vicomte de François-René Chateaubriand

“ A man unacquainted with politics would never have believed that an impotent hidden on the banks of the Lys would be flung back upon the throne by the collision of thousands of soldiers ready to cut each other's throats: soldiers of whom he was neither the King nor the general, who were not thinking of him, who knew of neither his name nor his existence. Of two such close spots as Ghent and Waterloo, never did one appear so dim, the other so dazzling: the Legitimacy lay in the store-house, like an old broken waggon. ”

“ At the end of each great epoch of time, one hears some voice, doleful with regrets of the past, sound the curfew: thus moaned they who saw vanish Charlemagne, St. Louis, Francis I., Henry IV. and Louis XIV. What could I not say, in my turn, eye-witness that I am of two or three lapsed worlds? When one has met, as I have, Washington and Bonaparte, what remains there to look at behind the plough of the American Cincinnatus and the tomb at St Helena? Why have I survived the age and the men to whom I belonged by the date of my birth? ”

“ The poet ought to have known that Napoleon's destiny was a muse, like all high destinies. That muse was able to change an abortive issue into a catastrophe which [Pg 221] revived its hero. The solitude of Napoleon's exile and tomb has spread over a brilliant memory a spell of a different kind. Alexander did not die under the eyes of Greece; he disappeared in the proud perspectives of Babylon. Bonaparte has not died under the eyes of France; he has vanished in the gorgeous horizons of the torrid zone. He sleeps like a hermit or like a pariah in a valley, at the end of a deserted pathway. ”

“ Helena has reappeared to the great joy of the peoples: the world has seen Napoleon again; Napoleon has not seen the world again. The conqueror's vagrant ashes have been looked down upon by the same stars that guided him to his exile: Bonaparte passed through the tomb, as he passed through everything, without stopping. Landed at the Havre, the corpse arrived at the Arc de Triomphe, a canopy beneath which the sun shows its face on certain days of the year. ”

“ We shall line the quays and the water-terrace with guns: let Bonaparte attack us in this position; let him carry our barricades one by one; let him bombard Paris, if he please and if he have mortars; let him make himself odious to the whole population, and we shall see the result of his enterprise! Let us resist for but three days, and victory is ours. The King, defending himself in his palace, will arouse universal enthusiasm. Lastly, if he must die, let him die worthy of his rank; let Napoleon's last exploit be to cut an old man's throat. ”

“ Henceforth any observation, however moderate it may be, is reputed profane: it needs courage to dare brave the cries of the vulgar, not to be afraid of being treated as a narrow intelligence, incapable of understanding and feeling the genius of Napoleon, for the sole reason that, in the midst of the lively and real admiration which one professes for him, one is nevertheless not able to worship all his imperfections. The world belongs to Bonaparte: that of which the ravisher was unable to complete the conquest, his fame usurps; living he missed the world, dead he possesses it. ”

“ Bonaparte, therefore, was persuaded to his enterprise less by the false reports of his friends than by the needs of his genius: he took up the cross by virtue of the faith that was in him. To a great man, to be born is not everything: he must die. Was Elba an end for Napoleon? Could he accept the sovereignty of a vegetable-patch, like Diocletian [246] at Salona? If he had waited till later, would he have had more chances of success, at a time when his memory would have aroused less emotion, when his old soldiers would have left the army, when new social positions would have been adopted? ”

“ Napoleon, booted, spurred, dressed in the uniform of a colonel of the Guard, decorated with the Legion of Honour, was laid in state on his little iron bedstead; upon that visage which was never astonished the soul, as it fled, had left a sublime stupor. The planishers and joiners soldered and nailed Bonaparte into a four-fold coffin of mahogany, of lead, of mahogany again, and of tin: they seemed to fear that he would never be imprisoned enough. The cloak which the erstwhile victor had worn at the vast funeral of Marengo served as a pall to the coffin. ”

“ He charmed one with his kindly grace, different from the manners of the Empire. The French recognised with pleasure in his person their old manners, their old politeness and their old language; the crowd pressed round him, a consoling apparition of the past, a twofold protection as he was against the conquering foreigner and against the still threatening Bonaparte. Alas, the Prince was setting his foot again on French soil only to see his son assassinated there and to go back to die in the land of exile whence he was returning: there are men round whose necks life has been flung like a chain! ”

“ One cannot abdicate crime as easily as a crown: the brow once girt with the hideous circlet retains ineffaceable marks from its contact.
The idea of reducing an ambitious man of genius from the rank of Emperor to that of Generalissimo or President of the Republic was a chimera: the red cap which they had fixed on the head of his busts during the Hundred Days would only have foreboded to Bonaparte the resumption of the diadem, were it given to the athletes who race through the world to run the same course twice. ”

“ We should see that illustrious alliance formed between honour and liberty, as under the reign of the Valois, upon our monuments. Gothic battlements crowned with infinite grace the orders borrowed from the Greeks. Is not liberty the greatest of benefits and the first of man's needs? It kindles genius, it elevates the heart, it is as necessary to the friend of the Muses as the air he breathes. The arts are, to a certain point, able to live in dependence, because they make use of a language apart, which is not understood by the crowd ”

“ At the First Restoration, I was of opinion that the tricolour cockade should be kept: it was resplendent in all its glory; the white cockade was forgotten; by retaining colours warranted by so many triumphs, men were not preparing a rallying-token for a coming revolution. Not to adopt the white cockade would have been wise; to abandon it after it had been worn by Bonaparte's own Grenadiers was an act of cowardice: one cannot pass with impunity under the Caudine Forks; that which dishonours is fatal: a slap in the face does you no harm physically, and yet it kills you. ”

“ A silent and solitary hearer of the formidable judgment of the destinies, I should have been less moved if I had found myself in the fray: the peril, the fire, the press of Death would have left me no time for meditation; but, alone under a tree, in the fields of Ghent, like the shepherd of the flocks which passed around me, I was overwhelmed by the weight of my reflexions: what was that battle? Was it decisive? Was Napoleon there in person? Were lots being cast upon the world, as upon Christ's vesture? ”

“ My admiration for Bonaparte was always great and sincere, even at the time when I was attacking Napoleon with the greatest eagerness.
Posterity is not so fair in its judgments as has been held; there are passions, infatuations, errors of distance even as there are passions and errors of proximity. When posterity admires without reserve, it is scandalized that the contemporaries of the man admired should not have had the same idea of that man as itself. ”

“ Sire, at this moment we share your royal sadness; there is not one of your councillors and ministers who would not give up his life to prevent the invasion of France. You, Sire, are a Frenchman, we are Frenchmen! Alive to the honour [Pg 133] of our country, proud of the glory of our arms, admirers of the courage of our soldiers, we would be willing, in the midst of your battalions, to shed the last drop of our blood to bring them back to their duty or to share lawful triumphs with them. We can only look with the deepest sorrow upon the ills that are ready to break over our country. ”

“ When Napoleon crossed the Niemen, at the head of four-hundred thousand foot and a hundred thousand horse, to blow up the palace of the Tsars in Moscow, he was less astonished than when, breaking his ban and flinging his irons in the faces of the kings, he came alone, from Cannes to Paris, to sleep peacefully at the Tuileries.
Beside the prodigy of the invasion of one man must be placed another which was the consequence of the first: the Legitimacy was seized with a fainting-fit; the failure of the heart of the State attacked the members and rendered France motionless. ”

“ Bonaparte was too near his cradle and his conquests: his funeral island should have been more distant and surrounded by more waves. It is inexplicable how the Allies had come to think of banishing Napoleon to the rocks where he was to serve his apprenticeship in exile: was it possible to believe that at the sight of the Apennines, that when smelling the powder of the fields of Montenotte, Areola and Marengo, that on discovering Venice, Rome and Naples, his three fair slaves, his heart would not be seized with irresistible temptations? ”

“ Impatient of will, patient of character, incomplete and as though unfinished, Napoleon had gaps in his genius: his understanding resembled the sky of that other hemisphere under which he was to go to die, the sky whose stars are separated by empty spaces.
One asks one's self by what spell Bonaparte, so aristocratic, so hostile to the people, came to achieve the popularity which he enjoyed: for that forger of yokes has most certainly remained popular with a nation whose pretension was to raise altars to independence and equality ”

“ Is a crown worth so great a sacrifice? It left them powerless to remove anybody: whom could they exclude, after accepting Fouché?
Parties acted without thinking of the form of government which they had adopted; every one spoke of the Constitution, of liberty, of equality, of the right of peoples, and no one wanted them; fashionable verbiage: one asked, without thinking, for news of the Charter, hoping all the time that it would soon die the death. Liberals and Royalists leant towards absolute government, modified by our habits: such is the temper and trend of France. ”

“ Shall it be among those soldiers whom he has so often deceived and sacrificed by misleading their valour? Shall it be in the heart of those families which the mere sound of his name still fills with terror?
"Bonaparte despises us enough to believe us capable of abandoning a lawful and dearly-beloved Sovereign to share the fate of a man who is no longer more than an adventurer. He believes this, the madman, and his last act of insanity reveals him to us as he is!
"Soldiers, the French Army is the bravest army in Europe; it will also be the most faithful. ”

“ None of us, who have lived through the troubles and excitements, shall escape the eyes of history. Who can flatter himself that he shall be found stainless in a time of frenzy when none has the entire use of his reason? Let us then be full of indulgence for others; let us excuse that of which we cannot approve. Such is human weakness, that talent, genius, virtue itself are sometimes able to overstep the limits of duty. M. Chénier worshipped liberty: can we ascribe it to him as a crime? ”

“ I fear nothing, therefore, for myself; but I fear for France: he who comes to kindle among us the torches of civil war brings with him also the scourge of foreign war; he comes to put back our country under his iron yoke; he comes, lastly, to destroy the Constitutional Charter which I have given you, that Charter which will be my proudest title in the eyes of posterity, that Charter which all Frenchmen cherish and which I here swear to maintain: let us then rally round it. ”

“ During these transactions, Bonaparte was turning over his ideas in his head:
"I have no army left," he said; "I have nothing but fugitives. The majority of the Chamber of Deputies are good; I have only La Fayette, Lanjuinais and a few others against me. If the nation rises, the enemy will be crushed; if, instead of rising, they quarrel, all will be lost. The nation has not sent deputies to overthrow me, but to support me. I am not afraid of them, whatever they may do; I shall always be the idol of the people and the army: if I were to say a word, they would be beaten to death. ”

“ Long live the Constitution!"
In this energetic, natural and sincere language, one feels the generosity of youth and the love of liberty. They who come to tell us to-day that the Restoration was received by France with dislike and sorrow are ambitious men who are playing a game, or new-comers who have never known Bonaparte's oppression, or old imperialized revolutionary liars who, after applauding the return of the Bourbons with the rest, now, according to their habit, insult the fallen and return to their instincts of murder, police and servitude. ”

“ Louis (it became fatal to his heirs) , the more pleasing was it to the national pride: the French rejoiced at seeing sovereigns who, when conquered, had borne the chains of a man, bear, as conquerors, the yoke of a dynasty.
The unshaken faith of Louis XVIII. in his blood is the real might that restored his sceptre; it was that faith which twice let fall upon his head a crown for which Europe certainly did not believe, did not pretend that she was exhausting her populations and her treasures. The soldier-less exile was to be found at the issue of all the battles which he had not delivered. ”