William Milligan Sloane

“ In the face of superior numbers, the French had not lost a single important position, and whatever military science had been displayed was all theirs; Blücher made the solitary advance move of the allies, the seizure of Möckern by York's corps; Schwarzenberg had been literally mired in his attempt to outflank his enemy, and but for Alexander's peremptory recall of the reserves destined for the same task, the day would have been one of irretrievable disaster to the coalition. Yet Napoleon knew that he was lost unless he could retreat. ”

“ If, then, Napoleon was after all but a plain man, how did he become a personage? Simply because he was the typical man of his day, less the personal mediocrity; the typical burgher in personal character, the typical soldier in war, the typical despot in peace, and the typical idealist in politics; capable in all these qualities of analysis; capable, consequently, of being understood; capable of exhaustion and of being overwhelmed by combinations. ”

“ It was an exceptional moment, a vacillating, retrogressive hour in the history of Austria, of France, and of Italy. The exceptional man, the vigorous citizen of a new political epoch, the inspired strategist of a new military epoch, the unscrupulous doubter of a new religious epoch—this typical personage was at hand to take advantage of the situation; and he did so, hastening the disintegrating processes already at work, seizing every advantage revealed by the crumbling of old systems, and reaping the harvest of French heedlessness. ”

“ There exists no record of human activity more complete than is that of Napoleon Bonaparte's life. In its beginnings we can see this worshiper of power stimulating his immature abilities in vain until, with reckless desperation, he closed the period of training and made his scandalous bargain with Barras; then, grown suddenly, inexplicably rich, becoming with better clothing, food, and lodging physically more vigorous, he seems mercilessly to drive the rowels into his own flanks until initiative, ingenuity, and ruthlessness are displayed with apparently superhuman dimensions. ”

“ The Concordat whatever its faults, partly secured a free church and a free state, separating thus what God had never joined together in holy wedlock; his splendid codes—for no matter who pondered and shaped them, they were his in execution—have guaranteed the perpetuity of civil equality not only in France, but, as the sequel has shown, throughout great expanses of Europe; the questions of a nation's right to its chosen ruler and government, agitated in a new form during the Hundred Days, were those with which succeeding generations were concerned until they were answered in the affirmative. ”

“ But Alexander hellenized the civilization of his day, and prepared the world for Christianity; Charlemagne plowed, harrowed, and sowed the soil of barbaric Europe, making it receptive for the most superb of all secular ideals, that of nationality; Napoleon tore up the system of absolutism by the roots, propagated in the most distant lands of Europe the modern conception of individual rights, overthrew the rotten structure of the German-Roman empire, and in spite of himself regenerated the long-abused ideas of nationality and fatherland. ”

“ Against this army, in this temper, Napoleon despatched what was left of that force which was the peculiar product of his life and genius, the old and middle guard. Most of its members were the children of peasants, and had been born in ante-Revolution days. Neither intelligent in appearance nor graceful in bearing, they nevertheless had the look of perfect fighting-machines. Their huge bearskin caps and long mustaches did not diminish the fierceness of their aspect. ”

“ By his retreat to Troyes on February twenty-second, Schwarzenberg had avoided a decisive conflict, saving his own army, and leaving Napoleon to exhaust himself against the army of Silesia; by his decision of March nineteenth he had confirmed Napoleon in the conviction that the allies were overawed, and had thus led his desperate foe into the greatest blunder conceivable—this chimerical scheme of concentrating his slender, scattered force on the confines of France, and leaving open a way for the great army of invaders to march direct on Paris. ”

“ But the old Napoleon was no more; vacillating almost as if in partial catalepsy, murmuring empty phrases in quick, indistinct utterance, he refused to decide. Members of the council began to gain admittance, and, waxing bolder as Napoleon grew more silent, the word "abdication" was soon on every tongue. At last a decision was taken, and such a one! Lucien was sent to parley with the chambers, and Fouché was summoned. The latter, with insidious eloquence, argued that in the legislature alone could Napoleon find a support to his throne. ”

“ France abhorred the dynasties and all their works, believing that dynastic rule could never mean anything except absolutism and feudalism. The experiment of popular sovereignty wielded by a democracy had been a failure; but the liberal French, like men of the same intelligence throughout Europe, did not, for all that, lose faith in popular sovereignty; they knew there must be some channel for its exercise. Outside of France, as in it, the most enlightened opinion of the time regarded Napoleon as the savior of society. ”

“ No mere man, even the most remarkable, can climb without supports of some kind, however unstable they may be. Napoleon Bonaparte did not soar, he rose on (p. 248) the ladder of power by stages easily traceable: first by the protection of the Robespierres; then by the necessities and velleities of Barras and the Directory; afterward by the encouragement of all France, which was sick of the inefficient Directory; and still later by the army, which adored a leader who frankly repaid devotion in the hard cash of booty, and bravery in the splendid rewards of that glory which was a national passion. ”

“ Next morning he was cheerful again, and as he stepped into the White Horse court of the palace at the hour of guard-mounting two battalions cheered him enthusiastically. His step was elastic, his countenance lighted with the old fire; the onlookers said, "It is the Napoleon of Potsdam and Schönbrunn." But in the afternoon Caulaincourt returned, and the sky seemed darkened; the Czar had listened to the envoy's eloquence only so far as to take into consideration once again the question of peace with the Empire under a regency; as a condition antecedent, Napoleon must abdicate. ”

“ Napoleon at first denounced such mutiny, but then, with seeming resignation, promised an answer next day. He did not yet know that in secret convention the generals were resolving not to obey the orders issued for the morrow; but as the door closed behind the marshals the mind so far clear seemed suddenly eclipsed, and murmuring, "These men have neither heart nor bowels; I am conquered less by fortune than by the egotism and ingratitude of my companions in arms," the great, homeless citizen of the world sank into utter dejection. ”

“ The behavior of the French people was natural enough, but they lent themselves to his purposes with complete surrender. In this the world learned a lesson which should never be forgotten: that democracy is an excellent workhorse, but a poor charger; a good hack, but an untrustworthy racer. The interest of the plain man is in his daily life, his family, his business, his advancement. He cannot be an expert in foreign or domestic politics, in public law, or in warfare; expertness requires the exclusive devotion of a lifetime. ”

“ With such opportunities, Bonaparte unfolded what was certainly his supereminent quality—the quality which endeared him to the French masses as did no other, the quality which above all others distinguished him from the hated tyrants under whom they had so long suffered, the quality which even the meanest intellect could mark as distinctively middle-class, in opposition to its negation in the upper class—the quality, namely, of untiring industry; laborious, self-initiated, self-guided, self-improving industry. This burgher quality Napoleon possessed as no burgher ever did. ”

“ The year 1814 is the most astonishing of Napoleon's military life. He first conceived a plan for combining the resources of Italy, Switzerland, Naples, and France. This failed by Augereau's sloth and Murat's ingratitude. Nothing daunted, the fertile brain then outlined schemes for meeting the quick advance of the allies through the Netherlands, for defending the Rhine frontier, and for a levy en masse of the French people to hurl back invasion under the walls of Paris. ”

“ Nothing could be more fatuous and simple than the effort to read the true character of Napoleon Bonaparte from his talk and behavior when an exile; a prisoner of time and space, as world communications then were; an exhausted body; a crippled, outraged spirit, reduced for attack and defense to the weapons of the pen and the tongue wielded on and over an immensity of apartness. ”

“ But in one respect he failed miserably, and that failure vitiated much of the substantial gain which seemed to have been made. He failed in curbing his own ambition. The majestic ridge of his achievement was the verge of the precipice over which he fell. In the first place, his signal success as a lawgiver was due entirely to the dazzling splendors of his victories. Marengo was the climax to a series of such achievements as had not so far been wrought on the tented field within the bounds of French history. ”

“ The abdication of Napoleon would mean the perpetuation of the Empire. The Empire would be not merely peace, but peace with what war had gained; to wit, the imperial court and society, the preservation and enjoyment of estates, the continuity of processes which had done so much to regenerate France and make her a modern nation. The prospect was irresistible, and Ney only expressed (p. 121) the grim determination of his colleagues when he gave the watchword so unexpectedly at the mounting of the guard. When Napoleon entered his cabinet he found there Berthier, Maret, Caulaincourt, and Bertrand. ”

“ But magnificent as was the work of all these doughty champions on both sides, it was far surpassed in the center, where during the entire day, under Napoleon's eye, advance and resistance had been desperate. Men fell like grass before the scythe, and surging lines of their comrades moved on from behind. Such were the numbers and such the carnage that men have compared the conflict to that of the nations at Armageddon. ”

“ Davout had found his Dutch and Flemings to be mediocre soldiers, unfit at crucial moments to take the offensive; the army had shrunk to about two hundred and fifty thousand men all told; straggling was increasing, and the country was virtually devastated. To this last fact the plain people, sufferers as they were, remained in their larger patriotism amazingly indifferent: the "hither-and-thither" system tickled their fancy, and they dubbed Napoleon the "Bautzen Messenger-boy." Uneasiness pervaded every French encampment; on the other side timidity was replaced by courage, dissension by unity. ”

“ Even in times of peace the hard-worked citizen either neglects his political duties altogether, or, performing them in a thoughtless routine, longs for some one he can trust to do his thinking and acting: in war, as far as we have had the opportunity to observe in ancient and modern times, his imperialism is avowed, and he demands a dictator. We have no reason to suppose that there is any democracy which could outlast twenty years of a herculean struggle for national life or death, and such the Franco-English wars which introduced the last century seemed to the Frenchman of that time to be. ”

“ Napoleon, walking slowly, advanced within pistol-shot. He wore the old familiar gray surtout, the well-known cocked hat, and a tricolor cockade. "Soldiers of the Fifth," he said in a strong, calm voice, "behold me!" Then advancing a few paces farther, he threw open his coat and displaying the familiar uniform, he called: "If there be one soldier among you who wishes to kill his Emperor, he can. I come to offer myself to your assaults." In an instant the opposing ranks melted into a mob of sobbing, cheering men, kissing Napoleon's shoes, struggling to touch the skirts of his shabby garments. ”

“ Napoleon seems to have been fully aware of French sentiment. In addition, he understood that not merely for this sufficient reason could he never be king of France in name or fact, but also that, having elsewhere harried and humiliated both peoples and dynasties in the name of revolutionary ideals, the masses had found him out, and were as much embittered as their rulers, believing him to be a charlatan using dazzling principles as a cloak for personal ambition. ”