C. S. Forester

“ Never could Napoleon have said of any woman’s beauty, as Richard III. said,
“Your beauty, that did haunt me in my sleep
To undertake the death of all the world
So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom.”
In men he could inspire the utmost self-devotion; it seems hateful to think first of the Cuirassiers, a living torrent of steel, pouring cheering to their deaths at Wagram at his command, and then of his vulgar deceit of Walewska and his petty, mercenary intrigues with other women. It leaves a foul blot on the splendour which surrounds him. ”

“ The equilibrium of Europe was poised upon the life of one man, and although many people believed that man to be superhuman, there was no one who thought him immortal. Napoleon had been wounded at Ratisbon; perhaps at his next battle the bullet would be better aimed. But hit or miss, there were many would-be assassins in Europe, and knives were being sharpened and infernal machines prepared in scores of dingy garrets.
No one could imagine what would happen were Napoleon to die. The Marshals recalled longingly the break-up of the Macedonian Empire, and already in fancy saw themselves kings. ”

“ To Napoleon a battalion marching past in column of double companies was worth all the vigour of Schiller and all the passion of Alfieri. Soldiers are a delight to most of us from our nursery days to our maturity; the sight of a long line of bayonets or the brilliance and glitter of the plumes and armour of the Household Cavalry can still make us catch our breath for an instant, but in few instances does this passion become overwhelming. When it becomes characteristic of a nation it usually portends calamity. ”

“ If a lady had a snub nose, he said so; if a gentleman’s coat was shabby, he said so with fury, because it was his pride to be the only shabby person present. If rumours hinting at a lady’s fall from virtue were in circulation, he told her so at the top of his voice, and demanded an explanation. When Napoleon quitted his court he invariably left half the women in tears and half the men in a rage. Then Talleyrand, Prince of Benevento and Grand Chamberlain, would go limping round from group to group, saying with his twisted smile, “The Emperor commands you to be amused.” ”

“ But no matter how much is written, or published, or read, no two men will ever form quite the same estimate of Napoleon. It is as easy to argue that he only rose through sheer good luck as it is to argue that he only fell through sheer bad luck. He can be compared to Iscariot or to St. Paul, to Alexander or to Wilhelm II. At times he seems a body without a soul; at others, a soul without a body. ”

“ Maria Letizia came through the ordeal unbroken in body or spirit. Even Napoleon’s fierce pride humbled itself before her, and her other children were her slaves. But she had a woman’s weaknesses as well as a man’s strength. She was bitterly jealous of her daughter-in-law Josephine; she was bigoted in church matters; and she fought like a tigress in the cause of whichever of her children was experiencing misfortune. When Lucien left France in disgrace in consequence of his marriage to Madame Jouberthon, his mother strove desperately hard to re-establish him. ”

“ It fell to Marmont, the only one of all the Marshals who owed everything to the Emperor, to surrender Paris to the Allies and complete his ruin. Not one of the twenty-six paladins accompanied their master to Elba or St. Helena; that was left to the junior officers such as Bertrand, Montholon and Gourgaud, who had been near enough to him to adore, but too far off to see faults. Yet even to these, life with their idol became at times unbearable, and more than one of them deserted before the end. In men Napoleon could not inspire the love that endures. ”

“ Madame Walewska visited him for a few days at Elba, but that was merely to seek further favours for herself and her son. After Waterloo she married; all her predecessors had already done the same. Women did not love Napoleon. We may picture Napoleon, then, going through life friendless and quite alone. Never a moment’s relaxation from the stiffness of his mental attitude of superiority; never the light of friendship in the eye of man or woman; every single person in Europe was either his slave or his enemy. ”

“ Yet he did not despair; he thrust fiercely into Silesia, and then, finding the Austrians moving against Dresden, he wheeled about, marched a hundred and twenty miles in four days, and gained at Dresden the most surprising of all his victories. With a hundred thousand men he flung back a hundred and sixty thousand Russians and Austrians in utter disorder; Vandamme had cut off their retreat, and once again it seemed as if Ulm and Austerlitz were to be repeated. And then once more occurred a startling change of fortune. Napoleon might have taken a hundred thousand prisoners ”

“ When Wellington gained a victory by which all Portugal was cleared of the French at one blow the public annoyance that even greater results had not been achieved, that the whole French army had not been captured, was extreme. There were few English people who did not think that, should Napoleon by some freak of fortune land in England, the veterans of Austerlitz and the almost legendary Imperial Guard would be routed by the militia and the hasty levies of the countryside. There was nothing which could drive the realities of war hard home into the public mind. ”

“ But just as no man can be a hero to his own valet, so can no general be a God to his immediate subordinates. The rank and file could think of Marengo, of Austerlitz, of Jena, but what of the Marshals? At Marengo, France was on the verge of a frightful disaster. The slightest touch would have turned the scale, and Napoleon, hemmed in against the Alps, must have surrendered. What of France then, with a triumphant army at her frontier and not another regiment at hand? In the Austerlitz campaign it was nearly the same. Before Jena, Napoleon fell into error after error. ”

“ To be a good general, a man must possess strategical skill, tactical skill and administrative ability, as well as the personality to ensure that his ideas are carried out. But to satisfy Napoleon’s jealousy, such a general in the Imperial army had to have another quality—he had to be a man who would never allow his thoughts to wander in the direction of obtaining the throne for himself. If Napoleon could have found three men with all these qualifications he could very possibly have maintained his Empire, since they would have assured to him the safety of Italy, Spain and Poland. ”

“ The Emperor of Austria and the Czar of Russia were present in its ranks, and it seemed as if nothing could save them from surrender. Fortunately, perhaps, for Europe, Napoleon was unwell and did not press the pursuit as closely as he might have done, and Vandamme, who rushed into peril like a bull into the ring, without outposts, without flank guards, without any reasonable protection, was overwhelmed by forces outnumbering his by four to one, and was forced to surrender. Vandamme may have feared neither God nor devil, but he had not the brains for a command in chief, even against men. ”

“ The carriage pelted forward through all the towns where addresses of welcome were ready, where droves of damsels all in white were preparing to greet them, where banquets and fêtes were ready. They drove past Soissons, where a wonderful pavilion had been erected, in which the Imperial pair had expected to meet for the first time during a ceremony more pompous even than epoch-making Tilsit; they only stopped when they reached the palace of Compiegne, where, at nine o’clock at night, a hurried dinner was prepared by the astonished servants. ”

“ It is when we come to examine the careers of the Marshals that we first meet evidence of one of the most curious and significant facts of Napoleon’s life. Everybody to whom Napoleon showed great favour; everyone who received his confidence; everyone, in consequence, who had appeared at one time to be on the direct road to unbounded prosperity, met with a most tragic and unfortunate end. ”

“ The man who took over command of the fleeing mob was already wounded. He was practically unknown; he was leading a beaten army in wild retreat from the finest troops in the world. And yet he rallied that beaten army; in the course of a few hours he had them once more in hand. He faced about time and again as he toiled across the wasted Castilian plains; in a dozen fierce rearguard actions he taught the exultant English that some Frenchmen, as well as being more than men in victory, were not less than women in defeat, and he showed Wellington that every French general was not a Marmont. ”

“ They did their duty; more cannot be said of any man, and much less of most. They gave their lives with a smile for a country which they adored. Danger was as usual to them as was the air they breathed. They gave their blood in streams; they marched with their men into every Continental capital. Their cowed enemies regarded them timidly, as though they were beings from another world. Their continued success and their overwhelming victories might well have led them to believe themselves superhuman. ”

“ Walewska he sought long and earnestly; he displayed every sign of attachment towards Marie Louise. Yet not merely these three, but every woman who granted him favours received in return immense gifts, and, if she desired it, a husband whose path to promotion was made specially easy. The women who flit into and then out of Napoleon’s life seem to be without number, but the gossip of a thousand memoirs, and the hints of a thousand letters, combined with the painstaking care of a crowd of patient inquirers, have brought them all under notice at some time or other. ”

“ Under Napoleon the French cavalry never charged home; at Waterloo we find the great cavalry charges, which Ney directed against the English squares, made at a trot, and the horsemen, swerving from the steel-rimmed, fire-spouting squares, wandering idly about on the flanks, while a few of the more enterprising cut feebly at the bayonets with their sabres. Wellington’s description of them riding about as if they owned the place argues powerfully against their ever having flung themselves upon the bayonet points, as good cavalry should do if sent against unbroken infantry. ”

“ Consequently Napoleon’s policy could not be questioned so long as his army was invincible, and mistakes of policy could be rapidly erased by a victory in the field. Similarly a military error was of far more importance than a political one; if the Bonapartes had never met with a defeat in battle their line would still inevitably hold the throne of France, with a ring of subject countries round them. It is therefore of the first importance to inquire into the failure of the army; the other failures are merely secondary. ”