends a commissioner to the island. They are there merely to gratify the curiosity of their sovereigns. The prisoner refuses them access to his presence, and, though they are here on this desolate rock with the sole purpose of seeing that he is in safe custody, during all the years of their sojourn they never clap eyes on him once. Here is a fresh focus of intrigue and boredom. The only one of the commissioners whom the Emperor allows his suite to make friends with is Monsieur le Marquis. This is the representative chosen by His Very Christian Majesty King Louis XVIII to keep watch on his formidable predecessor. The marquis sees that Napoleon gets all the most recent periodicals; the Emperor reciprocates by the loan of books. When tidings are brought announcing the assassination in France of a Bourbon duke, General Bonaparte sends his condolences to the marquis of the old nobility by the intermediation of Count Bertrand, who is also a sprig of the noblesse. A scene out of comic opera!

When the prisoner is in happy vein he seeks other pastimes. One evening he spends fluttering the pages of the official year-books of his reign, and says, like the bewitched tinker in the old folk-tale: “It was a fine empire. I ruled eighty-three million human beings; more than half the population of Europe!” He spends the whole of another evening with Las Cases chatting over old times. They laugh, the Emperor’s spirits rise, he orders champagne to be brought, and before they realise it the hands of the clock point to eleven. Napoleon says delightedly: “How quickly the time has gone! What agreeable hours! My dear fellow, you are sending a happy man to bed.”

Words which grip one perhaps more poignantly than any complaint could do.

He takes Montholon’s seven-year-old child on his knee and recites La Fontaine’s fable of the wolf and the lamb. The child has not fully understood, and makes a delicious muddle of lamb, wolf, and His Majesty. Another happy half hour in the Emperor’s life! Again, he strolls up and down the room in the evening after dinner, humming an Italian aria, and laughing gleefully, for he has just read that King Louis always speaks of him as “Monsieur de Buonaparte.” If he has a sleepless night, he makes Las Cases tell him anecdotes from the Faubourg; or he says to Gourgaud: “Let us exchange stories about love affairs. I never had enough time to spare for women. Otherwise they would have ruled my life for me.” If he gets bored in his bath, he takes the opportunity of demonstrating to Gourgaud why the pressure of the water upon a floating body is equal to the weight of the body. On one occasion, in the drawing-room, he has his own height and that of his companions measured against the door.

Sometimes he will not dress or go out in the morning, putting off both until the afternoon. On one of these occasions, after an exceptionally torrid evening, he does not re-enter the house till midnight, and says that he has won a real victory by staying out so long. Another day he goes up the stair-ladder into his valet’s garret, having been told that it is so nicely furnished. He is shown his own wardrobe, which is stowed away there, and is amazed to find what a lot of clothing he still possesses. He fingers the uniform he had worn as Consul (a gift from the city of Lyons), the spurs he had worn at Wagram, the cloak of the Marengo days. He makes no comment; goes down the stair-ladder in silence.

Amid these desperate attempts to kill time, does the prisoner come across no one whose situation moves him?

Yes, there is one. Of all the dwellers on this rock, the one whose lot touches the Emperor’s heart most profoundly is a slave, a Malay who passes by the name Tobias, has been kidnapped, sold into slavery, and cast up on this remote island. Napoleon comes across him working in the garden, or meets him in the road, is never weary of studying him, and gives him a gold coin whenever he sees him. The Malay thanks him in broken English: “Good gentleman.”

“Poor devil!” says the Emperor to his companion, obviously picturing himself in the position of this dusky piece of flotsam. “Snatched from his family, torn from his home, robbed of himself, sold into slavery! Was there ever a greater piece of wickedness? If a captain did it, he was a villain; but if the crew combined to seize poor Tobias, they were hardly responsible. Wickedness is always individual, never collective. Joseph’s brethren could not make up their minds to kill him, but Judas betrayed his master.”

After the next encounter with the Malay: “What a pitiful machine man is, after all! Not one bodily wrapping like another; not one soul that does differ from all the rest. Those who fail to recognise this, make a great many mistakes. Had Tobias been a Brutus, he would have hurled himself on death; an Æsop, and he would have been governor by now; a good Christian, and he would have blessed his chains. But he is only poor Tobias, so he is none of these things, merely bows his head in his simplicity and goes on with his daily task.”

The two continue their walk: “Certainly it is a long way from poor Tobias to King Richard. But the deed which brought the fellow here is no less shameful, for this man had his family, his friends, his own life. What a crime to have condemned him to slave on this island until the day of his death!” Suddenly, Napoleon stops short, and eyes Las Cases quizzically:

“I read from your face that you are thinking he is not the only sufferer of the kind on this island.” Las Cases nods assent, and the Emperor bursts out with a youth’s ardour: “There is no warrant for such a comparison! True, the violence done to us is more refined in its cruelty, but, in compensation, we are more distinguished victims.... The world has its eyes fixed on us. We are the martyrs of an immortal cause! Millions weep for us, the fatherland sighs, the spirit of glory mourns.... Adversity, too, has its heroism and its fame. Had I died on the throne, surrounded by all the emblems of power, I should have remained a riddle to many. To-day the wrappings have been stripped from me; thanks to my misfortunes, every one can judge me in my nakedness.”

Subsequently, the Emperor buys the slave, wishing to send him back to his own land and his own folk, but the governor forbids the repatriation: “It is plain to me that General Bonaparte is trying to win the hearts of the coloured population, in the hope of setting up a second negro empire, as in San Domingo.”

Tobias, therefore, remains a captive; a slave in a far country, like the Emperor.

XIII

“I am very old to make a journey of two thousand leagues. Perhaps I should die on the way; but, never mind, I should die nearer you.”

Thus writes his mother. The Emperor reads the letter again and again, when it is delivered to him a year after it was penned. The powers forbade the journey: who could tell, the old lady might concoct a plan for his escape! Letizia had been banished from France when the other members of her family were expelled. For the second time in her life, she is unable to go to her island home: the first time had been long ago when Corsica was in revolt; now, Europe stands in the way. She, therefore, goes to Rome, where the moral power of the pope upholds her; always making fresh attempts to secure her son’s removal to a more healthy abiding place. Although the tsar is favourable to such a transfer, Habsburg and England are determined Napoleon shall die; so there is nothing more to be done. Neither mother nor any of the brothers and sisters is allowed to send money to the exile.

When the monarchs assemble in Aix-la-Chapelle for the congress, Letizia writes to the princes: “A mother, more bowed with grief than words can tell, has long been hoping that the meeting of your imperial and royal highnesses would give her back her life. It is impossible that the captivity of Emperor Napoleon should not come up for discussion. Your magnanimity, your power, and your memory of earlier events, will surely incline Your Imperial and Royal Majesties to work for the liberation of a prince for whom you once professed friendship. I pray to God and to you, for you are God’s representatives on earth. Interests of State have their limits. Posterity, which confers immortality, admires a generous conqueror.”

No answer.

Later the captive learns that his mother has been accused of fostering a conspiracy in Corsica. She is said to have provided money amounting to millions. The pope is ordered to send his secretary of State to see the old lady and to make enquiries. Letizia gives the emissary the following message: “Tell the pope, and may the monarchs mark my words: If I were so fortunate as to possess all these millions they have credited me with, I should certainly not spend them in buying champions for my son’s cause. He has enough of them already. I would, rather, equip a fleet capable of rescuing him from the island where he is unjustly detained.”

What a feeling of pride and elation fills the son’s heart as he reads his mother’s words! But he never hears of Letizia’s bitter remark to an Austrian noble: “Why is my daughter-in-law amusing herself in Italy instead of joining her husband in St. Helena?”

Round what sun are the other planets turning? What an anticlimax!

Lucien and Joseph have gone to America, and are later joined by Jerome. They assume exotic titles. The Spanish revolutionaries have offered their ex-king the crown of Mexico. This piece of news excites the prisoner:

“Joseph will refuse. He is too fond of the pleasures of life to bother himself again with the burden of a crown—and yet, it would be a stroke of luck for England that the whole problem of Spanish America should be solved in this way. For if Joseph were to become king of Mexico a breach with France and Spain would be inevitable. For myself, his acquiescence would be weighty with consequences. He loves me and would use his position as a weapon to coerce England into treating me differently. Unfortunately, he is sure to refuse.” Thus quickly and hopefully does Napoleon, in the first year of his captivity, toy with every fresh opportunity.

The other brothers and sisters retire into obscurity. Jerome alone lives to be an old man, and, in the days of the third Napoleon, appears once more at court. The Emperor receives few letters from his brothers and sisters. Caroline begs her mother to send some money. Letizia refuses: “All I have belongs to the Emperor, from whom I have received all I possess.” To Lucien she writes: “When one is no longer king, one makes oneself a laughing-stock if one tries to live ostentatiously. Rings may adorn the fingers; but, if they fall off, the fingers still remain.” Hortense and Pauline once more play comedy as they had done at Malmaison.

Other tidings give Napoleon food for thought. Bernadotte becomes king. And Désirée? At last Napoleon’s early love wears a crown; she also lives to see the Second Empire. Countess Walewska, now a widow, marries a French nobleman. He approves the step, passes her situation in review, considers all he has done for her son, and then says complacently: “She is rich, and must have saved.” The tactless Gourgaud makes answer: “Your Majesty paid Madame Walewska ten thousand francs a month.” The Emperor blushes, and asks with embarrassment: “How do you know that?”

King Murat and Marshal Ney are both shot after court martial. Their master accepts their fate with soldierly fortitude. His only annoyance is that Murat should have been such a fool as to land in Calabria. He bears his brother-in-law no grudge. Even Marmont, who lives happily under the Bourbons, comes in for no more reproach than: “I am sorry for Marmont; I was really fond of him. He’s not a bad fellow. They appealed to him through his feelings. He fancied he was to be saviour of his country, and behaved like a madman. He would have done better to shoot himself.... Human nature is weak.”

And yet it is precisely Marmont who stifles every movement which might be of advantage to the exile. Murmurings against the Bourbon ruler spread throughout the land. But when, once more, the émigrés and the members of the new nobility are placed in great positions, notwithstanding their lack of qualifications for such posts, and a Richelieu is given high office in spite of his long absence from France and his ignorance of French affairs; when Lafayette, the veteran fighter for liberty, becomes leader of the proletariat and makes ready for a new revolution, gathering his forces in the clubs and even in the schools, and preparing among the troops “the men of the coming day,” to clear out the Bourbons, who can only maintain their position by the aid of foreign armies; when the radical provinces, eager to flaunt the tricolour cockade, rally in support of Napoleon II—it is Marmont, Bonaparte’s eldest comrade, who crushes the movement, and thereafter becomes minister.

The Emperor composedly reads that Louis XVIII. has dissolved the Chambers because many of the members favour Orleans or Napoleon. Executions for treason are the order of the day. But who is the most trusted associate of the Bourbon? A little nobody of a Corsican, whom Letizia once upon a time had made her private secretary—a sinecure job created to provide the man with a livelihood. Since all these events take place during the first year, the Emperor is filled with hope, and meditates upon the chances of a fresh revolution.

“What a cruel decree of fate that just at this moment I should be held prisoner! Who is there to set himself at the head of things? Who will be there to save thousands of the bravest from the scaffold?” He stays alone in his room until the morrow, when he speaks absently of Elba. Soon stranger ships heave in sight, the prisoner counts the shots. What is happening? The Emperor sends his friends to gather tidings; they hear nothing; but hope is strong. “What children we are, to be sure,” he exclaims next day. “And I, instead of giving a good example, am no better than the rest of you. Were I in America, I should think of nothing but my garden.”

Nevertheless, he would not have gone to America. He owns as much when he says: “If I were in America with Joseph, instead of suffering here, nobody would ever think of me, and my cause would be lost. I may have another fifteen years of life, but I am doomed to die here—unless France should summon me.”

These hopes are not unfounded. England considers it wise to increase the garrison from two hundred men to three thousand, in order to keep guard on one individual, although the cost of the troops in St. Helena is £320,000 a year. Still, there are possibilities, for the soldiers are whole-heartedly on his side. On one occasion six officers were arrested. They had come from Rio de Janeiro, and had planned to get the Emperor away in a kind of submarine. Again, two captains, travellers to India on a ship which has touched at the island, make him proposals for an escape: Napoleon listens attentively, but decides not to accept. On a third occasion, Montholon breaks in on the Emperor while he is at work with Gourgaud to remind his master that the passport of a certain individual expires in an hour’s time and a decision must be made. Montholon writes: “It had been proposed to take the Emperor to America for the sum of one million francs payable on landing. The Emperor’s word would suffice. Unfortunately I may not divulge any more of the scheme, lest I expose the originator, for whose loyalty to the Emperor we must be eternally grateful. The Emperor listened to me, and considered all I had to say: he paced to and fro several times in silence, asked Gourgaud and myself for our opinions. He took no part in the discussion. In the end, he said: ‘You must decline the offer.’”

There he stands, he has not been captive a year as yet, passably well in health, athirst for action, goaded by the pin-pricks of a mighty government and a puny governor. Before him opens out the possibility of escape, escape with the aid of English officers. The fact that risk is attached does not alarm one who is used to bold enterprises. There he is, dictating the story of his youth, when suddenly, at the end of his career, a friend makes proposals that are certainly not cobwebs of the brain. Napoleon is silent, he questions, he is silent again. Then: “You must decline the offer.” Why?

Because France is once more in a state of unrest, and so he decides to stay where he is. He is so sure of a change of feeling among the people that, later, when a ship is sighted and signals to the station, the Emperor says: “Perhaps the vessel brings news of my recall. If the prince regent dies, the young queen will summon me to England. She was always against my being sent to St. Helena.” When, on the outbreak of fresh revolts in Paris, his companions mention the possibility of France demanding his return, he concedes the point, adding:

“But what can they hope from my return? That I should again conduct wars? I am too old. That I should seek for fresh glories? I am sated with them.... It will be much better for my son that I should stay here. If Christ had not died upon the cross, he would not have become the Son of God. My martyrdom will give the crown back to my son, if he lives.”

Napoleon’s feeling for the dynasty is as deep as ever. His preoccupation with the thought of founding a line overpowers, in his maturer years, his impulse to action, to adventure, and even to win fame.

Though he is inspired with these lofty moods of hope and heroical renunciation, nevertheless despondency overwhelms him at times; then he becomes greatly depressed, and the most trifling upset in the household will seem an intolerable burden. When Bertrand stays away from dinner in a pet, the Emperor is out of sorts for days: “I know that I have fallen from my high estate, but that one of my nearest companions should rub it in is dreadful....” He groans. Las Cases offers to intervene. “No, I forbid it. I had to say that much. But now all is forgotten and I shall behave as though I had noticed nothing.” If travellers should wish to see him on such days, he refuses, saying: “Tell them, dead men do not receive visitors.” Occasionally Napoleon broods alone for the whole evening, sends at last for one of his companions, says a word or two, and dismisses him.

A quarrel arises between Montholon and Gourgaud as to whose room shall be furnished first, the Emperor has to mediate, the countess weeps, the Emperor proposes a game of chess. Dinner. A reading from the Book of Esther. Sometimes these scenes verge on the grotesque: a cow has escaped, the Emperor shows his vexation, Gourgaud sits glum throughout dinner because he is responsible for the cow, and is feeling aggrieved by his master’s anger. After dinner, the Emperor speaks of Islam and his preferences for the Mohammedan faith, then passes to a discussion of the trinity; finally he withdraws, making painful attempts to conceal his angry mood and muttering between his teeth: “Moscow! Five hundred thousand men!”

Gourgaud, who has left him overnight in an agreeable state of excitement, finds him next day in a gloomy temper: “What sort of an education will they give my son? Will they teach him to loathe his father? Hateful thought!” When Las Cases, who has copied out the chapter on Waterloo, deplores that victory should have been snatched from the Emperor’s grasp, Napoleon makes no reply, but says to Las Cases’ son in a voice which seems to come from a great distance: “My lad, go and fetch Iphigenia in Aulis; that will do us good.” Or he has Racine’s Andromache read to him.

I am come to the place where my son lies captive: for one moment only, allow my tears to flow with his! This is all that is left to me of Hector and of Troy. Permit me, Lord, to visit him once on every day....

But the Emperor breaks in on the reading with the cry:

“Enough! Leave me; I would be alone!”

XIV

With the growing inactivity and boredom, the moods of this tortured heart become more and more agonising; this many-toned instrument can no longer be controlled; discords arise.

He has been an emperor! How can he cease to play the part to which the society of a handful of courtiers and the degrading mockery of the enemy constrain him? In order to protest against the use of the title of general and against the illegality of his captivity, he drives out, at first, in full imperial grandeur, his carriage drawn by six horses, and an equerry in uniform riding at each door. His companions appear before him in general’s uniform or in court dress; no one opens conversation uninvited; when he takes his walks in the garden his suite does not approach till he gives a sign; visits are announced by an adjutant general, booted, and wearing a sword. When Gourgaud rises as Countess Montholon enters the room, he is reproved for this breach of etiquette.

Meanwhile he makes fun of the whole thing, mockingly calls Gourgaud “my grand master of the horse,” or announces at table: “I have been anointed by the pope; thereby I have become a bishop, and have the power to consecrate you as priests.” When he teases his friends about their all being in the “Dictionary of Weathercocks,” whose pages he is at the moment fluttering, Gourgaud ventures to say that the Emperor himself deserves a place in it. “Oh; and pray why?”

“Because you first of all recognised the republic, Sire, and yet, later, you were the crown.”

“You are right. Oh, well, the Empire was certainly the best of the republics!”

At the feast of Epiphany, he has a cake made for the children. Then he crowns little Napoléon Bertrand as king. When he is informed that there has been a complaint from the governor about the expenses of his household, and that, now that the price of meat has risen to forty sous, they must be more moderate in their consumption, he turns the matter off with a laugh, saying: “Parbleu! You might have answered that it costs us more than a crown.”

Never before has so much self-control been forced on him. Impassively he reads Lowe’s answer to a statement of grievances from Bertrand, who had said something about “the Emperor.” The governor writes that he is not aware of the presence of any emperor on the island.—The prisoner asks Gourgaud to order his horse to be saddled. Gourgaud replies that he has not seen the animal for three days, since the blacksmith insists on being paid three napoleons before he will send it back. The Emperor masters his anger, and says nothing more at the time; but next day he bursts out at Gourgaud: “Why did you insult me by talking to me about the blacksmith’s bill?” The day before, by a superhuman effort, he had managed to restrain his wrath, but by the torturing thoughts of the intervening hours his pride had been broken. The adjutant’s sullen reply had disturbed the Emperor’s equanimity quite as much as Austria’s desertion had done in earlier years.

A soldier and a southron, he is choked sometimes by the passion for vengeance. On one occasion, when uneatable meat is served at dinner, he contents himself with the remark: “I should trouble little about myself, if I could only feel sure that some day our humiliations would be proclaimed to the world, so that those who are responsible for them would be covered with shame!”

With a sublimity of spirit which grows in him now, he tries to moderate the natural rebelliousness of his disposition: “I am living here under a weight, so to speak; a weight which compresses the spring, but does not break it. Resignation—that is the dominion of reason, the real triumph of the soul.” This masterful man does his utmost to regulate his own conduct in accordance with the foregoing axiom. Subsequently he says: “Misfortune has its good side; it teaches us truths.... For the first time, I am able to contemplate history as a philosopher.”

For the first time, too, he is able to contemplate the present with a tranquil mind. During the early weeks of his stay on the island, when he was out walking with a pretty young Englishwoman, he conversed with her agreeably about various topics: how the climate was bad for the complexion; Ossian; the plantations. At this moment some negro slaves carrying heavy boxes crossed the path, and the lady called to them imperiously: “Get out of the way!”

The Emperor interposed: “But, Madame, please remember that the men are carrying burdens!”

Collapse of lady! Yet Napoleon Bonaparte himself would not have been so considerate in the days before he came to St. Helena.

In all matters now, except when he is playing the shadow emperor in pursuance of his feud with Lowe, Napoleon adopts a simplicity of life which outdoes that even of his poorest days as a lieutenant. When for some time there has been very little to eat, and the cook has had to eke things out with French beans, he eats them enthusiastically, praises the dish and the cooking.

“In Paris, I could get along with twelve francs a day. Dinner frs. 1.50; reading room; theatre in the evening, pit; I should hire a room for frs. 20 a month. I should only want one servant; and I should associate exclusively with people of like fortune. One can be happy in any station in life. When my mother sang lullabies over my cradle, there was not a word about what I was destined to become. I believe ‘Monsieur Bonaparte’ would have been quite as happy as ‘Emperor Napoleon.’ Everything in life is relative.”

His doctor has a fainting fit. Coming to himself, he finds that he is being attended to, not by a servant, but by the Emperor in person. Napoleon has lifted him on to the bed, has unfastened the collar of his shirt, and is kneeling beside him, administering vinegar.—When Cipriani, the Corsican servant, is dying, the Emperor asks the doctor whether a visit from the master would stimulate the man’s flagging forces.

“The excitement would kill him.”

“Oh, well, I suppose I had better not go.”

When playing reversi, he establishes a bank. For whose benefit? The money is to be used to buy the freedom of the most beautiful female slave on the island. One evening, his companions find him at work beside the lamp, slowly and carefully stitching the pages of a manuscript.

Sometimes, however, his dreams reawaken, and flutter against the bars of the cage. “I wish they would transfer me to a desert island, where I could have two thousand people of my own choice, with muskets and cannon. I should found a glorious colony, and should end my days happily in that model land. There I should not find it necessary to be at grips all the time with antiquated ideas.” Having said this apropos of nothing in particular, he passes on to the details of the scheme, dictating specifications—how much money and stores would be needed for the founding of his colony.

A chained sculptor, his plastic impulses must be content with such outlets in the world of imagination; but, side by side with these capriccios, he displays a heroic simplicity. One day, during the early weeks at St. Helena, he is out riding with Las Cases. “We came to a field that was being ploughed. The Emperor dismounted, and took the handles of the plough. With incredible speed, he drove a long and perfectly straight furrow. All this without saying a word until he had finished, when he told me to give the ploughman a napoleon. We remounted, and rode on our way.”

XV

“No one but myself can be blamed for my fall. I have been my own greatest enemy, the cause of my own disastrous fate.”

This admission, the profoundest of all those made by the exile shows that Napoleon has completely outgrown the cloudy Cæsarist fancies of his middle period. Had he been a believing Christian, the confession would have rounded off his atonement upon the rock. His sense of responsibility, however, is not directed towards God but only towards himself, and therefore the utterance represents a great man’s final settlement of accounts with destiny. But, at the same time, it is a last outburst of defiance, for his self-overweening esteem made it impossible for him to admit that there were any greater forces in the world than his own. Napoleon alone could overthrow Napoleon.

The remark was not the outcome of transient depression. During the closing years of his power, he had again and again spoken to his intimates about his faults and errors; now, upon the island, such admissions are frequent. Some of them are ardent, and some of them are cold; for even in these self-examinations there is an alternation between fantasy and realism. From time to time, we have the heartfelt cry of a penitent: “When I close my eyes, all my mistakes parade themselves before me, like figures in a nightmare.” Or, again: “I wanted too much.... I strung the bow too tightly, and trusted too much in my good fortune.”

But he will coldly reckon up the cases in which he has failed to understand men, coming at this late hour to views which the ablest observers had held while he was still on the throne. The reader who knows his story will require no comment on the remarks that follow.

“I considered Emperor Francis a good man; but he was only a blockhead, and in Metternich’s hands he became an instrument for my destruction.”—“I ought to have left Talleyrand at his post. What concern was it of mine that he was plundering the foreign chancelleries. I should have been content with having him closely watched. He served me well, as long as he could hope to make anything out of me. If I had kept him in office, I should still have been on the throne.”—“If only that man Fulton, with his steamboat, had been right, I should have been master of the world. But those idiots of savants made fun of his invention, just as they make fun of electricity. All the same, gigantic powers are hidden in steam and electricity!”

He regrets that at Tilsit he had decided to maintain the Hohenzollern dynasty. He regrets having crossed the Memel too early; having crossed it in 1812, before he had settled matters in Spain. He regrets that, in defiance of Carnot’s advice, he began the last campaign too early, and he regrets that at Waterloo he did not send the guard forward soon enough. Most of all, he regrets having, when his power was finally broken, entrusted himself to England, instead of to the tsar, or, better still, to the United States. Always, when he hears of crises in France, he regrets that he did not go to America.

“From that vantage ground I should have been able to guard France against humiliation from abroad, reaction from within; the dread of my return would have sufficed. In America I should have established the centre of a new French fatherland. Within a year, I should have had sixty thousand men grouped round me.... It would have been the most natural place of refuge—a land of vast expanses where a man can live in freedom. If I had had a fit of the blues, I should have mounted a horse, ridden hundreds of miles, enjoyed travel with the ease of a private individual, lost amid the crowd. In Europe I was too popular; bound up, in one way or another, with every nation.... As a fugitive, and disguised, I could certainly have escaped to the United States; but both expedients would have been undignified. I put my trust in the approach of danger, thinking that the nation would be forced to turn to me as its saviour; that is why I stayed as long as possible at Malmaison and in Rochefort. The destiny that brought me to St. Helena was the outcome of those feelings.”

This is the most productive of his meditations. The other mistakes of his career had entailed such complicated consequences that it was impossible for him to trace what might have been had he acted otherwise. But the final resolve at Rochefort had, as its inevitable upshot, brought him to this rock. In that respect, therefore, his mind was continually busied with alternative possibilities. Although, when in fancy he roams across the American prairies, he sometimes pictures himself as founding new States there, and sometimes as galloping through the wilds, we may ascribe it to the infinite variety of human passions that he should at the same time justify his final blunder on patriotic grounds.

His critical faculty is most keenly at work when he is pondering his dynastic aspirations. In the last days of the Empire, he had confided his doubts to a few choice spirits; now, when it is too late, he freely acknowledges his error. “I was a softy where my family was concerned; by sticking to their point they could get anything out of me. What terrible mistakes I made there! If my brothers had communicated a common impulse to the masses I placed under their rule, we should have been able to make our way to the ends of the earth!... I was not so lucky as Genghis Khan, whose four sons vied with one another in their father’s service. If I made any one king, he instantly regarded himself as king by divine right; the mere word was as infective as the plague. The new king was no longer my representative, but became a fresh enemy; instead of serving me, he wanted to make himself independent. I was the only stumbling block in his path. In the twinkling of an eye, they all became kings warranted genuine; under my protection, they all tasted the sweets of dominion. I alone bore the burden. Poor devils! Once I had been defeated, the enemy did not even bother to declare their formal deposition.”

That was as far as his penitence reached. However self-critical he might be, Napoleon never uttered a word of regret for having assumed a crown, or for having wished to found a dynasty. On the contrary, again and again he returned to his basic social idea: “I was the natural mediator in this struggle between the revolution and the past; my empire was in the interests of the rulers as well as in that of the peoples. My aim was the social rebirth of Europe; fate interfered before I had completed my task.” In line with his general conception of kingship, he deplores that the kings should have made an end of Murat. They would have done better to show the peoples that kings are above the law. Though the guillotining of King Louis had opened the road along which he himself had advanced to a throne, he condemned the act of regicide; not because he regarded the Bourbons as competent rulers, but because continuity seemed to him essential.

For he will never misunderstand Europe’s historical conditions; he will never try to establish offhand in Europe that which he dreams of establishing in the promised land of America or in the utopian island of his fancy. He always sees what is, as an outgrowth of what has been; always transforms the extant, instead of destroying it; he never wants to build entirely anew. Consequently, he does not discard the old forms, but uses them as a foundation for his new buildings. With a passion for ordering and arranging, and with a hatred for destruction, he feels how much can be done when the basis is secure. “When I rose to power, people thought I was going to be a Washington. Words cost nothing! In America, the role would have suited me well enough; there would have been no merit in adopting it on the western side of the Atlantic. In France, I could only become a Washington as a king among kings.”

That is the truth as he sees it. Since, at bottom, he despises the purple he has hung round his own shoulders, he would have been careful to avoid taking it to America, just as Washington had resisted the solicitations of his officers. By birth, he had been neither proletarian nor prince, but a member of a petty noble family which had fallen on evil days. Thus his position was an intermediate one, sandwiched between the classes. In his conversations with Englishmen about England, he displayed the naïveté of his class feeling, and his faith in the right of succession, for he closed an attack upon the British nobility in the following remarkable way:

“It is not a handful of nobles or rich men that makes a nation, but the mass of the people. True, as soon as the mob gains the upper hand it adopts an alias, and speaks of itself as the People; whereas, if it is conquered, a few poor wretches are hanged, and spoken of as robbers and rebels. ’Tis the way of the world: mob, robbers, rebels—or heroes. As the fortune of war may decide!”

After a reading of Voltaire’s La mort de César, he remarks that in youth he had himself wanted to write a “Cæsar.” One of his auditors, with a courtly double meaning, says that the Emperor has done so. Napoleon laughs the flatterer to scorn. “I? You poor babe! Yes, if I had been completely successful! But, in fact, Cæsar had no better luck than I have had—for he was assassinated!”

Closely associated with his self-criticism is his own estimate of his deeds. His historical sense, which is an integral part of his composition, leads him to an objective clarity in his contemplation of himself; perhaps an attitude of mind we may vainly seek for elsewhere in history before his day. Las Cases tells us that Napoleon talks of his career as if three hundred years lay behind him; and Countess Montholon movingly observes: “It seemed to me as if we found ourselves in another world, and I was listening to a Dialogue of the Dead.”

He stubbornly defends his alleged crimes, the poisoning of the plague-stricken in Jaffa, the execution of the duke of Enghien. One day he is seized with the impulse to confide to an English physician the whole story of the Enghien episode; since, as Consul, he ran the risk of being murdered, a counterstroke was necessary. Another time he deliberately sets himself to the task of finding out what O’Meara really thinks of him. The Emperor knows the doctor to be whole-heartedly devoted to his person, but of independent character. They are sitting over a jug of porter, drinking together. Napoleon suddenly puts his question:

“What sort of a man did you think I was before you came to know me? Speak your mind frankly!”

O’Meara gives the description of an amoral chimera, a man capable of any crime to achieve his end.

“I expected as much!” exclaims the Emperor. “Probably many Frenchmen think the same. They’ll be saying: Yes, he climbed to the top of the ladder of fame, by his own efforts; but in his climb he had to commit many atrocities.’” Thereupon he launches forth into vehement self-defence.

One night he summons Montholon in order to dictate the thoughts which throng his sleepless brain. He sets down how he was ever inclined to peace, how before a battle and after a victory he always entered negotiations. Or he compares the two revolutions, adding: “Cromwell achieved his aim when he was in the full maturity of his age, and attained to the highest rung of the ladder through cunning and hypocrisy. But Napoleon came to the fore as a stripling, and his first steps are illuminated with deeds of glory.... Whose blood have I shed? Who can boast that in my place he would have acted differently? What epoch confronted with similar difficulties has ever come through with such blameless results?... I believe it to be without parallel in history that a plain man should have attained to such amazing power without committing a single crime. In face of death itself, I could make no other declaration.”

Something now occurs which takes us wholly by surprise. Instead of, in the midst of this harangue, laying the blame for ill success on others, instead of allowing his inborn misanthropy to storm the heavens in resentment, he shows us that his days of exile have fostered his sense of justice. He who, for a lifetime, had declared that cupidity lay at the root of all men’s endeavours, and had dealt with his fellows on that presupposition, now becomes a cautious analyst; the man of power becomes a philosopher; Napoleon becomes tolerant.

Now, he declares that mankind is prone to gratitude rather than to ingratitude; the only trouble is, people always expect more thanks than the deed is worth. Las Cases informs us that his greatest censure nowadays is expressed by silence. He defends even those who were faithless: Augereau, Berthier, were not equal to the magnitude of their positions; he excuses his brothers. From the altitude of these judgments, he surveys the wide perspective with a tolerant eye. We seem to be listening to the imprisoned Socrates when we read:

“It is difficult to give people their due.... Do they even know themselves? Those who forsook me would never have believed, in the days of their good fortune, that a time would come when they would deny me.... Our last trials were more than human nature could endure. As a matter of fact, I was left in the lurch rather than actually betrayed, just as Peter denied his master.... Perhaps they have already shed tears of repentance. Who ever had more friends and more adherents than I? Who has ever been more beloved?... My fate might have been far worse!”

XVI

The Emperor’s companions keep diaries. He is well aware of this; he even has a look into one of them, but he reserves his thoughts. As a realist he calculates the monetary worth of these records, and he foretells what the writers will earn when they publish their books after his death; his only mistake is that he underestimates the amount. He bequeaths to each of his secretaries those portions of his writings which he has dictated to them severally. But he is correct in his estimate of the incalculable value the diaries will have for posterity in the study of himself.

Accustomed as he is to dictate, he shapes his sentences carefully even when conversing, so that his hearers may record his sayings with advantage. The value to future generations is thus enhanced, and these summaries of his thoughts raise him above his present wearisome existence. His passionate feeling for historical events drives him to this self-expression, no less than regard for those who shall come after.

Five days pass, sometimes, without his seeing anybody; he reads and he writes nothing. The future gives him no more food for thought. But during these periods of seclusion he surveys his life as a whole. Then his soul is shaken, and his lightning glance searches through and through his personality for a hundred hours at a stretch. Never has any man before him had to submit to such a scrutiny. The tension of his being is at these moments greater than at Austerlitz, more elemental than in the Council of State: he is a bound Prometheus, one who wishes to promote human happiness; and, shackled to the rock, he groans. Yet he is but a little man in an old green coat! The visions, the dreams, which for twenty years he was able and willing to conjure into reality, he now dissects into ideas. Thus, in the end, he becomes the severest commentator upon his own life story.

A book arrives. It is a collection of his manifestoes and decrees. He reads. Then he throws the volume aside, strides to and fro, and says to Las Cases:

“Every future historian will have to allow me my share.... Facts speak for themselves. I closed up the chasm of anarchy, and put an end to chaos. I cleansed the revolution from the filth it had accumulated, I ennobled the peoples, I stabilised the thrones. I encouraged all those who had talents, rewarded every merit, and widened the boundaries of fame and glory.... Could not historians protect me against many grave charges?... If I am accused of despotism, they can claim that dictatorship was necessary in the circumstances. Is it freedom I attacked? They can answer that anarchy was still threatening on our very threshold. Love of war? I was never the aggressor. Striving for world dominion? This arose accidentally, because of the conditions of the time. Too ambitious? Yes, true indeed. But my ambition was of the sublimest: to found the kingdom of reason, with full development and unrestricted enjoyment of all the human faculties. The historian may deplore that such ambition could not wholly attain its goal.” After a momentary silence, he concludes: “There, my dear fellow, in a few words, you have my entire story.”

Here he is on the defensive. But neither in such moods nor in any other do we ever hear him rave enthusiastically over his battles. In all the six years of his captivity, he does not seem, even once, to have sung the praises of General Bonaparte. If he is summing up what he achieved, he says:

“My fame does not rest upon my forty victorious battles, nor does it lie in the fact that I bent the monarchs to my will. Waterloo will wipe out the memory of so many victories; the last act makes one forget the first. What will never pass away, is my book of laws, the minutes of my Council of State, my correspondence with my ministers.... Through its simplicity my code of laws has had more effect than any civil codes before it; the schools I have set up, my methods of instruction, are creating a new generation; crime has decreased during my rule, whereas in England crime has become more prevalent.... I wanted to found a European system, a European code of laws, a European court of appeal; there would have been but one people throughout Europe.”

He reads in an English newspaper that Napoleon has hidden away vast treasures. He leaps to his feet, and dictates, to the man who happens to be his companion at the moment, these splendid sentences:

“Would you like to know about Napoleon’s treasures? Yes, they are vast, but they are not hidden away. The harbours of Antwerp and Flushing, where there is room for the largest fleets in the world, harbours which are open all through the winter; the waterworks at Dunkirk, Havre, and Nice; the huge docks at Cherbourg; the port of Venice; the high roads from Antwerp to Amsterdam, from Mainz to Metz, and from Bordeaux to Bayonne; the passes over the Simplon, Mont Cenis, La Corniche, and Mont Genèvre, which open up the Alps in four directions, and excel all the constructions of the Romans. Then there are the roads from the Pyrenees to the Alps, from Parma to Spezia, and from Savona into Piedmont; the bridges across the Seine, and the bridges of Tours and of Lyons; ... the Rhine-Rhone canal and the draining of the Pontine marshes; ... the re-establishment of the Church destroyed by the revolution; the setting up of new industries; the new Louvre; warehouses, streets, the water supply of Paris, the quays along the Seine; ... the revival of the weaving mills in Lyons; more than four hundred sugar factories; the repair and embellishment of the royal palaces at a cost of frs. 50,000,000, and the refurnishing of them out of Napoleon’s private fortune at a cost of frs. 60,000,000; the redemption of the only remaining crown diamond, the Regent, which had been pawned to Jews in Berlin for frs. 3,000,000; the Napoleon Museum, where all the works of art had been obtained by purchase or by the peace treaties; many millions for the support of agriculture and horse breeding.... These are the treasures of Napoleon, which represent an expenditure of milliards, and will outlast the centuries! These are the monuments which defy calumny.... Moreover, history will record that they were all erected while long wars were being waged, and without loans being raised to pay for them!”

There he is in his little room, in the narrow house, on the rock in the midst of the sea, defending his work, and, with a regal gesture, shaking things together pell-mell—main roads, sugar factories, crown diamonds, and the Catholic Church! Foreseeing the criticisms of history, he is fully aware of the truth about himself; though a century will elapse before posterity will begin to see in him something more than the military commander whose fame (as he says) was dimmed by the failure at Waterloo.

One evening, after dinner, the question assumes a personal aspect. An inquisitive member of his circle has asked when he was happiest, and all present give their ideas. Napoleon tells them that he was made content by his marriage and when his son was born, “I cannot say happy, but content.”

“When you were First Consul?”

“I was not yet sure enough of myself.”

“At the coronation?”

“In Tilsit, I think. By that time I had learned the vicissitudes of fortune; Preussisch-Eylau had been a warning to me, and nevertheless I had won a victory there; I had dictated the terms of peace; the tsar and the king of Prussia were paying court to me. But no, I am wrong, that was not the best. The happiest days I ever knew were after my first victories in Italy, when the masses surrounded me, shouting: ‘Evviva il liberatore!’ I was only twenty-six, but I foresaw what I might become. It was as if I were being lifted up into the air, and the world were disappearing beneath my feet!”

With a sudden transition, he hums an Italian song, and then stands up, saying: “Ten o’clock. Time for bed.”

How pale do these comparisons of happy moments seem in contrast with the fiery rhapsody of his deeds! It was in the work he did that was concentrated the life happiness of the man who enjoyed nothing but the completed action. He surveys his past; doubts this suggestion and that, saying that he was no more than “content,” and finally hears again the first chorus of evvivas. In imagination he is again the youth soaring upwards; and in the evening of his life, spent in this tropical exile, the vision of fame floats once more before his eyes. That was what the disciple of the classical heroes had set out to win—fame!

Fame, whose lure he had felt for the first time on the island of his birth, still allures him on the island to which he had been banished. Moreover, he knows that it is the glamour of warlike fame which has made him most widely known among men. He asks whether there can be any one in Paris who has never heard of Napoleon; he does not really mean Paris, but the world. When Las Cases tells him how, in the remotest valleys of Wales, shepherds had asked for news of the First Consul, or how yellow men in China had spoken of him in the same breath with Tamerlane, then the Emperor Napoleon forgets the shame and the weariness of his life on the rock, and knows his happiest moments. If he is in such a mood, some trifling item in the newspaper may arouse a flight of fancy:

“Yes, the reaction is doomed! Nothing can destroy great principles; they will endure for ever in the light of the wonderful deeds we have done! The first stains have been washed out in the waters of glory, and now the principles are immortal.... Adorned with our laurels, acclaimed by the peoples, sanctified by treaties with the powers, they are breathed from all lips and hearkened to by all ears.... They will rule the world; will become the faith and the morality of all the peoples; and, say what you will, this new epoch is associated with my name. I lighted the torch; friends and foes alike will acclaim me the leading champion, the greatest representative of the new principles. After my death, for the nations I shall still be the sun of their rights; my name will be the war cry of their struggle, the slogan of their hopes!”

Still, these heroics about himself lack the right conclusion. Politically he overestimates the value of his martyrdom; it has not been able to save the dynasty: but he does not foresee the effect which this last act of the drama will have upon the hearts of men. A soldier’s death looms before his eyes; he had sought it under fire on the last battle-fields; again and again he turns his own story over in his mind, in search of the romantic moment which would have been the most appropriate close; he often recurs to the subject in conversation. Like a playwright he looks for the fitting climax: “I ought to have died in Moscow. Till then my fame was undiminished.... If only heaven had sent me a bullet in the Kremlin! My dynasty would have been established; history would have compared me with Alexander and Cæsar. Whereas, as things have turned out, I am practically nothing.” On another occasion he thinks that death shortly before attaining the goal, would have had even more effect on posterity: “Had I fallen at Borodino, my death would have been like Alexander’s. A death at Waterloo would have been a good one. But perhaps Dresden would have been better. No, no, at Waterloo would have been best. The love of the people, their mourning!”

Once he summarises the whole as follows:

“Taking it all in all, what a ballad my life has been!”

XVII

Sunrise. A man stands at the door of a house where all the inmates are still asleep. He wears a white coat, red slippers, a broad-brimmed straw hat; he holds a spade in one hand, and rings a huge bell with the other, rousing the sleepers to work. A wall is to be raised, a ditch lengthened; land is to be reclaimed from the inroads of the sea; this is the scheme. Doors open, tent-flaps are flung back, and from all directions men flock to the master’s side. They are armed with shovels, rakes, axes; and are eager to carry out the Emperor’s commands.

He resembles the centenarian Faust.

The last year of his life has opened. He has made up his mind, come what may, to stay on this rock; and, since no one offers to make a verdant bower for him, he has decided, after yearlong feuds and resistance to his plans, to make a garden for himself. A half-circle of wall is to protect the growths from too much sun, from the trade wind, and from the watchful eye of the sentry. Cisterns are to store rain water; within the ramparts, earth is distributed for the flowers and the bushes; four-and-twenty large trees are planted; peaches, oranges, and, in front of his window, an oak. The trees have been imported from the Cape, and are brought to Longwood with the aid of the English artillery regiment—an old acquaintance of the Peninsular War. Chinese gardeners, Indian coolies, French servants, English stablemen, all help in the work; the doctor must take a hand too, with Montholon and Bertrand; and when the English officer on duty draws near, he sees the Emperor take a turf from his grand marshal’s hands, fit it into its place on the bank, and pat it down carefully. But since Napoleon knows that transplanted soldiers must be especially well treated in foreign parts, he waters the square of grass assiduously.

The work goes on for seven months; and, when it is finished, the garden, so swiftly brought into being on the rock, is regarded as a wonder. The governor’s daughter comes secretly to look at it. This is the last miracle wrought by Napoleon.

It is because he has become aware of the decline in his energies, that he has decided to beautify the place in which he is to pass the remainder of his days. He is overheard murmuring to himself Voltaire’s line: “See Paris once more? I cannot hope for that.” When his birthday comes round, he says it will be the last, gives the children presents; “at dinner, where we were all assembled, he beamed on us like a father in the family circle.”

That autumn, he takes his last ride, a long one, going out of bounds for the first time after four years.

He seldom dictates now, but has a fancy to do so sometimes at night when sleep will not come; dictates comments on the battles of Turenne, Frederick, and Cæsar; literary criticism upon Voltaire’s Mahomet and Virgil’s Æneid; remarks on suicide, which he had condemned long ago when he had been a lieutenant. His best secretaries, Gourgaud and Las Cases, have left the island long since. For a quarter of an hour at a time, he will stand drumming with his fingers on the door of the veranda, watching the gulls, or gazing at the clouds; he no longer scrutinises the ships through the telescope; he is only waiting for death.

The news of a fresh conspiracy against the Bourbons, originating in the army and widely supported by civilians, no longer excites him. During the last six months of his life, he rejects two schemes of rescue. “It is written in the stars that I am to die here. In America I should be assassinated, or forgotten. Nothing but my martyrdom can save my dynasty. That is why I prefer to stay in St. Helena.”

His mortal illness gains on him. The climate of the island is dangerous to persons whose livers are healthy when they first come; Napoleon, at thirty-five, had foretold that he would die of liver trouble like his father, and his liver complaint is greatly aggravated. He says that his stomach burns like fire; in some of the paroxysms, he rolls on the floor in agony. He complains of a pain in the gastric region, “like the stab of a penknife.” He shivers with cold, though he is burning within; when hot compresses are applied, they can never be hot enough for him.

He watches his symptoms, and studies their meaning; will not take any medicine until its action has been explained to him. He says ruefully: “I have got so fond of my bed that I would not exchange it now for a throne. What a pitiful creature I have become! I, who hardly ever needed sleep, pass my days in lethargy. It seems a desperate resolve merely to open my eyes. Often enough, I used to dictate on different topics to four secretaries at once. In those days, I was Napoleon.” His mood vacillates between heroic pathos and irony. When his valet reports that a comet is visible, the Emperor rejoins: “That was the sign before the death of Cæsar.” But when his doctor declares that there is no comet to be seen, the sick man says: “Well, people die without comets!”

His medical attendant is a Corsican named Antommarchi. Owing to the quarrel with the governor, the prisoner had no doctor for a year after O’Meara’s departure. At length Madame Letizia, after much effort, was able to arrange for the sending of this compatriot as his physician, together with two priests, a body servant, and a cook. Thus it is that, after years of silence, the Emperor hears trustworthy details about his mother. Once, during these last days, he says in simple words what she means to him: “All that I am and was, I owe to my mother; she taught me her own principles, and encouraged in me the habit of work.”

Now there are five Corsicans round the lonely man. Only two of them are any good: the body servant and the cook. Of the two priests, one is a deaf old man, partially paralysed, and unable to articulate clearly; the other, fresh from the seminary, is ignorant and uncouth. Antommarchi, too, is a young man, inexperienced but pretentious. Still, the sight of these islanders, men of his own race, revives memories of his Corsican home. Hence, towards the close, feelings reawaken which in early life he had stifled because of his determination to be a Frenchman. Napoleon dies as he was born, an Italian.

He often talks Italian, now, or intersperses his French with strange locutions literally translated from his mother tongue. When he reads an attack made on him by a senator who declares that in the day of the Empire France had chosen her master from among a people whom the Romans did not consider good enough, to use as slaves, Napoleon’s comment is that it is a great compliment to the Corsicans, “for the Romans knew that this people could not be forced to serve.... Besides, Corsica, lying between France and Italy, was an appropriate birthplace for a man who was to rule both.”

Then, suddenly, it is again his fatherland. “Ah, Doctor, where are the lovely skies of Corsica? If only I could have fled thither, the people would have received me with open arms, and would have become my family. Do you think that the allies could have mastered me in Corsica? You know our mountaineers, their courage and their pride! I am familiar with every ravine in the island, every stream!” He declares that he would fain have made much of this island (about which he never troubled after leaving it), would have signalised his love for it before all France. Only his misfortunes had prevented his carrying out these plans. He speaks of the spiritual greatness of the islanders, of their veneration for honour, of the blood feuds they hand down from generation to generation; he speaks of Paoli. “Everything is better there, the very smell of the ground. If my eyes were shut, I should recognise it; I have never come across it anywhere else.... No longer to own the house where one was born, to be homeless—this is to be without a fatherland!” Thus late, thus painfully, and thus indirectly, does this man without a fatherland make his great discovery; or thus late does he acknowledge his true feelings.

The Corsican doctor has no great sympathy with the Emperor; he does not credit Napoleon’s sufferings; he believes them to be simulated for political ends, in the hope of a removal to Europe; and is absent during the worst paroxysms. Thus the political use the Emperor has made of his ailments works out its own revenge; for now, when he is really dying, his own compatriot regards his sufferings as spurious. There is ample record of these differences between doctor and patient. Napoleon wishes to get rid of Antommarchi, and asks Lowe to have him sent back to Europe. This is a new triumph for the governor, to whom the quarrel between the great Corsican and the little is useful ammunition. Only four weeks before the Emperor’s death, his gaoler once more tries to force a way into his presence, and the consequent excitement is very bad for Napoleon.

The number of the faithful diminishes, as if to justify the misanthropist at the close of his life. Now, in the very last weeks, four of the servants and the old priest set sail for Europe; two others fall sick, and the last remaining members of his suite are meditating flight: Montholon is corresponding with the countess about the possibility of a substitute; Bertrand is about to yield to the continued solicitations of his family, and return to France. Montholon, to induce him to remain, has to assure him that when the Emperor talks of being seriously ill, this is not done merely to play upon Bertrand’s sympathies. When Bertrand finally decides to remain, the invalid is greatly encouraged. The only one who never thought of leaving, was Marchand, the valet. The Emperor says to him: “If this goes on much longer, no one will be left here but you and me. But you will look after me till the end, and will then close my eyes for me.”

What really cuts him to the heart is that the man who has been his close companion for so many years should now let long-hidden truths peep out. He has had an argument with Bertrand, who says: “It would have been the happiest day in my life if, after the deposition of the king, the Convention had raised the duke of Orleans to the throne.” The Emperor makes no immediate rejoinder, but afterwards says bitterly: “Bertrand, who owes everything to me, whom I made one of the grand officers of my empire!”

As his strength wanes, he looks round for something to lean on, and, for the first time in his life, he appeals to his relatives for help. Pauline is the dearest of them. Dictating a letter to her in the third person, he gives a bulletin of his condition, and ends as follows: “The Emperor earnestly hopes that Your Highness will acquaint influential Englishmen with his situation. He is dying on this dreadful rock, forsaken by all. His death struggle is terrible.”

In the middle of April, three weeks before the end, behind locked doors, he dictates his will to Montholon. Then the amanuensis has to redictate the document to the Emperor, for it must be in his own handwriting, that it may be above suspicion. The Emperor sits writing for five hours, in a cold sweat. The testament is characterised alike by statesmanlike greatness and by human feelings; it represents, as it were, a survey of his whole life.

XVIII

He begins his testament by declaring that he dies in the apostolical and Roman religion, in the bosom of which he was born,—the faith which he re-established in France, which he always protected, although, in his innermost soul, he never accepted its teachings. Then his thoughts turn to the glory of a hero’s grave, and, with a turn of phrase which shows that he regards himself as a Frenchman by choice rather than by birth, he writes: “It is my wish that my ashes shall be laid to rest on the bank of the Seine, in the midst of the French people, which I have loved so well.”

Next come thoughts of his son, upon whom are lavished all the hopes a man can entertain concerning what will happen after his own death, and for whom he wishes to concentrate such rights as he may possess, such treasures as he may own, and such teachings as he may utter. He tells his “beloved wife” that he retains for her the most tender sentiments, and beseeches her to watch over their son, since the lad is being brought up as an Austrian prince. She is never to forget that the young Napoleon was born a Frenchman. She must never allow the boy to become a tool in the hands of the triumvirs who oppress the peoples of Europe—among whom the greatest oppressor is the child’s own grandfather.

Then comes a last thrust at the enemy: “I am dying before my time, murdered by the English oligarchy and its hired assassins.” But, in the challenging tone of a tribune, he adds: “The English people will not be slow to avenge me.” He closes this part of his will by declaring that he had been defeated “through the treachery of Marmont, Augereau, Talleyrand, and Lafayette.” Though he adds, “I forgive them,” behind this mask of Christian charity the warrior’s steel glitters in the words: “May the France that is yet unborn forgive them as I do.”

Now, quite in the patrician style, he thanks his beloved mother and his brothers and sisters for the interest they have continued to feel in him. “I pardon Louis for the libel he published in 1820: it is full of false assertions and falsified documents.” Then come the actual bequests.

The main substance of what he has to leave consists of his savings out of the civil list during fourteen years, together with all the furniture, plate, etc., he had himself bought for his palaces; and also his Italian property. He estimates it as amounting to more than frs. 200,000,000, and points out that, as far as he is aware, no law has deprived him of it. Half of it is bequeathed to the surviving officers and men who had fought in the glorious campaigns from 1792 to 1815, in sums proportional to their rates of pay on active service; the other half is to go to the provincial towns and communes that had suffered in the two invasions. His aim, in these provisions, is to put the Bourbon government in the wrong for laying an embargo, at the time of his abdication, upon all his money and securities. These clauses in his will are to promote a Napoleonic sentiment among soldiers and civilians alike; his secret hope being that his testament will exercise an influence in favour of his dynasty, like Cæsar’s will when disclosed to the Roman populace by Mark Antony.

Now comes legacies to ninety-seven specified individuals. The list was drawn up in the course of ten days. “His mind is continually at work discovering new objects for his liberality; day after day he recalls the names of additional old servants whom he wants to remember in his will.” The bequests are to come from a special property of frs. 20,000,000, of whose ownership he feels more secure than of the great imperial treasure. Frs. 6,000,000 had been deposited in hard cash on leaving Paris in 1815.

Who are the legatees?

Montholon is to have frs. 2,000,000; Bertrand and the valet Marchand, about half a million each. The valet is the only one whom Napoleon honours with the name of friend, and he adds: “It is my wish that he should marry the widow, sister, or daughter of an officer of my old guard.” Marchand, Bertrand, and Montholon are to be the executors, and all three of them have to affix their seals to each page of the will. Thus the last document penned by Napoleon’s hand bears four seals: the Emperor’s eagle volant, the arms of the two counts of the old noblesse, and the plain monogram of the man of the people in whom the Emperor showed supreme confidence by appointing him one of his executors. “The services he has rendered me are those of a friend.”

Every one of the servants on St. Helena receives a competence; so do the three surgeons Larrey, Percy, and Emmery. Of Larrey, Napoleon adds: “He is the most virtuous man I have ever known.” Similar large sums, frs. 100,000 in most instances, are left to various generals who had been closely associated with him, to his secretaries, to two authors, the Elba guards, and the children of generals killed in battle. The stablemen, the valets, the orderly officers, the huntsmen, a house-porter, a librarian, the children or grandchildren of old family friends in Corsica; the children or grandchildren of his nurse (if in need, despite previous benefactions); the children or grandchildren of his sometime tutor in Auxonne; those of the general in command at Toulon under whom he had had his first experience of active service; those of the deputy who had helped him to get his plans put in force against Toulon; those of Muiron, “our aide-de-camp, killed at our side at Arcola, covering us with his body”—all are remembered. The next item to the Muiron bequest is a legacy “to the subaltern officer Cantillon,” who had been acquitted of the charge of attempting to assassinate Wellington. “Cantillon had as much right to assassinate that oligarch, as the latter had to send me to perish upon the rock of St. Helena. Wellington, who proposed this outrage, attempted to justify himself by pleading the interest of Great Britain. Cantillon, if he had really assassinated that lord, would have excused himself, and have been justified, by the same motives, the interest of France.”

This revolutionary outcry about Cantillon concludes the list of legatees. In the instructions to the executors, the following items are enumerated: the malachite furniture from Russia; the golden table service (which was presented to him by the town of Paris); a small farm on the island of Elba which had been purchased with Pauline’s money; a store of quicksilver at Venice, reckoned to be worth frs. 5,000,000; gold and jewels in a hiding-place at Malmaison; and so on, the fantastic inventory of a monarch and an adventurer.

To his mother, he leaves his silver night-lamp which has lighted many a sleepless night during his sojourn on St. Helena; each brother and sister receives a special bequest; Joseph and Lucien, as if no cloud had ever shadowed his relations with them, are mentioned calmly one after the other, each receiving “an embroidered mantle, vest, and small-clothes,” though the living Napoleon had given a crown to one and offered a crown to the other.

But the principal legatee of Napoleon is his son. First of all, the boy is to have all his “arms, field-beds, saddles, spurs, snuff-boxes, orders, books, body linen, which I have been accustomed to wear and use.... It is my wish that this slight bequest may be dear to him, as recalling to him the memory of a father of whom the universe will discourse to him.” Amid the inventories, which mention such items as two pairs of night-drawers and two pillow-cases, there flash out such entries as the following: “My sword, the one I wore at Austerlitz; ... my gold travelling box, the one I made use of on the morning of Ulm, of Austerlitz, of Jena, of Eylau, of Friedland, of the island of Lobau, of Borodino, and of Montmirail; ... four boxes found on the table of Louis XVIII. in the Tuileries on March 20, 1815; ... my alarm-clock, it is the alarm-clock of Frederick II. which I took at Potsdam (in box No. III); ... a blue cloak (that which I had at Marengo); ... a consular sword; ... a grand collar of the Legion of Honour.” Each list of items finishes with a charge to one or other of his confidants to take care of the articles named, “and to convey them to my son when he shall attain the age of sixteen years.”

Here is another entry: “Marchand shall preserve my hair, and cause a bracelet to be made of it, with a gold clasp, to be sent to the empress Marie Louise, to my mother, and to each of my brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, the cardinal, and one of larger size to my son.”

Various persons and places are named in which his son is likely to be interested. “I wish my executors to make a collection of engravings, pictures, books, and medals which may give my son sound ideas, and destroy the erroneous ideas which the policy of a foreign land may have tried to impress on him. I want him to be able to see things as they really were.... My memory will be the glory of his life.... I do not expect my son to benefit by my mother’s will, for he is likely to be wealthier than her other children, but I hope that she will leave him some such precious legacy as her own portrait and my father’s, or some trinkets which he will know have come down to him from his grandparents.”

It may seem as if his life were ending with very simple thoughts, since he makes this touching reference to his parents; but in the next clause the abyss yawns. Those who are about his son, Bertrand’s children perhaps, or Montholon’s, are “to see to it that he resumes the name of Napoleon as soon as he comes of age, and is able to do so without inconvenience.”

After this sedulous care for the legitimate heir, there follows, at the very last, a clause of a few lines, §37, in which Napoleon writes: “I should not complain if little Léon were to enter the civil service, should he be so disposed. I should like Alexandre Walewski to serve France in the army.” The writer could not foresee that, some decades after the death of his legitimate son, Léon was to end his ne’er-do-well life in America as the husband of a cook; but that Count Walewski was to attain high distinction, as a diplomat under Louis Philippe, and as minister of State and senator during the second empire. By his talent and good looks, Marie’s son was to show that he had, in very truth, been a love child.

But there is a second testament for the legitimate heir. Two weeks before his death, towards three in the morning, the Emperor sends for Montholon, who has been tending him faithfully for the last few weeks: “When I entered the room, I found him sitting up, and the fire glancing in his eyes made me fear a fresh attack of fever. He perceived my uneasiness, and said kindly: ‘I am not worse, but my mind has been roused by discussing with Bertrand what my executors ought to say to my son when they see him ... it is better, therefore, that I should, in a few words, give you a summary of the counsels which I bequeath to my son. Write:’”

There follow twelve printed pages, containing the Emperor’s political testament. Not a word about war, but a great many words about peace; and, as regards Europe, we find almost all the leading thoughts of the century which opened with his rise to power. We are given a glimpse of a fancied second reign. He tells us how he would govern, loftily criticising his own previous work. He looks forward to new political forms, and, with a seer’s vision, contemplates the twentieth century. From the rock, he issues an appeal for the union of Europe, a manifesto on behalf of an understanding among the peoples to promote liberty, equality, civilisation, talent, and commerce. All these thoughts form themselves in the mind of the dying Napoleon during one of the last restless nights of his illness:

“My son should not think of avenging my death; he should profit by it.... The aim of all his efforts should be, to reign by peace: if he should recommence my wars out of pure love of imitation and without any absolute necessity, he would be a mere ape. To do my work over again would be to suppose that I had done nothing; ... the same thing is not done twice in a century. I was obliged to daunt Europe by arms; in the present day, the way is to convince her reason.... I have implanted new ideas in France and in Europe; they cannot retrograde: let my son bring into blossom all that I have sown....

“It is possible that the English, in order to efface the remembrance of their persecutions, will favour my son’s return to France; but in order to live in a good understanding with England it is necessary, at any cost, to favour her commercial interests: this necessity leads to one of these two consequences—war with England, or a sharing of the commerce of the world with her. This second condition is the only one possible in the present day; questions of foreign policy will, in France, for a long time, take precedence of questions of home policy. I bequeath to my son sufficient strength and sympathy to enable him to continue my work with the sole aid of a lofty and conciliatory diplomacy....

“Let not my son ever mount the throne by the aid of foreign influence; his aim should not be to fulfil a desire to reign, but to deserve the approbation of posterity. Let him cherish an intimacy with my family, whenever it shall be in his power. My mother resembles the great women of classical antiquity.... The French nation, when it is not taken the wrong way, is more easily governed than any other; its prompt and easy comprehension is unequalled; it immediately discerns who labours for, and who against it; but then it is necessary always to speak to its senses, otherwise its uneasy spite gnaws, it ferments and explodes....

“Let him despise all parties; let him only see the mass. Excepting those who have betrayed their country, he should forget the previous conduct of all men, and reward talent, merit, and services, wherever he finds them....

“France is the country where the chiefs of parties have the least influence: to rest for support on them, is to build on sand. Great things can only be done in France by having the support of the masses....

“I relied on the whole mass of the people without exception; I set the example of a government which favoured the interests of all.... To divide the interests of a nation is ... to engender civil war. A thing indivisible by nature cannot be divided; it can only be mutilated. I attach no importance to the constitution; but its fundamental principle should be universal suffrage.

“The nobility I created will not be a buttress to my son....

“My dictatorship was indispensable, and the proof of this is that I was always offered more power than I wanted.... It will not be the same with my son: his power will be disputed; he must anticipate every desire for liberty.... The aim of a sovereign is not only to reign, but to diffuse instruction, morality, and wellbeing. Anything false is an untrustworthy prop....

“The French people is animated by two equally powerful passions, which seem opposed, but which, nevertheless, are derived from one and the same feeling, namely, love of liberty and love of distinction. A government can only satisfy these two wants by the most exact justice.... In order to govern, it is not necessary to pursue a more or less perfect theory, but to build with the materials which are under one’s hand; to submit to necessities, and profit by them....

“The liberty of the press ought to become, in the hands of the government, a powerful auxiliary in diffusing, through all the most distant corners of the Empire, sound doctrines and good principles. To leave it to itself would be to fall asleep beside a danger.... Under pain of death, nowadays, one must either direct or hinder everything.

“My son ought to be a man of new ideas, and of the cause which I have made triumphant everywhere: ... to reunite Europe in the bonds of an indissoluble federation....

“Europe is moving towards an inevitable transformation: to endeavour to retard this progress, would be to waste strength in a useless struggle; to favour it, is to strengthen the hopes and wishes of all....

“My son’s position will not be free from immense difficulties. Let him do by general consent what circumstances forced me to work for by force of arms. If I had remained victorious over Russia in 1812, the problem of peace would have been solved for a hundred years to come. I cut the Gordian knot of nations; at the present day it must be untied.... It is no longer in the north that great questions will be decided, but in the Mediterranean; on the shores of the Mediterranean, there is enough to content all the ambitions of the different powers, and the happiness of civilised nations may be purchased with fragments of barbarous lands. Let the kings listen to reason; Europe will no longer provide matter for maintaining international hatreds. Prejudices are dispersing; interests are widening and becoming fused; trading routes are being multiplied. No longer can any one nation monopolise commerce....

“All that you say to my son, or all that he learns, will be of little use to him, unless he has in the depths of his heart that sacred fire and love of good which alone can achieve great things.

“I hope, however, that he will be worthy of his destiny.

“If they refuse you permission to go to Vienna....”

The document suddenly breaks off; Napoleon’s powers have flagged; like the utterance of an oracle, the soothsaying ends in the middle of a sentence. But what this man on his deathbed designed for the instruction of his poor little son, can serve to instruct Europe a century after it was written. The political problems of our own day, however we may attempt to solve them, are in truth solved here by the sovereignty of genius.

XIX

After this brilliant outpouring, the productive spring dries up. Agreeable visions float before his mind. It seems as if fate intends him to enjoy the euthanasia. The day after writing his political testament, he lies free from pain and care, surrounded by the mist-wreaths of hope:

“When I am dead, each of you will have the sweet consolation of returning to Europe. You will see again, the one his relatives, the other his friends; but for my part, I shall meet my brave warriors in the Elysian Fields. Yes,” he continued, raising his voice, “Kléber, Desaix, Bessières, Duroc, Ney, Murat, Masséna, Berthier; all will come to meet me: they will talk to me of the deeds we did together. I shall recount to them the later events of my life. When they see me, they will be inspired with their old enthusiasm, their old passion for glory. We shall talk of our battles to the Scipios, to Hannibal, Cæsar, and Frederick. What a delight that will be. If only people here on earth are not terrified at seeing so many soldiers put their heads together!”

Such is the dying man’s flight of fancy. In all the thousands of his recorded utterances, there is none that shows the naïveté of his mind more plainly than this reverie. He looks into a world peopled by the shades of the heroes, sees his generals there in familiar converse with those of ancient Rome, enters an idyllic paradise in which they talk of big guns. While Napoleon is speaking, the English doctor (whose ministrations the Emperor has at length consented to accept) enters the room.

At this moment, the music of flutes, to which he has, in fancy, been listening, breaks off; once more he hears the rattle of the drums. The statesman recurs to the present. Without transition, he passes into a new register, after his manner, and makes a formal oration which embodies what he wishes to be the official view of his death:

“Come nearer, Bertrand, and translate what I say word for word to this gentleman. My death is the results of injuries worthy of the hands that have inflicted them. I surrendered to the British people, that I might settle down at a British fireside. In defiance of international law, I was loaded with chains.... England overpersuaded the princes, and the world saw an unprecedented sight. Four great powers hurled themselves upon one solitary man. How shamefully you have treated me on this rock! There is no possible mortification to which you have not subjected me!... With cold calculation, you have slowly done me to death! The vile governor has been the executioner appointed by your ministers! I end like the proud republic of Venice! I bequeath the shame of my death to the royal family of England!”

After this outburst, he sinks back upon his pillows. The doctor stands there dumbfounded, and Napoleon’s companions are in little better case. What was it? An epilogue; a protest; a commination? Pure politics! In the evening, he has an account of Hannibal’s campaigns read aloud to him.

Next day, April 21st, a fortnight before the end, he sends for the Corsican abbate. Since this man’s coming, Napoleon has had Mass read every Sunday, but otherwise has had nothing to do with the priest. Now he says:

“Do you know what a ‘chapelle ardente’ is? Have you ever officiated at one before? Never? Well, now you will officiate at mine.” Details follow. “After my death, you will set up your altar at my bedside, and will say Mass with the usual ceremonies until I am under ground.”

In the evening, the priest spends nearly an hour with him. Since, we are told, Vignali was not dressed for the occasion, he can only have conversed with Napoleon, and cannot have confessed him. Napoleon has not communicated for forty years, and does not do so now.

The sick man is much wasted; for several weeks he has not been shaved; his face is sunken and dusky. Now he has his bed carried into the drawing-room, for he finds the bedroom too confined. He is racked by terrible attacks of gastric spasm. In the intervals of calm, he continues to speak of persons to whom he wishes to leave legacies. Sometimes he dozes and dreams. In these dreams, women appear to him; Marie Louise is not one of them: “I saw my good Josephine, but she would not put her arms round me.... She was unchanged, loving as always. She said we should soon meet to part no more. She assured me—— Did you see her too?” Just like the dream about his generals; from the paradise of children, from the land of faëry.

When he feels better, he has the latest newspapers read aloud. An attack on him in one of them excites him, and he has his will brought to him. Breaking the seals he has laboriously affixed, without saying a word he writes with tremulous hand:

“I had the duke of Enghien arrested and brought to trial because this trial was necessary for the safety, the interest, and the honour of the French people, at a time when the count of Artois, according to his own admission, was maintaining sixty assassins in Paris.”

Like two ghosts, they face one another; the dead Bourbon and the dying Bonaparte.

On the 27th., he asks for the will once more, and laboriously reseals it. He has inventories made of the contents of his boxes and cupboards; valuable documents are put into envelopes, on which he writes the inscriptions. All this is done in the intervals between attacks of vomiting. His companions have to affix their seals, and every one of them must verify a written record of the packets. So great is his mistrust of England.

Is there anything still to do? Various articles which have not yet been dealt with are lying on the counterpane. “I am very weak; there is not much time left; we must finish things off.” What is that? Hortense’s diamond necklace, which used to gleam from her neck on festal occasions in the Tuileries, and was sewn into his waistband the day he left Malmaison. This he gives to Marchand. There is a plain golden snuff-box. Toilsomely, with the point of a penknife, he scratches his initial N on the lid, and gives the box to the doctor, saying:

“I expressly demand that a post-mortem shall be made, and, in especial, that the stomach shall be examined. I believe that I am dying of the same illness as my father. Ask Louis to send you the report about that, and compare it with what you find at the autopsy. Then you may at least be able to spare my son this horrible illness. Tell him how he can guard against it, and how he can be saved from the dread of it which has so afflicted me.”

For six years he has been blaming the climate of the rock for his liver trouble; only a few days ago he had charged England with killing him in the unwholesome prison-house. By ordering a post-mortem examination, he is risking the collapse of this theory; indeed, that is what he expects. All is done for his son’s safety. He hopes that the lad can be saved from the family disorder.

Is everything ready? Can we start? Wait a moment! There is still lacking an official address to the authorities. He dictates the following letter:

“Monsieur le Gouverneur! Emperor Napoleon died on the ——, after a long and painful illness. I have the honour to inform you of the fact.... Please let me know what arrangements your government has made for the conveyance of his body to Europe, and also in respect of the members of his suite.”

“Count Montholon, you will sign that.”

Napoleon had dictated sixty thousand political letters. Perhaps this one, the formal report of his own death with the date left open, is the most remarkable of them all; for who would have expected that destiny would leave so much time and so much tranquillity of mind in face of approaching death to a man who had faced sudden death on sixty battle-fields? The lines above quoted seem rather a grotesque close to his domineering career, and we feel a hope that this gruesome epistle will not be his last.

It is not the last. On the 29th., after a feverish night, he dictates the drafts of two communications. One deals with the utilisation of Versailles; the other with a reorganisation of the National Guard. But these are not addressed, as they would have been before his abdication, to the Minister for Public Works and to the Minister for War. He dictates the superscriptions: “First Dream”; and “Second Dream.” Then he says: “I feel so wonderfully well now; I could go for a thirty-mile ride.” Next day, he becomes icy cold and sinks into a delirium, which lasts five days till the end.

But Napoleon Bonaparte’s vital energies do not subside so easily. During these five days, there is a lucid interval, and he seizes the opportunity for issuing orders and making declarations:

“When I lose consciousness, you must on no account admit an English doctor.... You will remain true to my memory, and will not do anything that might harm it. All my laws and all my actions were based upon the strictest principles. Unfortunately, the circumstances were so grave that I could not be lenient, and had to postpone many good things. Then came the disasters. I could not string the bow more tightly; ... that was why France never secured the liberal institutions I had intended to introduce. But the country credits me with my good intentions; it loves my name and my victories. You will do the same! Be true to our principles and to our fame!”

His thoughts are still circling round his work. With the mournful glance of a dying sculptor, he sees before him nothing but a fragment; and with his last breath he tells those around him what he had designed to fashion.

Next day, his mind is wandering once more amid memories of youth and of Corsica. But still, from time to time, there revives the wish to be useful to his son. His fantasy creates possessions on the island, and the faithful Marchand takes down from dictation these mind-wanderings that are so precise in their details:

“I leave to my son my house in Ajaccio with its outbuildings; two houses adjacent to the saltpits with their gardens; and all my estates in the Ajaccio district. These will bring him an income of frs. 50,000. I bequeath....”

This is Napoleon’s last command. He has won and lost half the world; but in his dying visions he sees the Corsican home of his ancestors, together with the son to whom he had intended to leave half the world as heirloom. The strains mingle; to keep his son from want, he bequeaths the lad a house which he does not own. Then his mind turns back from his kin. He is once more the soldier, on his first campaign, in Italy. Around him flit the wraiths of his earliest comrades. He shouts:

“Desaix! Masséna! Victory is ours! Quick! Forward! We have them....”

Next day the abbate goes to him unsummoned. Beneath a layman’s dress, the priest carries something he seeks to hide. He demands to be left alone with the dying man. After a while he comes out, saying: “I have given him extreme unction. Owing to the condition of the stomach, no other sacrament was possible.”

A terrible last night. Towards morning, when he is murmuring in delirium, Montholon hears the words:

“France!... Armée!... Tête d’armée.... Josephine!”

This is Napoleon’s last utterance.

Next moment, with amazing energy, he springs out of bed, overpowering Montholon, who is alone with him. The two fall to the floor, and he grips Montholon so fiercely that the count cannot even cry for help. Archambaud, who is in the next room, hears the noise, comes in, and releases Montholon. No one knows what enemy the Emperor was trying to strangle in this last fight.

The rest of the day he lies breathing quietly. By signs he seems to ask for water, but since he can no longer swallow they must be content with holding a sponge moistened with vinegar to his lips. Mist and rain drive fiercely round the house. A count of the old noblesse and a man of the people watch by the camp-bed of Austerlitz.

At five o’clock, the rage of the south-east trade wind is redoubled, and two trees of the latest planting are uprooted.

At this moment, the man on the bed is in the throes of a prolonged rigor. There is no sign of pain; his eyes are widely opened, staring into vacancy; the death-rattle is in his throat. As the tropical sun sinks into the sea the Emperor’s heart stops beating.

XX

On the study table, in the garish light of noon, lies the naked corpse of Napoleon. Five English surgeons, three English army officers, and the three Frenchmen, surround the extemporized post-mortem table, where Antommarchi is performing the autopsy. The Corsican doctor has removed the liver and incised it. He holds up the organ for the others’ inspection, and demonstrates, as if to a class of students. “You see, gentlemen, how this ulcerated part of the stomach has become adherent to the liver. What are we to infer? That the climate of St. Helena has intensified the gastric disorder, and has thus brought about the Emperor’s premature death.”

A vote is taken: England against France. The majority declare the viscera to be healthy, while the Corsican is ostentatiously thrusting his finger through the perforated wall of the stomach. Medical report.

The Emperor’s body was embalmed, and at the lying-in-state was covered with the gold-embroidered cloak of Marengo. The whole garrison, by its own wish, marched past. All who saw the body testify to the calm and serenity of the features. In mysterious fashion, his face, which, since the days of the coronation, had tended to assume the robust maturity of the Roman emperors, had now returned to the delicacy of youth.

The British authorities refused to allow the shipment to Europe. The grave was dug in a secluded valley, beside a spring shaded by two weeping willows. He was accorded the honours of a British general; salvos of artillery and musketry were fired over the grave, what time there fluttered in the breeze the colours on which were emblazoned the names of the English victories in Spain. The governor was present, and declared that he had forgiven the Emperor.

Six stone slabs from gun emplacements cover the tomb. A seventh was needed for the artillery officer’s grave; but, since it was not available at the moment, three glazed tiles were taken from the cooking-stove of a new house. The governor would not allow the inscription “Napoleon” to be placed on the tomb, but insisted upon “Napoleon Bonaparte.” There was, therefore, no inscription. The furniture of Longwood was sold by auction; the house was bought by a farmer, who turned the place into a mill; the two rooms in which the Emperor had lived for six years were restored to their former uses, becoming a byre and a pig-sty.

One thing only did England do in honour of the dead: a sentry was posted at the grave. For nineteen years, the guard was relieved at the proper intervals; then the dead Emperor was brought home to Paris.

Without waiting for this, all the others return to Europe. The governor was publicly horsewhipped in London by Las Cases’ son; he died in obscurity. Bathurst, who, as Minister for War and Plantations, had been responsible for the treatment of Napoleon, ultimately killed himself in an access of melancholia. All England was writing and talking about the barbarous treatment of the great exile.

The Corsican doctor goes to Italy. Lucien refuses to see him. In Parma, Marie Louise also shuts her door against him, but he sees her in her box at the theatre. In Rome, Antommarchi visits Letizia Bonaparte, and for three days she makes him tell her all his news. He leaves the silver lamp with her, and sails back to Corsica. Letizia sits by the fireside, weeping over the fate of her second son, Napolione.

She has still fifteen years to live. She outlives Elise; outlives Pauline, who dies with a mirror in her hands; outlives several of her grandchildren, and three popes. She is half paralysed, and has become blind. But she sits there facing her son’s bust, her spirit unbroken, mourning her dead.

Like a princess, she welcomes to her palace all those who have remained faithful to the Emperor. Her servants are the last persons in Europe to wear his colours; her carriage is the last to bear his escutcheon. She has news at times from Vienna and her grandson, but the young man is not allowed to visit her. When he is one-and-twenty, he dies. Now, Marie Louise writes to her. She does not answer the letter. At last she is told that she may return home, but she refuses to go, since the same right is not accorded to her children.

Nine years after the Emperor’s death, the Bourbon dynasty is overthrown, and the Orleans monarchy is established. The new king knows how strong the Bonapartists are, and he orders that the statue of Napoleon, which fifteen years before had been removed, shall be replaced on the Vendôme column. When Jerome brings his bed-ridden mother these tidings, she has a renewal of health and is able to leave her bed. For the first time after a long interval she makes her way into the drawing-room, and her blind eyes turn towards the bust. She says in a toneless voice:

“Once again the Emperor is in Paris.”

ENVOY

To write the history of a man, or the history of an epoch, these are two distinct undertakings, differing both in name and technique. Vain has been the attempt to combine them. Plutarch renounced the one, and Carlyle renounced the other; that is why both these masters were able to achieve their respective tasks. It would be fair to say that Plutarch’s example has found no imitators; no one, after Plutarch, has made it his specific task to write the history of great minds upon a strictly historical foundation.

Such a work does not come within the domain of the historian, seeing that the search for truth demands other talents than those requisite for the art of portrayal. Artists have sometimes dramatised historical figures with a free hand; sometimes they have produced one of those horrible mishmashes which pass by the name of “historical novel”—of which Goethe, like Napoleon, said that they confuse everything.

The attempt is especially difficult when, not works, but deeds, are the milestones along the road of life. Cæsar, Frederick, and Napoleon, only became great powers through their victories in the battle-field; and yet their battles tend, more and more, to become unmeaning for posterity. Nowadays, it is only in military academies that Pharsalia, Rossbach, and Austerlitz, have a historical significance. Not one of the three great generals I have named would mean any more to us than Crassus, Seydlitz, or Masséna, had they, too, been nothing more than military commanders; it is the political genius of Cæsar, Frederick, and Napoleon, that makes these men supreme. In his highest embodiment, the statesman shapes all our destinies. Where genius and character intersect, is the focus for the searcher of the soul.

In this book, I have tried to write the inner history of Napoleon. Since his personality finds expression in every step of his political career, his ideas as founder of States and as legislator, his attitudes towards revolution and legitimacy, towards the social order and the problem of Europe—are valuable means of portrayal. Irrelevant was the course of the battles; irrelevant the contemporary position of the European States, in so far as this was manifested only in coalitions or antagonisms as mutable as the weather.

Every difference of opinion with his brothers or his wife, every hour of gloom or elation, his outbursts of wrath and his accesses of pallor, tricks or acts of kindness towards friend or foe, every word to his generals or to women (as reported in letters or authentic conversations), seemed more important than the order of battle at Marengo, the items of the peace of Lunéville, or the details of the Continental System. What we have all learned about him at school and the university has here been restricted to a minimum; but there has been a broad demonstration of the things that are lacking amid such everyday knowledge. Yet we have not been concerned only with that Napoleon intime who is so favourite a topic with French writers; but, rather, with the Napoleonic figure as a whole, in public career and in private life, as representative of all mankind. Affairs of State and love affairs that happened on the same day, have been referred to on the same page: they derive from the same source; they determine one another; and a study of the imbroglio of the human heart will often give us more information concerning great plans than all the calculations of the tactician.

Napoleon’s personality, which has no more to do with the nation for which or against which he was fighting than it has to do with morality, has not been treated here as miraculous, nor yet as split up into abstract concepts. In the episodes of his life I have tried to grasp the innermost moods (of which his rise was a natural and logical outcome), and to trace his movement towards the climax of St. Helena. To examine this man’s inner life; to explain his resolves and his refrainings, his deeds and his sufferings, his fancies and his calculations, as issuing from the moods of his heart—the disclosure of this great chain of affects, was at once the means and the end of the portrayal.

That is why there was no place in my record for portraits of the generals. Nothing could be admitted to this one volume which did not throw light upon the history of the one interior.

If we wish to give a picture of a life so full as this man’s, we must perforce follow his tempo; the writer, therefore, is bound to the words of the person being described, and can never let that person speak too much. For, in truth, a man always explains himself better than any one else can do it for him; even when he is mistaken, or when he is lying, he reveals himself to those who come afterwards, to those who know the truth. But the author must forget that he, too, knows the end. Only if, from moment to moment, he describes the feelings as they must have been experienced by one without foresight into the completed destiny, will he be able to generate that tension which, in actual life, made the sequence of events vibrant with passion.

Thus with his own sympathy, he forces the heart of the man to reveal its sympathy. In the present work, the spirit of dispassionate analysis is shown once only, towards the end. We cannot study the motor engine till it stops running.

Such a portrayal, which brings us into close proximity with its object, may give the impression of being a work of pure fancy. If, by its method of treatment, it is to be sharply differentiated from an imaginative creation, it must throughout cling to the framework of historical truth. One who believes that there is a logical succession of happenings in which there is no room for chance, will guard against retouching any detail; he will never bend a date or an incident to fit a preconceived purpose, even though, for stylistic purposes, he may think fit at times to leave one or the other unmentioned.

In this book, all the data are recorded facts, except the soliloquies. To it there might well be applied Goethe’s judgment upon Bourrienne’s Memoirs: “All the nimbus, all the illusion, with which journalists and historians and poets have surrounded Napoleon, vanishes before the awe-inspiring realism of this book: but the hero is by no means diminished thereby; he grows. We learn from this what a splendid thing truth is, when any one has the courage to speak it.” Napoleon’s life is a great epic, written by the hand of fate; its full meaning will not reveal itself to one who gives rein to imagination, but only to him who gives himself up to the amor fati.

Thus, likewise, for the reader of these pages should be reconstructed the tragedy which once only in a millennium a mortal man has created out of his life. What a man can attain through self-confidence and courage, through passion and imagination, through industry and will, he attained. To-day, in the age of the revolutions which once again are opening every path to the man of supreme ability, the ardent youth of Europe can find as an example and a warning no greater man than the one who, of all men of the West, made and suffered the most violent commotions.

AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author wishes to thank Monsieur Edouard Driault, editor of the “Revue des Etudes Napoléoniennes,” Versailles, and Herr F. M. Kircheisen, for kindly help in supplying material for the illustrations; and to make due acknowledgments to Professor Pariset of Strasburg and Herr Kurt Wildhagen of Heidelberg, for advice during the preparation of the book.

INDEX

Abdication. See Demand, He drafts and He signs

Aboukir, 131, 135, 232, 240 Bay, 126, 135

Academy, 6 on Board, 119

Achilles, 598

ACHMED, 131

Acknowledgement of Democracy, 513

Acre, 132, 133, 134, 135, 242, 265, 397, 574

Adaptation to Circumstances, 574

Adda, 66, 113

Additional Act, 514, 517, 518, 519

Adige, 70, 77

Admiral. See Emperor and Admiral

Admiralty, 372

ADOLPHUS. See GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS

Adrianople, 133

Adriatic, 90

Advancement of Relatives, 224

Adventurer once more, 419

ÆNEID, 655

ÆSCHYLUS, 607, 622

ÆSOP, 629

A-flicker with Excitement, 384

Africa, 11, 117, 232, 528

Again attacked, 237

Against the Grain, 157

Again Unity of Command, 82

Agamemnon, 622

Aix, 140, 479, 497

Aix-la-Chapelle, 238, 631

Aim. See True

Ajaccio, 18, 24, 27, 139, 251, 481, 485, 673

Alarm. See Emperor’s

Aleppo, 133, 574

Alessandria, 72

ALEXANDER THE GREAT (of Macedon), 11, 115, 117, 119, 121, 127, 229, 232, 238, 242, 259, 324, 359, 361, 370, 565, 653

ALEXANDER I, Tsar of Russia, 232, 240, 252, 253, 270, 271, 292, 308, 311, 312, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 320, 334, 373, 374, 375, 376, 378, 385, 386, 391, 397, 406, 409, 411, 433, 437, 443, 467, 604. See also TSAR ALEXANDER, also What is ALEXANDER Thinking? as Prototype, 11

ALEXANDRINE, 571

Allah is Allah, 122

Alliance, La Belle, 523

All young France is ready, 472

Alps, 40, 55, 63, 179, 289, 455, 497, 650

Alsace, 207

ALVINTZY, 60

America, 109, 171, 473, 530, 533, 537, 632, 634, 635, 643, 645, 655. See He should, also United States

Ambitions. See BERNADOTTE’S Great

America, Spanish, 632

American Marriage. See JEROME’S

Amours, 202

Amphictyonic League, 595

Amsterdam, 650

Anachronism. See War

Ancients. See Council of Ancients

Ancona, 89, 90, 284

Andalusia, 329

Andromache, 460, 637 and Astyanax, 460

An everlasting Disgrace, 542

Anger. See Genuine

Angleterre, Hôtel de l’, in Warsaw, 418

ANGOULÈME, Duchess of, 489

An Idyll renewed, 486

ANNA, Grand Duchess, 349

Annexations, 89

Another Family Council, 348

Ansbach, 252

Antibes, 57, 498

Antiquity. See Heroes of

ANTOINETTE, MARIE, 219

ANTOMMARCHI, 656, 658, 674, 676

ANTONY. See MARK ANTONY

Antwerp, 650

Anxieties. See JOSEPHINE’S

Any Crown You like, 300

APELLES, 565

Apennines, 55, 64, 566

Apollo, Salle, 155

Apostolical Emperor, 370

ARCHAMBAUD, 674

ARCHDUKE CHARLES. See CHARLES

Arcis-sur-Aube, 463, 522

Arcola, 64, 65, 76, 77, 78, 112, 137, 158, 536, 624

ARISTOTLE, 229

Arm the Peasants, 464

Army. See Tatterdemalion Grand. See Grand Army in the East, 116 of Italy, 40, 50, 56 of Liberators, 61 of the Interior, 45 of the Rhine, 40, 41, 86, 87, 114, 120

ARNAULT, 93

ARRIAN, 119

Artillery Fire, 532

ARTOIS, Count of (afterwards Charles X), 490, 501, 670

“As General Bonaparte,” 433

Asia, 11, 41, 128, 188, 229, 232, 237, 244, 282

Asia Minor, 11

Asiatic Conquests. See Dreams of

Aside. See Naïve

Aspern-Essling, 337, 341, 419, 522, 567

A Son!, 260

Assassination. See Attempted

Astorga, 331, 363, 377

Asturia, 299

Astyanax, 460, 488

At Headquarters, 92

Athens, 63, 69

Atlantic Fleet, 372

Attacked. See Again

Attempted Assassination, 159

Attempted Rising, 24

Attempt on His Life, 193. See also I intended

At the masked Ball, 347

ATTILA, 86, 90, 511

Audience of Kings, 309

Auerstädt, 255

AUGEREAU, 60, 75, 81, 92, 101, 114, 133, 448, 462, 463, 468, 510, 647, 660

AUGUSTUS, 194, 228, 272, 566

AURELIAN, 566

Austerlitz, 243, 244, 245, 251, 252, 253, 255, 270, 274, 318, 334, 381, 386, 387, 395, 439, 461, 500, 509, 520, 561, 562, 577, 609, 649, 663, 674, 679. See also Eve of Austerlitz

Austria, 40, 87, 118, 179, 183, 238, 244, 251, 258, 259, 274, 308, 314, 315, 318, 333, 369, 370, 375, 380, 382, 383, 410, 419, 430, 435, 439, 440, 451, 455, 459, 462, 639 Felix, 369

Auxonne, 14, 56, 662

Avignon, 497

Awaiting the Signature, 473

Azores, 494, 618

Aztecs and Incas, 307

Back Room at Saint-Cloud, 155

Back to Europe, 308

Back to Paris, 525

Baden, 206, 246, 279, 493

Bad News from Spain, 399

Bag of Gold, 153

BAGRATION, 389, 394

Ball. See At the Ball

Ballad. See What a Ballad

Baltic, 273, 420

Banishment, 29

Bank of England, 380

Bank of France, 454

Barbier de Séville, 622

BARCLAY DE TOLLY, 389, 390, 394, 395, 399

BARON VOM STEIN, 406

BARRAS, 38, 43, 44, 47, 50, 80, 109, 115, 142, 146, 147, 152, 153

Bar-sur-Aube, 462

Basle, 38, 511

Bassora, 132

Bastia, 480

Bastille, 16, 217

BATHURST, 676

Battalion, Holy, 242

Battle, Death in. See He seeks of Jena, 255 of the Nations, 446

BAUDIN, 141

BAUER, 556

BAUSSET, 344

Bautzen, 434, 439, 445 “Messenger,” 445

Bavaria, 127, 183, 241, 246, 279, 334, 430, 446, 493

Bayonne, 308, 312, 650

BEAUHARNAIS. See EUGENE, also HORTENSE, also JOSEPHINE Vicomte de, 47

BEAULIEU, 60

BEAUMARCHAIS, 622

BEETHOVEN, 231

Belated Blessing, 226

Belgium, 30, 89, 453, 458

Belle Alliance, 523

“Bellerophon,” 537, 538, 539, 540, 541

Benevento, 494

BENJAMIN CONSTANT, 512. See also CONSTANT

Beresina, 415, 416

Berlin, 256, 257, 258, 274, 290, 308, 334, 400, 405, 445, 446, 651

BERNADOTTE (afterwards CROWN PRINCE, then King, of Sweden), 118, 144, 145, 148, 149, 153, 161, 198, 246, 281, 365, 366, 386, 406, 429, 436, 438, 443, 445, 446, 448, 452, 462, 467, 571, 633 Désirée. See DÉSIRÉE triumphans, 365

Bernadotte’s Ambitions, 386

Bernard. See Great St. Bernard

BERTHIER (afterwards Prince of Neuchâtel), 60, 72, 81, 92, 100, 120, 148, 149, 219, 246, 256, 335, 336, 351, 368, 388, 398, 411, 461, 462, 464, 468, 471, 473, 474, 495, 510, 555, 557, 575, 587, 647, 668

BERTHOLLET, 120, 129, 138

BERTRAND, 481, 484, 535, 609, 610, 613, 615, 621, 636, 638, 654, 658, 659, 661, 664, 669 Madame, 10, 613, 627 Napoléon, 638

Besançon, 501, 509, 555

BESSIÈRES, 668

Betray. See Old Friends

Bible, 120, 122, 601, 622

Big Guns, 13

BINGHAM, 627

Birchen Staff. See Leaning

Blenheim, 127

Blessing. See Belated

Blindness. See Brotherly Blindness

Blindness to its Dangers, 212

Bloodhound, A, 187

BLÜCHER, 443, 444, 445, 455, 457, 459, 460, 461, 462, 467, 522, 534, 619, 626

Blunder. See Consequences of a

Body of Steel, 548

Bohemia, 447

Bois (de Boulogne), 38

Bologna, 75, 99, 476

BONAPARTE. See As General Monsieur and Europe, 184 and the Sphinx, 121 Caroline. See CAROLINE CARLO, 298, 305 Elise. See ELISE Jerome. See JEROME Joseph. See JOSEPH La Pagerie. See JOSEPHINE Letizia. See LETIZIA Louis. See LOUIS Lucien. See LUCIEN Napoleon Francis. See NAPOLEON FRANCIS Pauline. See PAULINE

Bon, Cape, 137

“Boney,” 540

Bordeaux, 464, 541, 650

BORGHESE, 199, 200, 485. See also PAULINE

Born to rule. See Man born to rule

Borodino, 399, 653, 663

Bosnia, 90

Bosphorus, 41, 259, 273, 282

Boulogne, 234, 235, 238, 572, 580

Boulogne, Bois de. See Bois

BOURBON, Duke of, 490 Palais, 529

Bourbons—never!, 469

Bourbons’ Return, 489

BOURRIENNE, 25, 37, 58, 91, 107, 118, 119, 124, 127, 148, 156, 161, 179, 204, 438, 556, 681

Breach between the Brothers, 197

Brescia, 74

Breslau, 268, 425

Brienne, 6, 9, 48, 457, 556, 558, 611

Brieg, 269

Broil with Prussia, 252

Broils. See Family

Brooding Lad, 8

Brother Lucien. See Sire

Brotherly Blindness, 456

Brotherly Hate, 304

Brothers. See Dangerous

Brothers and Sisters, 198

Brothers, The. See Breach between

BRUIX, 234, 235

Brumaire, 528. See also Eighteenth, also Nineteenth

BRUNSWICK, 253, 255, 408, 576

Brussels, 523

BRUTUS, 64, 85, 149, 343, 560, 629

BRUYÈRE. See La Bruyère

BUBNA, 341, 430, 567

Bucharest, 269

Buenos Ayres, 534

BUFFON, 10

Bulletin from Russia. See Last

BÜLOW, 524

Bukovina, 384

Bureau of Public Opinion, 380, 381

Burgos, 548

Burgundy, 125

BUONAPARTE. See BONAPARTE

Burning Street, 403

But Talleyrand is indispensable, 313

BYRON, 231, 615

Cadets School, 9, 133

Cadiz, 388, 420

CADOUDAL, 438

CÆSAR, 24, 85, 121, 182, 186, 195, 212, 277, 285, 322, 326, 371, 378, 421, 463, 519, 521, 560, 565, 566, 567, 578, 592, 624, 645, 646, 653, 655, 656, 661, 668, 679. See also Christ Cromwell, and Bonaparte, 195

Cæsar’s Chariot, 519 Death, 326

Cæsars, 566

CAGLIOSTRO, 593

Cairo, 121, 122, 131, 132, 135, 136, 185, 264, 267, 286, 396, 476, 605

Cajoleries, 272

Calabria, 633

Calculation, 569 and Imagination, 117

Calculations. See I am the Man and Yearnings

Caldiero, 76

California, 534

CAMBACÉRÈS, 598

CAMILLA, 139

Campaign. See Excitement of

Campaigns of Napoleon the Great, 380

CAMPBELL, 479, 504

Campo Formio, 104, 109

Candour to Opponents, 341

Canino, 485

Cannes, 433, 497, 498, 503, 623

CANOVA, 248, 582

CANTILLON, 662

Cape Bon, 137

Cape (of Good Hope), 89, 103, 258, 372, 654

Capets, 414

Capitol, 64, 85, 105

Capri, 566, 613

Capua, 383

Caracas, 534

Care for the Children, 173

CARLO BONAPARTE, 298, 305

CARLYLE, 679

CARNOT, 57, 71, 82, 114, 214, 407, 511, 518, 521, 528, 598, 642

CARNOT’S Advice, 521

CAROLINE BONAPARTE (afterwards wife of MURAT), 198, 224, 247, 260, 266, 352, 364, 428, 429, 451, 475, 485, 632

Carpet, The, 305

Carrée, Fort, 34

Carthage, 10

CASES. See LAS CASES

Cassel, 394, 452

Castiglione, 75, 463

Castille, 331

Catalonia, 312

CATHERINE THE GREAT, 566

Cattaro, 273, 307

COULAINCOURT, 375, 376, 377, 401, 411, 417, 418, 432, 434, 446, 457, 458, 464, 465, 467, 468, 471, 472, 507, 529, 531, 606

Cause. See Espouse my

Cave. See Imagination

Chains. See In Chains, also Strike

Chamber of Deputies, 526, 528. See also Lower House

Chambers, 153, 186, 195, 455, 496, 511, 517, 519, 525, 526, 527, 528, 529, 530, 634. See also General

Chambers of Commerce, 176, 379

Chambers take the Initiative, 526

Champaubert, 460

CHAMPAGNY, 311, 343

Champ de Mai, 506, 518, 520

Champion of the Family, 172

Chance. See Circumstances

Chance missed, 235

Channel, 115, 516

Chapelle ardente, 669

Characterisation. See German

Chariot. See Cæsar’s

CHARLEMAGNE, 226, 227, 238, 242, 245, 258, 259, 283, 284, 285, 359, 566

Charlemagne, 248

Charleroi, 521, 522

Charles XII, 393

CHARLES AUGUSTUS, 255

CHARLES, Austrian Archduke, 60, 88, 338, 351

CHARLES, Hippolyte, 73, 123. See also HIPPOLYTE

Charlottenburg, 258

CHATEAUBRIAND, 277, 508, 554, 565, 566

Châtillon, 458, 461, 492

CHÉNIER, 114, 195, 598

Cherbourg, 650

Chess. See Game

Chessplayer, 567

Childlessness. See Tragedy of

Children. See Care, also Name your

China, 11, 652

Chinese Island where there are no Weapons, 581, 582

Christ, 86, 184, 321, 322, 338, 636. See also Jesus and Cæsar, 322

Christianity, 319, 322

CIMAROSA, 554

Cinna, 591, 622

CIPRIANI, 613, 621, 640

Circumstances and Chance, 604

Cisalpine Republic, 82, 105, 182

CITERNI, 277

City. See Rome, also The Eternal

Civil Code, 170

CLARKE, 80

CLARY. See DÉSIRÉE, also JULIE

Cleaning up the Mess, 176

Clear the Hall, 160

CLEOPATRA, 128

Cleves, 247

Climax of the Scene, 302

CLOVIS, 561

Coblenz, 577

Coburg, 273

Cockade. See Red

Code, Civil, 170

Code Napoléon, 170, 171, 172, 173, 280, 286, 371

Coffee and Sugar, 398

COLLI, 60

Colours. See Kissing

Command. See Again, also Last, also Unity

Commander. See Statesman

Commander of the Forces, 45

Comédie Française, 410

Commercial Warfare, 361

Committee of Public Safety, 40, 42, 47, 561

Companions, 610. See also Fate

Company at Morfontaine, 452

Comparison with Napoleon, 407

Compiègne, 351, 352

Concerning the Germans, 591

Concordat, 284, 372, 429, 430

CONDÉ, 206, 207, 490, 500

Confederation of the Rhine, 246, 279, 287, 341, 373, 382, 388, 420, 424, 425, 433, 443, 445, 447

Confessions, 214

Confidants conspire, 331

Congress. See Tidings

Conquests. See Dreams and Plans

CONSALVI, 185

Consequences. See Political

Consequences of a Blunder, 208

Consequences of Marmont’s Desertion, 471

Conservatoire, 98

Considerations, 639

Conspiracy, 148

CONSTANT, Benjamin, 195, 511, 512, 514, 517, 527

Constant (Napoleon’s Valet), 267

CONSTANTINE (Roman Emperor), 284 (Russian Grand Duke), 405

Constantinople, 133, 242, 273, 282, 284

Consul, First, 166, 174, 175, 183, 185, 186, 187, 190, 201, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 210, 225, 232, 280, 373, 379, 381, 498, 550, 554, 555, 556, 565, 575, 582, 586, 597, 605, 629, 646, 651, 652 for Life, 186, 187, 213

Consuls, 154, 155, 160, 161, 165

Contempt for his Fellows, 583

Content. See Form without

Continent, 109, 114, 116, 183, 214, 244, 246, 248, 258, 282, 361, 367, 524

Continental System, 258, 680

Contradictions of Monarchy, 423

Convention, 26, 27, 28, 31, 33, 35, 42, 43, 44, 45, 658

Conversation. See Memorable

Conversation with Rapp, 508

Conversation with Wieland, 320

Corfu, 89, 90, 103, 473

CORIOLANUS, 23

CORNEILLE, 218, 276, 551, 564, 591, 621, 622

Corniche, 650

Corsica, 1-49, 85, 95, 96, 113, 117, 138, 199, 251, 338, 476, 480, 483, 484, 496, 505, 533, 535, 537, 631, 657, 662, 673, 676 again, 138

Corsica comes to St. Helena, 656

Corsica’s Struggle, 4

Corsican Election, 23

Corsicans, 294

Corso, 73

Corte, 16, 251

Cortes, 453

CORVISART, 475, 598

Cossaria, 86

Council. See Another Family

Council of Ancients, 149, 150, 155, 156, 16 of Five Hundred, 149, 150, 151, 153, 155, 157, 158, 159 of State, 166, 169, 170, 192, 194, 195, 207, 224, 230, 279, 332, 360, 414, 423, 554, 582, 590, 592, 649, 650

Councils, 146, 147, 153, 154, 156, 159, 188

Counterplot. See Plot

Counterstroke. See Stroke

Countess. See Polish, also Walewska

Cracow, 430

CRASSUS, 679

Creation, 193

Crete, 11

CRŒSUS, 458

CROMWELL, 195, 463, 647

Coup d’État. See Plans

Courage, 577. See also Returning

Court. See Little Court, also Plebeians at Court

Court Dress. See Mummy in

Courtship, 351

Crises, 75

Criticism of the French, 215

Crowd. See Tuckets

Crown. See Any

Curse of Legitimacy, 422

CYRUS, 566

Dagger in the Dictator’s Heart, 517

Daily Life, 621

Daimonic Loneliness, 605

Dalmatia, 436

Damascus, 132, 133, 146

Danaids, 414

Danger and Discouragement, 77

Dangerous Brothers, 438

Dangers. See Blindness to

Dangers of Distance, 340

Danube, 259, 308, 337, 341, 419, 612

Danzig, 376, 388, 432, 509

DARU, 238, 323, 325, 410, 415, 418, 444, 597

Dauphiné, 20, 497

DAVID, 565

DAVOUST, 219, 255, 390, 394, 403, 507, 526

Days, Hundred, 599, 609, 623

Deadly Climate, 608

Deadwood, 608

Death, 674. See also Waiting

Deathbed. See Justifies

Death in Battle. See He seeks

DECRÈS, 229, 533

Defeat, 448. See also First at Waterloo, 524

Defence. See Napoleon’s

Defenceless, 540

Delta, 130

Demand for Abdication, 527

Democracy. See Acknowledgment Fiction of, 188

Denmark, 493

Deputies in secret Session, 528

DESAIX, 120, 132, 179, 587, 668, 673. See also Quai

Deserter, 25

DÉSIRÉE CLARY (afterwards Wife of Bernadotte), 30, 44, 46, 145, 452, 633

Destiny, 603. See also Follow, also Sense, also To Destiny Man of, 604

Destruction of the Fleet, 126

Devotion to Josephine, 99

Dialogue of the Dead, 646

Diarists, 648

Dictator. See Dagger

Dictatorship, 195

Dictionary of Weathercocks, 638

Die Standing. See I will

“Diet, Imperial” at Erfurt, 561

Dignity, 552. See also Imperial

Dijon, 178

DIOGENES, 324

Dilemma. See Tragical

DIOCLETIAN, 567

Dioscuri, 511

Diplomat, 88

Diplomats. See Hectoring

Directors, 48, 49, 50, 57, 65, 66, 67, 72, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 97, 101, 104, 106, 108, 109, 114, 115, 116, 118, 127, 139, 146, 147, 151, 152, 154, 165, 284, 529, 532, 556

Directory, 51, 106, 114, 127, 140, 153, 175, 276, 379, 511, 528, 530

Disastrous Inertia, 435

Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes, 11

Discoveries. See Explorations

Disgruntled Kings, 363

Disillusionment. See Victory

Disquiet. See Growing

Distance. See Dangers of

Divine Right. See Rulers

Divorce, 345. See also Marriage and

Dniester, 259

Domingo, 590, 630

Don Quixote. See Quixote

Don’t you know me?, 499

Dover, 137

Dramas, Family. See Opening

Dream, first, 672

Dream, second, 672

Dream, trivial. See Life

Dreams and Mathematics, 131 of Asiatic Conquests, 41

Dresden, 335, 386, 388, 434, 438, 444, 492, 508, 548, 553, 589, 590, 653

DRIAULT, 683

Driven out, 533

DROUOT, 481, 495, 531

Drums of the Revolution, 15

Drum-Taps, 166

Düben Castle, 445, 462, 470

Düben Heath, 445

Duchatel, 203

DUCOS, 146, 147, 150, 151, 153, 155, 159

Dunkirk, 115, 650

DUROC, 260, 261, 262, 415, 434, 435, 587, 597, 618, 668

Dvina, 390

Dynastic Snare, 301

Dynasty. See Spanish

Eagle Volant, 230

East, the, 90, 91. See also Army in the East, also Lure of the East, also Messengers from the East

East India Company, 607

Eckmühl, 500

Egypt, 10, 11, 103, 115, 116, 117, 119, 122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 128, 130, 131, 136, 137, 138, 140, 141, 204, 210, 239, 242, 272, 372, 411, 413, 495, 498, 514, 543, 566, 573, 620, 621

Egyptian Plan, 116

Eighteen-hour Day, 174

Eighteenth Brumaire, 150, 179, 196, 197, 338, 365, 494, 502, 560. See also Nineteenth Brumaire, also Brumaire

Eighty-five Francs, 21

Elba, 184, 473, 475, 476, 477, 479, 481, 482, 483, 484, 485, 489, 491, 492, 493, 494, 496, 504, 511, 513, 531, 535, 623, 634, 661, 662

Elbe, 258, 273, 286, 308, 374, 447

Electoral Colleges of the Empire, 505

ELISE, Bonaparte (afterwards Grand Duchess of Tuscany), 92, 96, 198, 247, 248, 364, 451, 452, 475, 676

EL KEBIR, 128

Elysée, 466, 471, 525, 530

Elysian Fields, 668

EMMERY, 661

Emperor. See also Apostolical, I am, Return, Self-crowned and Admiral, 234 and his Mother, 495 and the Slave, 630 drives a Plough, 641 of the East, 242 of Rome, 283 of the West, 283, 285, 290

Emperors. See Two Emperors

Emperor’s Alarm, 414

Emperor scores over the Poet, 321

Emperor’s Onslaught, 324

Empire. See also Holy Roman Empire, Turkish Empire

End of Everything, 125

Energy in narrow Bounds, 481

ENGHIEN, 206, 207, 208, 210, 214, 281, 332, 565, 591, 646, 670. See also Kidnapping

England, 33, 91, 103, 105, 109, 114, 116, 127, 183, 207, 212, 233, 235, 237, 239, 240, 244, 247, 248, 258, 259, 282, 285, 306, 307, 312, 328, 333, 359, 361, 362, 363, 365, 373, 374, 377, 379, 380, 382, 390, 396, 420, 430, 436, 451, 459, 475, 490, 492, 503, 538, 541, 542, 584, 588, 593, 607, 614, 624, 626, 631, 632, 634, 635, 650, 669, 671, 675, 676

England’s Enmity, 232

Enmities. See Intrigues

Enmity. See England’s

Epilogue, 675

Equality at the Front, 581

Equality, not Liberty, 168

Erfurt, 255, 308, 309, 313, 315, 317, 318, 322, 326, 342, 350, 374, 392, 450, 555, 561, 591 “Imperial Diet,” 561

Eroica, 231

“Espouse my Cause,” 294

Essling. See Aspern-Essling

Essonne, 465

Eternal City. See also Rome, The Eternal

Ettenheim, 206

Etiquette and Parody, 638

EUGENE DE BEAUHARNAIS (afterwards Viceroy of Italy), 47, 93, 118, 128, 143, 204, 222, 224, 246, 248, 249, 284, 285, 298, 299, 300, 331, 336, 348, 349, 382, 389, 402, 412, 417, 531, 561, 566, 569

Euphrates, 574

Europe, 11, 51, 64, 69, 85, 87, 88, 100, 104, 105, 109, 123, 137, 183, 205, 211, 217, 218, 239, 240, 244, 245, 246, 251, 258, 282, 287, 314, 318, 329, 334, 359, 362, 364, 365, 366, 368, 374, 375, 376, 377, 378, 383, 384, 396, 399, 430, 440, 447, 455, 473, 480, 483, 484, 492, 496, 498, 521, 524, 528, 538, 543, 554, 580, 582, 589, 595, 596, 612, 624, 625, 626, 631, 643, 644, 645, 650, 658, 665, 667, 668, 676, 680, 682. See also Back to, Bonaparte and, Farewell, Partition, United, and United States of

Europe is a Mole-hill, 91, 121, 378

Europe too small, 296

European System, 650

Eve of Austerlitz, 241

Everyman, 581

Everything is crashing round me, 453

Evil. See Prophet of

Examination of a Prisoner, 393

Excommunication and Victory, 338

Execrated by the Mob, 479

Execration. See Public

Excitement of the Campaign, 461

Explorations and Discoveries, 130

Extinct Volcano, 607

Eylau, 265, 311, 500, 580, 651, 663

Faithful grow weary, 658

Faithful Servants, 613

False to his own Principles, 279

Falsifications, 625

Fame, 568 still lures him, 652

Family. See Champion Bequests, 662 Broils, 428 Council. See Another Dramas. See Opening Man. See Genius and Troubles. See More

Fantastic Schemes, 283

Fantasy and Number again, 359

Farewell Europe, 543

Farewell to the Guard, 477

Fatal War, 373

Fate of old Companions, 633

Father. See Our

Fatherland. See Without

Faubourg. See Faubourg Saint-Germain Saint-Antoine, 527 Saint-Germain, 218, 466, 562, 609, 628

Faust, 654

Felix Austria, 369

FERDINAND, 453

Ferrajo, 481

Ferrara, 99

Fertility. See Habsburg Fertility

FESCH, 20, 23, 27, 30, 95, 199, 226, 284, 352, 353, 371

Fiction of Democracy, 188

Figaro, 622

Fighting. See Street

Finckenstein, 266, 267, 268, 270, 339

Finisterre, 384

Fire!, 402

First Consul. See Consul, First Defeat, 337 Dream, 672 “I,” 16 Overtures for Peace, 87 Place is occupied, 20 Sword, 9 triumphal Entry, 68 Victory, 33

Five Hundred. See Council

Fleet. See also Destruction Through

Fleet sets sail, 118

Flight homewards, 136

Florence, 427

Flushing, 650

Foe. See Overestimating

“Follow your Destiny,” 496

FONTAINE, LA, 628

Fontainebleau, 281, 465, 466, 467, 468, 471, 473, 474, 486, 504, 605

Foolish Speech, 156

Fop and the Husband, 73

Forces. See Commander

Forebodings. See Gloomy

Foreign Office, 103. See also Ministry for Foreign Affairs

Forgotten!, 376

Former Fellow-student, 555

Form without Content, 216

Fort Carrée, 34

Fortress. See Invincible

Fortuné, 73, 74

“Fortune is a Strumpet,” 400

Fortune of War, 457

Fortune’s Wheel. See Turn of

FOUCHÉ, 177, 182, 186, 187, 197, 230, 231, 269, 277, 331, 332, 333, 340, 345, 365, 377, 378, 379, 436, 437, 443, 451, 473, 474, 475, 511, 530, 532, 533, 614

FOUCHÉ’S Rise, 530

FOUCHÉ, TALLEYRAND and, 182

Four Teeth, 394

Fourth-act Moods, 432

Fourth Name, 217

Fowler, 81

FOX, 232

FOY, 277

France, passim. See also All young, History, In southern, and King of greets him, 141 is his Mistress, 563

FRANCIS, Emperor of Holy Roman Empire and of Austria, etc., 73, 87, 104, 109, 180, 181, 239, 240, 243, 252, 312, 350, 369, 370, 386, 398, 422, 430, 434, 436, 437, 439, 443, 445, 446, 505, 506, 515, 642 King of Rome, 488. See also NAPOLEON FRANCIS

Frankfort, 382, 455, 456

FREDERICK THE GREAT, 8, 10, 24, 111, 112, 175, 208, 251, 253, 255, 257, 259, 274, 277, 329, 463, 566, 568, 621, 655, 663, 668, 679

Frederick’s Sword, 257

FREDERICK WILLIAM III, 251, 252, 383, 425, 437, 443

Fréjus, 140, 480. See also Landing

French. See Criticism of are easy to rule, 666 remain sceptical, 564

Frenzied Energy, 72

Friedland, 270, 331, 500, 522, 663

Friends betray him. See Old

Friendship. See Last

Fridericus Rex, 251

Friuli, 75

Fronde, 562

Fruitless Wooing, 316

Fulfilment. See Tragedy of

FULTON, 235, 642

Further Peace Proposals, 180

Galicia, 259, 375

Gambler. See Great

Game of Chess, 443

Ganges, 242, 308, 359, 373

Gaoler, 617. See also Lowe

Garda, 73

Garden. See Kingdom

Gardener, 654

Gassion, 597

General against People, 43 and King, 580 and the Chambers, 151 Bonaparte. See As General Bonaparte grows dangerous, 65

Generals. See Sons of the People

GENGHIS KHAN, 511, 644

Genius and Family Man, 213 German. See Homage

Genoa, 12, 33, 34, 82, 96, 117, 139, 184, 239, 504

Genoese Senate, 72

Genuine Anger, 575

GEORGE III, 236

George, Mademoiselle (Giorgina), 202, 203, 558

German. See also Homage, Two Germans, and Unconquerable Characterisation, 111 Genius. See Homage Opinions. See Other

Germans. See Concerning

German Spirit, 425

German Women. See Two German Women

Germany, 87, 90, 109, 171, 184, 206, 244, 285, 286, 308, 309, 319, 333, 335, 359, 382, 407, 410, 420, 425, 427, 429, 430, 436, 440, 443, 570

Gibraltar, 307

Giorgina, 202, 203, 258

Giuliano, San, 180

GLENDOWER, 273

Gloom, 37. See also Hours

Gloomy Forebodings, 459

GNEISENAU, 522

Goblet, golden, 181

God protect France, 503 protect the King, 502

“God’s Image on Earth,” 277

GOETHE, 1, 53, 163, 256, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326, 327, 357, 421, 449, 545, 551, 583, 602, 679, 681. See also How is

Goethean Motifs, 602

Goethe is imperturbable, 327

Goethe’s Epilogue, 449

GOHIER, 142, 146, 147, 149, 152, 153

Golden Goblet, 181

Good-night, Bourrienne, 161

Gospel and Republic, 86

Gospels, 86

GOURGAUD, 535, 602, 610, 611, 612, 613, 616, 620, 621, 625, 626, 628, 633, 635, 636, 637, 638, 639, 655

Gourgaud’s Petulance, 611

Government. See Tottering grows uneasy, 80

Grand Army, 424

Grape-shot. See Why not use

Gratitude, 558

GRASSINI, 100, 192

Graz, 364, 427

Great Ambitions, 66

Great Britain, 662. See also England

Great Gambler, 442

Great Nation, 103, 109, 147

Great Pyramid, 11

Great St. Bernard, 178, 179

Greece, 319

GREGORY VII, 371

Grenoble, 498, 499, 500, 504

Grosbois, 389

Grouchy, 522, 523, 524

Growing Disquiet, 297

Grumble. See Peasants

Guadarrama, 330

Guard, National. See National Guard

Guard. See Farewell

Gumbinnen, 387

Guns. See Big

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, 365

Habsburg Fertility (missing index entry added by transcriber), 350

Hamburg, 233, 381

Hamelin, 507

Hammerfest, 359

Hampered Energies, 523

HANNIBAL, 55, 178, 189, 534, 668, 669 modern, 178

Hanover, 374

Hansa Towns, 374, 439

Harassing Restrictions, 616

HARDENBERG, 383

Hat, 441

Hate. See Brotherly

HATZFELD, 256

Havre, 650

HAYDN, 193

Headquarters, 92

Head Shepherd, 285

Heart. See Sluggishness

He cheers up, 476

Hector, 598, 637

Hectoring the Diplomats, 104

He drafts an Abdication, 470

He dreams of India, 127

HEGEL, 450

Heir. See Hunt for, also Search for at last, 353

Helena. See St. Helena

HENRY IV, 568, 592

Herald’s College, 6

Herat, 236

Hereditary Titles, 280

Heroes. See Rebels of Antiquity, 229

Hero’s Return, 141

Herr Goethe. See How

He seeks Death in Battle, 463 should have gone to America, 643 signs the Abdication, 474 threatens Paris, 100 threatens Rome, 284

Hesitations, 444

Hindustan, 268. See also India

HIPPOLYTE, 73, 93, 123, 142, 204, 597

His Dealings with the Masses, 592 Feeling for History, 565 first Sword, 9 Generals love and hate him, 587 little Son, 368 social Philosophy, 593 Son’s Heritage, 663 Son’s Portrait, 488 Successors steal his Property, 475 unfailing Memory, 175

History and France, 64

History of Bonaparte, 380

HOCHE, 114

Hofburg, 351, 369, 370

Hohenlinden, 206

HOHENLOHE, 253

Hohenstaufen, 336

Hohenzollern, 258, 408, 642

Holland, 116, 139, 183, 246, 247, 280, 287, 307, 371, 427, 428, 447, 453, 552, 559

HOLLAND, 615

Holy Battalion, 242 Father, 340, 370 Legion, 412 Moscow, 402 Roman Empire, 89 Russia, 404

Homage to German Genius, 318

Homely Monarch, 483

HOMER, 119, 622

Honour, 556. See also Legion of, also Policy and

Hope. See Stirrings

Hopeless, 14

HORTENSE DE BEAUHARNAIS (afterwards Wife of Louis Bonaparte), 47, 71, 143, 198, 202, 204, 222, 224, 247, 249, 298, 301, 428, 474, 486, 503, 520, 531, 533, 575, 633, 671

Hostilities, 619

Hôtel de l’Angleterre in Warsaw, 418

HOTHAM, 538

HOTSPUR, 273

Hours of Gloom, 637

House of Peers, 526. See also Upper House

“How is Herr Goethe?”, 421

How many of you are there?, 440

Human Heart. See Sluggishness

Humaneness, 578

Hundred Days, 599, 609, 623

Hungary, 87, 341

Hunt for an Heir, 129

Husband. See Fop

Hutt’s Gate, 615

“I.” See First

Iago, 315

“I alone have Money,” 380

I am a Roman Emperor, 566

“I am the Man of Calculations,” 392

“I am the State,” 455

Ideals and Looting, 62

Idyll. See An Idyll Secret

I have lost all Hope, 71

“I intended to kill you,” 342

Iliad, 622, 624

Illuminates, 343

Illyria, 438, 439, 610

Imagination, 594. See also Calculation

Imagination in its Cave, 12

“Imperial Diet” at Erfurt, 561

Imperial Dignity, 211

Imperialists. See Rival

Imperturbable. See Goethe is

Improvisation, 210

I must not stay here, 114

Inca State, 11

Incas. See Aztecs

Indies, 89

In Chains, 615

Incorruptible. See Letizia is

Increasing Tension, 146

India, 10, 11, 91, 127, 131, 137, 236, 258, 259, 268, 283, 359, 373, 617

Indus, 132

In Favour of the Working Classes, 191

Inertia. See Disastrous Inertia

Influence. See Stein’s

In Motley, 480

Inner Man, 303

Inquisition, 328, 331

In Pawn to the Old World, 506

In southern France, 30

Institute, 98, 114, 120, 129, 135, 147, 192, 520, 582

Interior. See Army

In the Elysian Fields, 668

In the travelling Carriage, 335

Intrigues. See Island of and Enmities, 612

Invalides, 484

Invincible Fortress, 133

Invitation to Paris, 326

Inward Reserves, 482

Ionian Islands, 90, 91, 273

Iphigenia in Aulis, 637

Ireland, 372

Iron Age, 510

ISABEY, 227, 620

Islam, 637

Island, The. See Corsica This. See This Island of Intrigues, 27

Isola Bella, 100

Israel, 56

Issus, 242

Isthmus of Suez, 116, 131

Istria, 436

Italia unità, 62

Italian Temperament. See Understands

Italy, 3, 40, 55, 56, 58, 59, 62, 63, 70, 75, 81, 82, 83, 89, 90, 93, 94, 96, 105, 106, 107, 136, 138, 139, 150, 178, 183, 210, 239, 240, 244, 246, 283, 284, 285, 287, 291, 298, 300, 336, 379, 412, 419, 436, 447, 453, 458, 472, 473, 481, 489, 535, 569, 591, 621, 632, 652, 676. See also Army, also Eugene Viceroy of. See Eugene

I will die standing, 447

Jacobin Club, 23, 27, 145, 153, 303, 555

Jacobins, 25, 26

Jaffa, 132, 614, 646 Prisoners, 132

Jamestown, 615

Janina, 90

Jealousy, 76

Jena, 255, 256, 319, 323, 381, 500, 523, 555, 663. See also Battle of

JEROME BONAPARTE (afterwards King of Westphalia), 37, 125, 198, 248, 268, 287, 288, 294, 364, 382, 389, 394, 428, 430, 438, 452, 467, 474, 476, 520, 556, 580, 599, 632, 677

Jerome makes himself ridiculous, 288

Jerome’s American Marriage, 248

Jesus Christ, 371, 372, 600. See also Christ

JOHANNES VON MÜLLER, 319, 321, 323, 603

John (author of Revelation). See St. John

JOHN THE GOOD, 534

JOMINI, 578

JOSEPH I, King of Spain, 308, 330. See also Joseph Bonaparte

JOSEPH (son of Jacob), 629

JOSEPH BONAPARTE (afterwards King of Naples, then King of Spain), 8, 13, 23, 27, 30, 38, 39, 45, 46, 72, 73, 92, 124, 144, 149, 198, 206, 207, 216, 222, 223, 224, 228, 246, 247, 268, 295, 300, 301, 302, 303, 308, 316, 330, 362, 364, 365, 428, 437, 438, 444, 452, 453, 456, 458, 459, 460, 461, 464, 465, 466, 531, 535, 579, 580, 590, 596, 597, 632, 634, 662

Joseph makes Difficulties, 330

JOSEPHINE DE BEAUHARNAIS (afterwards Empress), 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 58, 70, 72, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 92, 93, 94, 95, 99, 100, 109, 113, 114, 115, 118, 123, 124, 141, 143, 144, 145, 146, 149, 153, 161, 172, 193, 197, 199, 202, 203, 208, 213, 214, 216, 217, 218, 222, 226, 227, 234, 239, 246, 247, 257, 260, 264, 267, 275, 289, 290, 291, 296, 298, 301, 303, 316, 344, 345, 347, 353, 354, 367, 368, 452, 474, 485, 521, 531, 556, 557, 558, 578, 597, 603, 621, 670. See also Devotion

Josephine cometh not, 70

Josephine’s Anxieties, 203 Infidelity, 124 Plan of Campaign, 142 Swoon, 344

JOSEPHINE (Giorgina), 203, 558

JOURDAN, 149

Joyful Days for Letizia, 484

JUDAS, 629

JULIE CLARY (afterwards Wife of Joseph Bonaparte), 44, 301

JUNOT, 33, 35, 36, 73, 123, 124, 438, 588

Jupiter, 229, 370

Justifies himself on his Deathbed, 670

Kandahar, 268

KANT, 591, 593

Katzbach, 444

KAUNITZ, 243, 561

Kaunitz Castle, 561

KEBIR, EL, 128

KELLERMANN, 66, 67, 72

Key of St. Peter, 96

Kidnapping of Enghien, 206

Kill you. See I Intended

King of Rome, 382

Kingdom in a Garden, 6 of Westphalia, 287

Kingdoms. See New

King Lear upon the Heath, 397

King Log and King Stork, 247

King of France, 431

Kings. See Audience of, also Disgruntled

KIRCHEISEN, 683

Kissing the Colours, 478

Kléber, 120, 134, 137, 141, 587, 668

Königsberg, 387, 423, 425

KOLLER, 480

Koran, 119, 122, 123, 128

Kovno, 387

Knights of Malta, 103

Kremlin, 400, 401, 402, 403, 409, 410, 653

KUTUSOFF, 399, 400

La Belle Alliance, 523

LA BRUYÈRE, 74

Lacépède, 598

La Corniche, 650

Lady hesitates, 48

Lagoons, 89

LAFAYETTE, 526, 528, 564, 633, 660

LA FONTAINE, 628

LAMARCK, 602

La Mure, 498

Landing at Fréjus, 140

LANNES, 72, 112, 149, 219, 333, 337, 338, 587

Laon, 462, 468, 522, 525

LA PAGERIE, 115. See also JOSEPHINE.

LAPIE, 416, 417

LAPLACE, 114, 120, 169, 602

La Rothière, 457

LARREY, 661

La Scala, 100, 182

LAS CASES, 536, 538, 609, 610, 611, 624, 626, 628, 630, 636, 637, 641, 646, 647, 652, 655, 676

Last Bulletin from Russia, 417 Command, 673 Gifts, 671 Letter, 405 Offers of Friendship, 254 Touches, 149 Will and Testament, 659

LAVALETTE, 454, 511, 515, 530, 531, 533

LAVATER, 584

La Vendée. See Vendée

La Vilette, 571

Lavishness. See Oriental

Leads a retired Life, 113

Leaning on a birchen Staff, 412

Lear. See King Lear

LEBRUN, 296

LECLERC, 93, 148

LEFÈVRE, 470

Legality. See Semblances

Legatees. See Ninety-seven

Leghorn, 96, 486, 493, 494

Legion of Honour, 192, 211, 212, 279, 348, 491, 501, 547, 556, 559, 560, 621, 663

Legions. See Many

Legitimacy. See Curse

Legitimist Weaknesses, 561

Leipzig, 370, 446, 448, 449, 450, 454, 522

Lemberg, 387

LEO, 86

Leoben, 88, 90, 93, 104

LÉON, 290, 299, 457, 486, 531, 664

LESSEPS, 131

LETIZIA BONAPARTE (“Madame Mère”), 4, 5, 16, 29, 30, 92, 94, 95, 199, 202, 225, 250, 331, 345, 427, 428, 451, 474, 483, 485, 486, 496, 631, 632, 634, 656, 676. See also Joyful Days at the Fireside, 451 implores, 631 is full of Trouble, 427 is incorruptible, 250

Letter to Louis of Bourbon, 189 with an open Date, 672

Letters on Corsica, 15, 19

Levant, 420

Liberation. See Price of, also War of

Liberators. See Army

Liberty. See Equality

Lieutenant Reads, 10

Life at Montebello, 96

“Life is a trivial Dream,” 39

Life, retired. See Leads

Ligny, 522

Lilliput, 483

Limping Mephistopheles, 379. See also TALLEYRAND

Lion, Advice of. See That is

Lion of St. Mark, 96, 239

Lisbon, 248

Lithuania, 387, 410

Little Court, 93

Little Mother Russia, 398

Lobau, 578, 663

Lodi, 65, 66, 158, 331, 337

Log. See King Log

Loire, 473

Lombardy, 40, 55, 62, 65, 68, 69, 75, 83, 89, 178, 284, 289, 391, 566, 588

London, 205, 334, 361, 362, 492, 538, 615, 617

Loneliness, 38. See also Daimonic

Lonely Man, 263

Longwood, 608, 610, 614, 615, 616, 617, 619, 675

Looting. See Ideals

Loudoun, 617

LOUIS XIV, 302, 312, 327, 574. See also Roi Soleil

LOUIS XVI, 22, 44, 221, 644

LOUIS XVIII. See Louis of Bourbon

Louis of Bourbon, Count of Provence (afterwards Louis XVIII), 96, 189, 209, 466, 490, 491, 501, 502, 516, 561, 627, 628, 634, 660, 663. See also Letter to, and Louis XVIII

LOUIS BONAPARTE (afterwards King of Holland), 21, 33, 38, 77, 198, 202, 222, 223, 224, 246, 247, 267, 268, 303, 307, 308, 363, 364, 427, 428, 451, 452, 520, 552, 561, 564, 603, 671

LOUIS FERDINAND, 253

LOUIS PHILIPPE, 664

LOUISE, MARIE. See MARIE LOUISE

Louise, Queen of Prussia, 254, 257, 258, 267, 274, 275, 590

Louvre, 83, 650

Love Letter from the Battle-field, 74

Love of Frankness, 554

LOWE, SIR HUDSON, 614, 615, 616, 617, 618, 619, 620, 638, 640, 658 Lady, 611

Lowe’s Animus, 618

Lower House, 517, 520, 623. See also Chamber of Deputies

Lucca, 184

LUCIEN BONAPARTE (Archdeacon), 23

LUCIEN BONAPARTE (Napoleon’s Brother, afterwards Prince of Canino), 27, 38, 39, 96, 144, 146, 147, 149, 150, 151, 153, 155, 158, 159, 160, 196, 197, 198, 201, 202, 222, 225, 249, 251, 266, 291-306, 427, 452, 475, 485, 520, 525, 526, 529, 531, 533, 632, 662, 676

Lucien as Rival, 196

Lucien’s Portrait of Napoleon, 291

Luck. See Stroke of

Lunéville, 182, 680

Lure of the East, 90

Lutheranism, 285

Lutheran Terminology, 285

Lützen, 433, 439, 500

Lyons, 21, 22, 81, 141, 481, 500, 504, 625, 629, 650, 651 Academy, 21, 22

MACDONALD, 396, 448, 462, 470, 471, 472, 473

Macedonia, 90

Machiavelli, 10

Madame Mère, 225, 345, 459. See also Letizia

Madeleine, 269

Madras, 620

Madrid, 197, 286, 308, 327, 330, 333, 400, 405, 408, 438, 566

MÆCENAS, 529

Maggiore, 100

Magon, 235

MAHOMET, 310. See also MOHAMMED.

Mahomet, 309, 655

Mai. See Champ

Main, 382

MAITLAND, 538, 539

Mainz, 112, 376, 433, 442, 450, 451, 650

Malay. See Tobias

Malet, 413

Malmaison, 124, 204, 237, 346, 347, 353, 474, 485, 520, 530, 531, 533, 552, 558, 633, 643, 662, 671. See also Reveries

Malta, 103, 118, 362

Maltese, 122

Mamelukes, 121, 132, 135

Mameluke, The, 335, 416. See also RUSTAM

Man. See Inner, also Lonely, also Only the strong born to rule, 98 of Destiny, 604 of Figures, 570

Manœuvres. See Poet’s

Mantua, 40, 73, 75, 78, 139, 206, 292, 305

Many Legions, 387

MARCHAND, 613, 620, 658, 661, 663, 671, 673

Marchfeld, 338

Marching to Victory, 239

March of the Thousand, 498

Marengo, 173, 179, 180, 182, 232, 240, 245, 337, 359, 419, 461, 524, 577, 625, 629, 663, 675, 680

Maret, 413, 455, 457, 458, 459, 474, 493, 507

Marianne (the French Republic), 216

MARIA THERESA, 464

MARIE, 263, 476, 664. See also WALEWSKA

MARIE ANTOINETTE, 219, 349, 351

MARIE LOUISE, 351, 352, 354, 369, 370, 386, 387, 432, 464, 475, 476, 477, 487, 505, 506, 515, 621, 663, 670, 676

Marie Louise’s Treason, 505

Marie, ou les peines d’amour, 364

Marie’s Posy Ring, 270

MARK. See ST. MARK

MARK ANTONY, 661

MARMONT, 33, 36, 66, 70, 77, 125, 136, 148, 149, 150, 220, 363, 399, 433, 445, 446, 449, 462, 463, 464, 465, 467, 468, 470, 471, 472, 499, 507, 510, 553, 558, 587, 633, 634, 660

Marmont’s Desertion, Consequences of, 471 Treason, 468

Marne, 464

Marriage. See Jerome’s, also Reasons for, also Undermined and Divorce, 171

Marseilles, 27, 29, 30, 500

Martinique, 46, 47, 372

Martyrdom. See Price

Masked Ball. See At the

Masséna, 60, 61, 72, 81, 91, 139, 147, 281, 362, 363, 375, 500, 587, 668, 673, 679

Mathematician and Seer, 56

Mathematics. See Dreams and

MAUBREUIL, 466

Maundy Thursday, 500

Mecklenburg, 273

Mediterranean, 91, 103, 115, 117, 121, 137, 138, 339, 476, 480, 483, 486, 535 Fleet, 372

Medicis, 427

MÉHUL, 554

Melas, 179

Member of the Institute, 582

Memel, 270, 273, 373, 388, 389, 391, 419, 642

Memoirs, 623

Memoirs (Bourrienne’s), 681

Memorable Conversation, 439

Memorial of St. Helena, 609

Memory, 572 unfailing, 175

Méneval, 204, 205, 221, 302, 346, 350, 396, 515

Mephistopheles, 314, 575 the limping, 379. See also TALLEYRAND

“Mercure de France,” 277

MERVELDT, 446, 447

MESSALINA, 306

Mess, Cleaning up the, 176

Messenger. See Third

Messengers from the East, 268

Messiah, 600

Metternich, 271, 307, 312, 318, 347, 353, 369, 375, 383, 385, 423, 430, 436, 438, 439, 440, 441, 442, 443, 455, 493, 504, 511, 548, 559, 578, 587, 589, 642. See also News for

Metz, 650

Mexico, 307, 534, 536, 632

Midilli, 20

Milan, 64, 67, 69, 70, 72, 73, 75, 76, 78, 80, 93, 94, 97, 105, 118, 139, 181, 210, 218, 230, 347, 378, 400, 405, 566

Millesimo, 521

MILTON, 622

Ministry for Foreign Affairs, 101. See also Foreign Office for War, 372. See also War Office

Minsk, 387

Mio dolce Amor, 49

MIRABEAU, 10, 18, 20

Miscalculation, 79

Mob. See Execrated

Modena, 75, 76

Modern Hannibal, 178

Mohammed, 122. See also Mahomet

Mohammedanism, 122

Moldavia, 259, 375

Mole-hill. See Europe.

MOLIÈRE, 622

Monarch. See Homely

Monarchy. See Contradictions

Money, 586. See also I alone

MONGE, 120, 138

“Moniteur,” 33, 79, 205, 428, 500, 620

Mont Cenis, 650

Monsieur Bonaparte, 640

Montebello, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 100, 105, 113. See also Life at

Montereau, 460

MONTESQUIEU, 10, 120, 279, 457

Monteverde, 100

Mont Genèvre, 650

MONTHOLON, 599, 612, 613, 621, 623, 628, 635, 636, 646, 654, 658, 659, 661, 664, 672, 674 Madame, 638, 646

Montmirail, 500, 663

MONTMORENCY, 279

Moodiness, 281

Moods. See Fourth-act

MOORE, 615

Moravia, 242

MOREAU, 114, 133, 148, 167, 178, 205, 438, 443, 444, 530, 587

More Family Troubles, 364

More Peace Proposals, 236

Morfontaine, 330, 452, 457

Mort de César, 645

MORTIER, 464, 471, 472

Moscow, 286, 373, 393, 395, 396, 397, 398, 399, 400, 401, 402, 404, 405, 409, 410, 413, 419, 440, 455, 476, 489, 500, 509, 554, 566, 637, 653

Moskva, 399, 403, 500

Moselle, 26

MOSES, 56, 130, 600, 601, 622 Wells of, 130, 601

Mother. See Emperor and his

Mother Letizia, 94

Mother Russia, 398

Mother’s Life comes first, 354

Motley, 480

MOULIN, 139, 146, 147, 148, 152, 153

MUIRON, 77, 535, 536, 618, 662

“Muiron,” 137

MÜLLER, JOHANNES, 319, 321, 323, 603 (Chancellor, Weimar), 555

Mummy in Court Dress, 231

Munich, 205

MURAT (afterwards King of Naples), 43, 44, 48, 72, 92, 135, 148, 149, 160, 198, 219, 222, 224, 247, 248, 281, 308, 330, 331, 336, 349, 364, 366, 388, 390, 395, 402, 411, 412, 417, 421, 428, 429, 450, 451, 475, 494, 570, 587, 614, 633, 644, 668 and Bernadotte, 429

Murder. See Slow

Mure, 498

Muscovy, 392, 401. See also Russia

Mutable Many, 355

My Cause. See Espouse

“My Game is going awry,” 445

“My Sceptre is from God,” 371

“My Star is setting,” 434

Mystifications, 204

My Strength is builded on a Rock, 223

Naïve Aside, 228

Name your Children after me, 243

Naples, 82, 183, 246, 300, 308, 336, 412, 421, 494, 570 King of. See Joseph, also Murat

NAPOLEON I, passim. See also, Comparison, Lucien’s Portrait, Resume the Name, St. Napoleon II, 529, 530, 613, 634. See also NAPOLEON FRANCIS III, 613 and Maitland, 538 and the Royalists, 190 FRANCIS, King of Rome (“Napoleon II”), 382, 488, 660. See also Napoleon II, Rome, King of

Napoleonic Idea, 596

Napoleon Museum, 651

Napoleon’s Defence, 209

Napoleon the Conqueror, 257

Napoleon’s Treasure, 651

Napoleon II, 529

NAPOLIONE, 5, 19, 216, 676

NARBONNES, 279

Nation, Great. See Great Nation

National Assembly, 18 Guard, 17, 23, 24, 42, 44, 57, 177, 414, 420, 424, 454, 457, 458, 465, 481, 525

Natural Philosophy, 601

NECKER, 110

NEIPPERG, 488, 515

NELSON, 118, 119, 126, 240

NERO, 277

NESSELRODE, 379, 465

NEY, 219, 423, 445, 470, 471, 472, 500, 501, 509, 510, 522, 587, 633, 668

Ney’s Remorse, 509

New Testament, 600

New Kingdoms, 246 Programme, 502

News for Metternich, 504

Nice, 30, 33, 34, 51, 57, 139, 433, 650

Niemer. See Memel

Nile, 121, 126, 130, 131, 135, 141, 360, 566

Nineteenth Brumaire, 295, 304, 479. See also Eighteenth Brumaire, also Brumaire

Ninety-seven Legatees, 661

Niobe, 346, 474

NOAILLES, 279

Nobles’ School, 6

Normandy, 568

“Northumberland,” 543, 608

No Sea Legs, 233

“Not one Polish Village,” 377

Notre Dame, 185, 227, 230, 242, 338, 452, 456, 500

Not so lucky as Genghis Khan, 644

No Tragedies!, 298

Norway, 386

Novels, 396

Number again. See Fantasy

Nuremberg, 252, 450

Oder, 258, 382, 431

Odyssey, 622

Œdipus, 310

Œdipus, 622

Offers of Friendship. See Last

Old Companions. See Fate of Friends betray him, 462 Home, 139 Regime, 218 Tempo and the New, 522 Testament, 600

Oldenburg, 374, 375, 377

O’MEARA, 617, 620, 646, 656

Omens. See Russian

On Foot into Warsaw, 418

“Only the strong Man is good,” 22

Onslaught. See Emperor’s

On the Alert, 494 the Banks of the Seine, 465 the “Bellerophon,” 539

Opening of the Family Dramas, 199

Operations Department, 40

Opinion, Bureau of Public, 380, 381

Opinions. See Other, also Two

Opponents. See Candour to

Orangerie, 155

Orbits of the Satellites, 632

Orestes, 309

“Orient,” 118, 121

Oriental Devices, 128

Oriental Lavishness, 112

ORLEANS, 634, 658, 676

Ossian, 37, 119, 622, 639

Ostend, 175

Osterode, 266

Othello, 71

Other German Opinions, 450

OUDINOT, 462, 470, 507, 508

Our Father of Blessed Memory, 222

Ourcq, 191, 571

Outbreak of War, 253

Outlaw him, 158

Overestimating the Foe, 389

Over my dead Body, 620

Overtures. See First

OWEN GLENDOWER, 273

PAGERIE. See JOSEPHINE

PAISIELLO, 554

Palais Bourbon, 529

Palazzo Serbelloni, 69, 70, 80

PAOLI, 4, 5, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 36, 95, 538, 657

Papal States, 84, 285, 371

Paradise Lost, 622

Parcæ, 432

Paris, passim. See also Back to, He threatens, Invitation to, Putsch in, Rising in, Road to, Tsar in, What is

PARISET, 683

Parma, 300, 475, 650, 676

Parody. See Etiquette

Partition of Europe, 273

Patriotic Society, 20

Paul et Virginie, 37 Tsar of Russia, 230, 232

PAULINE BONAPARTE (afterwards Princess Borghese), 92, 95, 198, 247, 248, 298, 303, 364, 485, 488, 495, 531, 633, 659, 662, 676

Pause in the Advance, 390

Pavia, 178

Peace. See First Overtures Policy, 183 Proposals. See Further, also More with Rome, 185

Peasants. See Arm begin to grumble, 382

Peninsular War, 362, 654

People. See General needs a Chief, 106

People’s Commissary for War, 36

PERCY, 661

PERETTI, 20

Persia, 268

PETER. See ST. PETER

Petersburg. See St. Petersburg

Petroffsky Palace, 403

Pharsalia, 679

PHÉLIPPEAUX, 133

Philip II, 327, 328, 331, 566

PHILIPPE. See LOUIS PHILIPPE

Philoctète, 622

Philosophie Zoologique, 602

Pianosa, 481

PICHEGRU, 205, 206, 207

Picture of Philip II, 328

Piedmont, 58, 184, 650

Pied Piper, 507

Pin. See Scarab

Pisa, 484

PIUS VI, 85 VII, 226, 227, 370, 371, 429

Place occupied. See First Place

Plan. See Egyptian

Plans for a Coup d’État, 147 for a Rescue, 635 for World Conquest, 372

Plantation House, 617

PLATO, 10

Plebeians at Court, 219

Plot and Counterplot, 205

Plough. See Emperor drives

PLUTARCH, 6, 7, 19, 21, 34, 64, 69, 97, 119, 188, 212, 213, 679

Plymouth, 540, 542, 610

Po, 58, 65, 75, 127

Poet. See Emperor scores

Poet’s Manœuvres, 325

Poland, 258, 259, 273, 285, 329, 375, 383, 385, 387, 401, 420, 433, 435, 447, 486, 492, 548, 590

Polish War, Second, 387

Poisoning the Plague-stricken, 134

Policy and Honour, 293 towards the Peoples, 590

Polish Countess, 261 Village. See Not one

Political Consequences, 194 Programme, 102 Testament, 665

Politics on the Stage, 310

Pomerania, 365, 429, 438

POMPEY, 566

Pontine Marshes, 650

Pope. See Gregory VII, also Leo, Pius VI, Pius VII, Short Way with

Porte, 103

Porto Ferrajo, 481

Portrait. See His Son’s of Napoleon. See Lucien’s

Portugal, 183, 362

Posen, 260, 387

Posy Ring. See Marie’s

Potsdam, 256, 319, 321, 663

“Pourvou que cela doure,” 199, 225, 451

Poverty, 7

Prague, 435, 437, 440, 442, 443

Preamble, 660

Pressburg, 244, 603

Preussisch-Eylau. See Eylau

Priam, 598

Price of Liberation, 83 of Martyrdom, 636

Princes. See Servile

Princess. See Which

Principles. See False to

Prison, 34. See also Socrates

Prisoner. See Examination

Programme. See New, also Political

Prometheus, 649 bound, 649

Promised Land, 56, 59, 63, 178

Property. See His Successors

Prophet, 122 of Evil, 311

Protestantism, 285

Provence, 382, 478 Count of, 189. See also Louis of Bourbon

Province. See This Island

Prussia, 8, 171, 183, 212, 251, 252, 253, 256, 257, 273, 274, 276, 286, 308, 333, 334, 383, 408, 424, 425, 429, 430, 433, 435, 439, 493, 568, 571, 576, 651. See also Broil with, also Louise, Queen of Prussia vacillates, 383

Psychologist, 584

Public Execration, 28 Opinion, Bureau of, 380, 381

Pultava, 393

Pultusk, 265

Putsch in Paris, 413

Pygmies, 436

Pyramid, 11

Pyrenees, 362, 455, 650

Quai Desaix, 191

Quatre Bras, 522

Queen of Prussia. See Louise

QUERELLE, 206

QUIXOTE, 328

Racine, 597, 622, 637

RADZIWILL, 279

RAPP, 204, 256, 342, 388, 389, 398, 411, 508, 509. See also Conversation

Rastatt, 112, 118

RAYNAL, 10, 11

RAYNEVAL, 418

Reading, 622

Reasons for the Marriage, 50

Rebels or Heroes, 645

Rebuffs. See Two Rebuffs

RÉCAMIER, 38

Red Cockade, 17 Sea, 116, 566

Regent Diamond, 651

Reggio, 359

Regime. See Old

Reichenbach, 435

Relatives. See Advancement of, also Untrustworthy

RÉMUSAT, 214, 215, 278, 591

Republic, 10

Rescue. See Plans

Reserves. See Inward

Restoration, 313

Resume the Name of Napoleon, 664

Resurrexit, 677

Retired Life. See Leads

Retrospect, 646

Return of the Emperor, 497

Returning Courage, 454

Revanche!, 264

Revelation of St. John the Divine, 1

Revenges. See Time’s

Reveries at Malmaison, 531

Reverse, 18

Revolution. See Drums

Revolutionary Traits, 559

Revolution is at an End, 177

“Revue des Etudes Napoléoniennes,” 683

Rex. See Fridericus

Rheims, 113

Rhine, 89, 118, 150, 178, 206, 207, 238, 253, 308, 373, 382, 388, 420, 424, 425, 433, 443, 445, 447, 450, 452, 453, 455, 458, 591. See also Army of, Confederation -Rhone Canal, 650

Rhodes, 24

Rhone, 30

Rhythm of the Epoch, 426

RICHARD, 630

RICHELIEU, 101, 633

Ridiculous. See Jerome makes

Ring, Posy. See Marie’s

Rio de Janeiro, 635

Rising. See Attempted in Paris, 42

Rival. See Lucien as Imperialists, 374

Riviera, 72, 496

Rivoli, 337, 378, 389, 462, 621

Road to Paris, 503

Robbers, 381

ROBESPIERRE, Joseph, 32, 35 Maximilien, 25, 30, 34, 35, 47, 498, 511

Rochefort, 535, 540, 541, 565, 643

Rock, The. See St. Helena

ROEDERER, 149, 169, 174, 181, 201, 213, 219, 453, 550, 558, 562, 564, 569, 572, 585

Roi Soleil, 227, 288, 327, 455. See also Louis XIV

Romagna, 99

Roman, 19. See also Holy

ROMANZOFF, 316, 333

Rome, 63, 82, 85, 86, 99, 185, 212, 225, 226, 245, 283, 285, 292, 336, 337, 338, 340, 371, 372, 382, 393, 459, 465, 467, 469, 475, 478, 485, 486, 488, 566, 593, 631, 676. See also He threatens, Peace with, The Eternal, Understanding

Rome, King of, 382, 459, 465, 467, 469, 488, 617. See also Napoleon II, also Napoleon Francis

Rossbach, 679

Rosetta, 130, 147

Rothière. See La Rothière

ROUSSEAU, 8, 11, 21, 111, 166, 229, 605

Royalists. See Napoleon and

Rubicon, 85, 389

RUDOLF (of Habsburg), 370

Rulers by divine Right, 437

Ruling from afar, 269

Russia, 183, 211, 239, 251, 258, 259, 311, 314, 318, 359, 360, 373, 375, 379, 380, 382, 383, 386, 387, 396, 397, 398, 404, 412, 418, 419, 420, 423, 430, 432, 433, 439, 441, 443, 459, 522, 528, 553, 554, 571, 662, 667. See also Muscovy, also Last Bulletin

Russian Omens, 265

RUSTAM, 135, 266, 292, 339, 396. See also Mameluke

Saale, 446

Saalfeld, 253

Saint-Antoine, 218, 527

St. Bernard, Great, 178, 179

Saint-Cloud, 147, 153, 154, 160, 189, 220, 221, 295, 432, 526, 620. See also Back Room

Saint-Denis, 532

STE. GENEVIÈVE, 456

Saint-Germain, 218, 466

St. Helena, 13, 473, 541, 543, 545-677. See also Corsica comes

St. John, Church of, in Moscow, 410

ST. JOHN THE DIVINE, 1

ST. LOUIS, 501

ST. MARK, 96

ST. NAPOLEON, 339, 484

ST. PETER, 96, 648

St. Petersburg, 333, 349, 375, 376, 395, 396, 401, 404, 405, 409, 410, 553

St. Sophia, 270, 385

Salamanca, 399, 414

SALICETI, 26, 27, 31, 35, 37, 65, 66, 80, 95

Salle Apollo, 155

Salzburg, 240

San Domingo, 590, 630

San Giuliano, 180

Sanhedrin, 590

Sans Souci, 257, 566. See also Visions in

SANTINI, 613

Saragossa, 333

Sardinia, 40, 59, 60, 65 King of, 59, 60

Satan, 568

Satellites. See Orbits

Savants. See To the

SAVARY, 461, 529

Savona, 370, 650

Saxony, 325, 433, 443, 447, 493

Scala, La, 100, 182

Scarab Pin, 367

Scene with Lucien. See Climax

Scepticism, 600

Sceptre. See My Sceptre

SCHARNHORST, 253, 383, 437

SCHELLING, 450

Schemes. See Fantastic Schemes, also Worldwide Schemes

SCHERER, 136

SCHILLER, 416

SCHLEIERMACHER, 437

Schönbrunn, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 342, 345, 353, 430, 486, 548, 573, 578, 588, 589

SCHWARZENBERG, 348, 559

Schweidnitz, 269

SCHWARZENBERG, 367, 396, 443, 444, 461, 462, 468, 604

SCIPIO, 64, 189, 668

Scion of the lesser Nobility, 562

Scrivia, 180

Scutari, 90

Sea Legs. See No

Search for an Heir, 201

Second Dream, 672 Polish War, 387 Wife, 369

Secret Idyll, 267 Session. See Deputies

Seeks Death. See He seeks Death

Seer. See Mathematician

SÉGUR, 175, 227, 402

Seine, 465, 650, 659

Self-confidence, 551 Criticism, 642 Crowned Emperor, 227

SELIM, 474

Semblances of Legality, 154

Semmering, 548

Senate, 90, 186, 198, 201, 210, 214, 296, 297, 353, 423, 445, 467, 468, 469, 484, 518, 562, 565. See also Genoese House (Roman), 565

Sense of Destiny, 360

Sensitive Nerves, 549

Serbelloni, Palace, 69, 70, 80

Serbia, 375

Servants. See Faithful

Servile Princes, 317

Sèvres, 621

Seydlitz, 679

She lays Siege, 143

Shepherd, Head, 285

Shiraz, 132

Short Way with the Pope, 336

Shot at Dawn, 207

SHUVALOFF, 480

Sicily, 118, 119, 372, 429

Siege of Toulon, 31

Sierra de Guadarrama, 330

SIEYÈS, 139, 144, 146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 152, 153, 155, 159, 168, 528

Signature. See Awaiting

Silesia, 259, 382, 383, 435, 443, 444

Simple Tastes, 221

Simplicity, 553

Simplon, 650

“Simply Dead,” 602

Simulated Wrath, 576

“Sire, your Brother Lucien,” 292

Sisters. See Brothers and

Slow Murder, 669

Sluggishness of the human Heart, 487

Smelting Works, 485

Smolensk, 387, 390, 395, 396, 397, 411, 412, 500

Snare. See Dynastic

SOCRATES, 647

Soissons, 525

Sombre Thoughts, 366

Son! See A Son!, also His little

Sons of the People as Generals, 60

Son’s Portrait. See His

SOPHOCLES, 622

Sorrows of Werther, 120. See also Werther

SOUCHET, 472

SOULT, 325, 330, 472, 580

Southern France. See In southern

Spain, 116, 171, 183, 259, 300, 306, 307, 308, 312, 328, 329, 330, 333, 336, 359, 362, 363, 368, 375, 379, 382, 383, 390, 399, 420, 421, 427, 433, 437, 444, 447, 468, 560, 590, 595, 642, 675. See also Bad News

Spanish America, 632

Spanish Dynasty, 306

Sparta, 21, 63, 69

Spezia, 650

Sphinx, 121. See also Bonaparte

Spirit and Sword, 167

STAËL, 110, 198, 207, 216, 231, 277, 320, 429, 510, 511, 554

Stage. See Politics on the Management, 589

STANISLAS, 419

STAPS, 342, 343, 344

State. See I am

State, Prisoner, 415, 416

Statesman and Commander, 181

Stein, 258, 333, 393, 406, 407, 408, 409, 437, 451, 493, 505

Stein’s decisive Influence, 604

Stickler for Morality, 557

Stirrings of Hope, 634

Stock Exchange, 176, 269

Stockholm, 282

Stork. See King Log

Storming Pace, 220

Storming the Habsburg Fortress, 352

Story of Waterloo, 624

Strasburg, 372, 509

Street. See Burning Fighting, 44

“Strike off my Chains!”, 35

Stroke and Counterstroke, 375

Stroke of Luck, 424

Strong Man. See Only the

Struggle against Venality, 84

Struggles in Vienna, 492

Strumpet. See Fortune

“Stupidest Thing in my Life!,” 329

Stürmer, 611

Styria, 86

Subordinates. See Treatment

Successors steal his Property, 475

Such is my Will, 69

Suez, 116, 131, 147

Sugar. See Coffee

Surinam, 372

SUSSEX, 615

SUVAROFF, 405

Sweden, 365, 386, 430

Swiftly westward, 420

Switzerland, 10, 139, 171, 183, 246

Sword. See First Frederick’s Spirit

Sympathetic, 598

Syria, 119, 131, 132

System. See Continental European

TACITUS, 277, 319, 320, 321, 560, 565

Tagus, 308, 528

TAMERLANE, 652

Talk. See Tea

Talking and Questioning, 585

TALLEYRAND (afterwards Prince of Benevento), 100, 101, 102, 103, 108, 109, 110, 113, 116, 133, 147, 148, 152, 153, 177, 182, 185, 205, 206, 208, 219, 230, 231, 240, 244, 246, 253, 291, 295, 303, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 323, 331, 332, 333, 338, 349, 374, 378, 379, 406, 431, 453, 459, 465, 466, 467, 468, 473, 474, 475, 494, 510, 557, 560, 561, 571, 575, 576, 586, 589, 600, 642, 660 and Fouché, 182 as Internationalist, 315 indispensable, 313 is a Traitor, 312 rules, 467 smiles, 333

TALLIEN, 38, 47, 71, 75, 557

TALMA, 218, 309, 502, 535, 592

Taranto, 233

TASSO, 457

Tastes. See Simple

Tatterdemalion Army, 57

Taxis. See Thurn

Tea and Talk, 314

Teeth. See Four

Tempo, 571. See also Old

Terminology. See Lutheran

Terror, 46, 167

Testament, Napoleon’s, New, 600 Old, 600

“That is the Advice of a Lion,” 410

Théâtre Français, 191, 390

The Eternal City, 286. See also Rome

“The Mother’s Life comes first!”, 354

The People need a Chief, 106

Themistocles, 537, 542, 565

Thinking. See What is Alexander

Thinking Things over, 491

Third Messenger, 404

Thirteenth Vendémiaire, 44, 50

Thirty Years’ War, 624

This Island, this Province, 95

“This War will last three Years,” 395

Thoughts. See Sombre

Thousand. See March

Three Years. See This War

Thrift, 278

Through the Enemy’s Fleet, 137

Thurn and Taxis, 314

TIBERIUS, 566

Tidings from the Congress, 493

Tiflis, 269

Tilsit, 270, 274, 282, 308, 315, 375, 380, 383, 384, 385, 390, 404, 406, 548, 553, 589, 642, 651

Threatens Rome. See He threatens

Three Cheers, 627 Fundamental Powers, 550

“Time is Everything,” 32, 60

Time’s Revenges, 408

Tippoo Sahib, 127

Tiring Job, 606

Tirol. See Tyrol

Titles. See Hereditary

Tobias, the Malay, 629, 630

“To Destiny!”, 51

TOLLY. See Barclay de Tolly

TOLSTOY, 312, 404

“Too far, Sire,” 388

Too small. See Europe

To Rochefort, 535

Tortona, 72

To the Savants, 97

Tottering Government, 145

Toulon, 6, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 57, 72, 115, 118, 128, 137, 139, 140, 460, 476, 662. See also Siege of

Tours, 650

Trafalgar, 240, 252

Tragedies. See No Tragedies

Tragedy of Childlessness, 200 of Fulfilment, 282

Tragical Dilemma, 516

TRAJAN, 566

Transitional Characteristics, 560

Travelling Carriage, 335

Treason. See Marie Louise’s Treason, also Marmont’s Treason

Treatment of Subordinates, 588

Treviso, 370

Trianon, 249, 346

Tribunate, 214

Triest, 89

Trinity, 122

Triumphal Entry. See First

Triumvirs, 154

TRONCHET, 169, 174, 194

Troubles thicken, 515

Troy, 637

TRUCHSESS, 480

True Aim, 299

Tsar Alexander, 271. See also Alexander breaks away, 334 in Paris, 466

Tuckets for the Crowd, 105

Tugendbund, 383

Turks. See Victory

TURENNE, 279, 574, 655

Turn of Fortune’s Wheel, 40

Turkey, 41, 90, 333, 375

Turkish Empire, 90, 91, 103

Tuscany, 66, 82, 427, 475, 487, 559

Two Emperors, 244 German Women, 256 Hundred and Fifty Men, 458 Opinions, 275 Rebuffs, 46

Tyrol, 40, 75, 333

Udine, 102

Ulm, 239, 500, 663

Unconquerable German, 343

Undermined Marriage, 115

Understanding with Rome, 85

Understands the Italian Temperament, 63

Under the Stars, 120

Unfailing Memory, 175

Unfeeling, 597

Unflagging Industry, 573

United Europe, 82, 378, 667

United States of America, 100, 390, 530, 533, 595, 643 of Europe, 245, 359, 378, 496, 514, 595, 596

Unity of Command, 67

Untrustworthy Relatives, 144

Upper House, 517, 520

Vacillations, 536

Valençay, 312

Valence, 9, 14, 21, 24, 141, 553, 608

Valladolid, 331, 340, 548

Varennes, 22

Vatican, 84, 85, 95, 185, 337 State Papers, 371

Venality. See Struggle

Vendée, 31, 36, 41, 189, 205, 590

Vendémiaire, Thirteenth, 44, 50

Vendôme Column, 676

Venice, 72, 82, 89, 90, 100, 117, 239, 240, 241, 593, 650, 662, 669

Venetian Sbirro, 614

Verona, 73, 240

Versailles, 6, 672

Viceroy of Italy. See Eugene

Victory. See Excommunication and, First Victory, Marching to and Disillusionment, 78 over the Turks, 135

Vienna, 40, 86, 88, 96, 103, 118, 133, 286, 317, 334, 336, 348, 349, 351, 369, 386, 387, 400, 405, 430, 431, 439, 443, 459, 460, 488, 489, 492, 493, 494, 504, 511, 514, 515, 516, 538, 548, 559, 589, 668, 676

Vilette, 571

Vilna, 387, 390, 391, 392, 393, 397, 413, 419

VIGNALI, 670

Vincennes, 206

VINCENT, 316, 329

VIRGIL, 655

VISCONTI, 92

Visions in Sans Souci, 259

Visitors, 262

Vistula, 265, 382, 393, 431, 528

Vitebsk, 395

Vittoria, 437, 627

Vive l’Empereur, 399, 414, 448, 468, 477, 478, 499, 500, 524, 527 le Roi, 478

“Voilà un homme!”, 323

Volant. See Eagle

Volga, 390

VOLTAIRE, 8, 10, 120, 166, 229, 259, 309, 320, 321, 591, 645, 655

Volcano. See Extinct

Wagram, 338, 340, 381, 461, 500, 520, 567, 587, 629

Waiting for Death, 655

Walewska, 260, 264, 267, 289, 338, 339, 342, 349, 353, 418, 457, 476, 486, 633 again, 339

WALEWSKI, 664

Wallachia, 375

Wallenstein, 417

Wallenstein’s Death, 509

War. See Fatal, Fortune of, Outbreak, Peninsular, This as an Art, 579 Office, 40, 41. See also Ministry for War of Liberation, 287

Warfare. See Commercial

War is an Anachronism, 582

Warnings, 520

Warsaw, 259, 260, 375, 376, 418, 419, 421, 439, 548, 576. See also On Foot

WASHINGTON, 645

Waterloo, 523, 524, 527, 567, 605, 617, 624, 626, 637, 642, 650, 651, 653 See also Defeat, Story

Wavre, 522

We have to forget, 514

We must be content, 501

“We need him in the Army,” 36

Weathercocks, Dictionary of, 638

Weimar, 255, 256, 318, 320, 325, 330, 421, 449, 493, 603

Wellington, 362, 368, 399, 437, 491, 522, 524, 533, 534, 567, 626, 662

Wells of Moses, 130, 601

Werther, 119, 323, 324. See also Sorrows

Weser, 374

West Indies, 51, 313

Westminster, 13

Westphalia, 252, 287. See also Kingdom of

Westward. See Swiftly

What a Ballad my Life has been, 653 is Alexander thinking?, 385 is Paris saying?, 276

Where is Ney?, 500 is the Enemy?, 391

Which Princess?, 349

Whither to go, 534

Why not use Grape-shot?, 26

WIELAND, 320, 321, 322, 323

Wife. See Josephine, His second, Marie Louise

WILDHAGEN, 683

Will. See Last

Without a Fatherland, 657

Women. See Two German are Slaves, 599

Wooing. See also Courtship, Fruitless

Words overheard, 415

Working Classes. See In Favour of

World Conquest. See Plans

Worldwide Schemes, 103

Wrath. See Simulated

WURMSER, 60, 73, 75, 78

Württemberg, 246, 326

Xerxes, 541

Xerxes’ Answer, 541

Yearnings and Calculations, 346

YORCK, 245, 424

“You are frightfully young!”, 289

“You must!”, 411

Young France is ready, 472

Your Brother Lucien. See Sire

“Your holiness being infallible,” 430

Zante, 90

Zeus thunders, 332

Zur Morphologie, 602