Emperor Napoleon III

“ We have had enough of war without kindling civil war." Finally the Emperor gave way, and drew up a declaration couched in these terms: "The allied Powers having proclaimed that the Emperor Napoleon was the sole obstacle to the re-establishment of peace in Europe, the Emperor Napoleon, faithful to his oaths, declares that he is ready to descend from the throne, to leave France, and even give up his life, for the good of the fatherland, inseparable from the rights of his son, of those of the regency of the Empress and of the maintenance of the laws of the Empire." ”

“ They are at this moment ready to receive any prince, that foreigners may think proper to impose on them. But, if they reject Napoleon II., the Emperor ought to have recourse to his sword, and to those brave men, who, covered as they are with blood and scars, still cry 'Long live the Emperor!' It was, in favour of his son, that he abdicated: his abdication is void, if Napoleon II. be not acknowledged. Shall French blood have been spilt again, only to make us pass a second time under a foreign yoke? to bow the head beneath a degraded government? ”

“ As far as regards his Majesty, his determination is irrecoverably fixed: he will not leave France less than he found her. Should the Allies wish to alter the bases that have been proposed and accepted,—namely, that France should preserve her natural limits, the Emperor finds only three courses open to him: to fight and conquer; to fight and perish gloriously; or, finally, if the nation should not support him, to abdicate. The Emperor attaches but little importance to sovereignty; he will never purchase it by degradation. ”

“ Princes, magistrates, soldiers, citizens, we have all but one object in our several departments,—the interests of our country. Weakness in the executive is the greatest of all misfortunes to the people. Soldier, or First Consul, I have but one thought; Emperor, I have no other object,—the prosperity of France. I do not wish to increase its territory, but I am resolved to maintain its integrity. I have no desire to augment the influence which we possess in Europe, but I will not permit that we enjoy to decline. No State shall be incorporated with our empire ”

“ The Emperor then thought these national limits were necessary to the security of France as well as to the equilibrium of Europe; he thought that the French nation, in the circumstances under which it found itself, ought rather to risk every chance of war than to give them up. France would have obtained that integrity, and with it preserved her honour, had not treason contributed to the success of the allies. The treaty of the 2d of August, and the bill of the British parliament, style the Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, and give him only the title of General. ”

“ The sovereigns of Europe eagerly acknowledged Napoleon: all beheld with pleasure the modification of the Republic, which placed France on a footing of harmony with the rest of Europe, and which at once confirmed the constitution and the happiness of that great nation. Ambassadors from Austria, Russia, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, and America, in fine, from all the powers of Europe, came to congratulate the Emperor. England alone sent no ambassador: she had violated the treaty of Amiens, and had consequently again declared war against France; but even England approved the change. ”

“ Lowering clouds and pitiless rain robbed the scene of all brilliance, but wreathed it with a certain sombre majesty. On the one side was the fair city, the centre of German art and culture, hastily girdled with redoubts and intrenchments manned now by some 120,000 defenders. Fears and murmurings had vanished as soon as the Emperor appeared; and though in many homes men still longed for the triumph of the allies, yet loyalty to their King and awe of Napoleon held the great mass of the citizens true to his alliance. As for the French soldiery, their enthusiasm was unbounded. ”

“ This circumstance causes the greatest bustle round the Elysée; the multitude rushes towards the gate, and testifies the deepest interest; numbers penetrate within the hall, while some even of the popular class scale the walls; some in tears, others in a state approaching to distraction, crowd up to the Emperor, who is walking tranquilly in the garden, and make offers of every description. Napoleon alone is calm, constantly replying that they ought in future to employ this zeal and tenderness for the good of their country. ”

“ We here approach one of the most interesting experiments of the modern world, which, if successful, would profoundly have altered the face of Europe and the character of its States. Even in its failure it attests Napoleon's vivid imagination and boundless mental resources. He aspired to be more than Emperor of the French: he wished to make his Empire a cosmopolitan realm, whose confines might rival those of the Holy Roman Empire of one thousand years before, and embrace scores of peoples in a grand, well-ordered European polity. ”

“ I should have fallen a martyr to my zeal, and my memory would have lived for ever in all noble and generous hearts. But I repeat it, nobody considers the attempt practicable; and nobody thinks of making it. The Emperor Napoleon’s plans and wishes are still those which he formed when he repaired willingly and in good faith on board the Bellerophon, that is, to go and seek a life of tranquillity in America, or even in England, under the protection of the laws. ”

“ The nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, and son of Hortense, was only known as the perpetrator of two very absurd attempts to overthrow the monarchy under Louis Philippe. But since the remains of the great Emperor had been returned to France by England, and the splendors of the past placed in striking contrast with a dull, lustreless present, there had been a revival of Napoleonic memories and enthusiasm. Here was an opportunity to unite two powerful sentiments in one man—a Napoleon at the head of Republican France would express the glory of the past and the hope of the future. ”

“ Three days later the Emperor started for the camp at Boulogne.
In spite of the enthusiasm of the people and the army, one thing became clear to every thoughtful observer, and that was that the new régime, lacking strength to resist misfortunes, must have perpetual success in order to live. Napoleon was condemned, by the form of his government, not merely to succeed, but to dazzle, to astonish, to subjugate. His Empire required extraordinary magnificence, prodigious effects, Babylonian festivities, gigantic adventures, colossal victories. ”

“ The second idea which suggested itself to the Emperor’s mind was to proceed to Italy, to form a junction with the Viceroy. “But this,” said Napoleon, “would have been a desperate course, without the chance of obtaining an adequate result. It would have removed the theatre of conflict to too remote a point. Public enthusiasm would have had time to subside; and we should no longer have been fighting in France, on whose sacred soil alone we could hope to work the prodigies that had become indispensable.” ”

“ He resolved to divorce Josephine, whom he loved and respected; a woman fully worthy of his love, and of the exalted position to which she was raised. But she had no children, and Napoleon wanted an heir to the universal empire which he sought to erect on the ruins of the ancient monarchies of Europe. The dream of Charlemagne and of Charles V. was his, also—the revival of the great Western Empire. Moreover, Napoleon sought a domestic alliance with the proud family of the German emperor. He sought, by this, to gratify his pride and strengthen his throne. ”

“ In the next place, we are not following another sovereign. That the Emperor Napoleon was our sovereign is an undeniable fact; but he has abdicated, and his reign is at an end. You are confounding private actions with party measures; love and devotedness, with political opinions. Finally, with regard to our colours, which seem to have dazzled you so much, they are but a remnant of our old costume. We wear them to-day, only because we wore them yesterday. One cannot with indifference lay aside things to which one is attached; that can only be done from constraint or necessity. ”

“ They only seek equality."
But France no longer wished for an aristocratic king, who would confer wealth, splendor, and power exclusively upon his nobles. The old feudal throne was still hated with implacable hatred. France demanded a popular throne; a king for the people, one who would consult the interests of the masses, who would throw open to all alike the avenues of influence and honor and opulence. Such a monarch was Napoleon. The people adored him. He is our emperor, they shouted with enthusiasm. We will make him greater than all the kings of all the nobles. ”

“ Those who have not seen the glory of the Emperor Napoleon, during the years 1810, 1811, and 1812, can never conceive what a pitch of power one man may reach.
When he passed through Champagne, or Lorraine, or Alsace, people gathering the harvest or the vintage would leave everything to run and see him; women, children, and old men would come a distance of eight or ten leagues to line his route, and cheer and cry, "Vive l'Empereur! Vive l'Empereur!" One would think that he was a god, that mankind owed its life to him, and that, if he died, the world would crumble and be no more. ”

“ They will not admit any other manner of re-establishing in France an imperial throne, even were it but for life; the two sovereigns being firmly resolved never to accept in the person of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, any other than the supreme elective chief of the Republic, and to oppose by all the means in their power the pretension of establishing the actual President of the French Republic as Emperor, in the sense of an hereditary transmitter or founder of a Napoleonian dynasty. ”

“ Napoleon Bonaparte, in making himself emperor, has performed an act which places France in a false position that she cannot maintain. As long as he was merely the head of the republican party—the incarnation of the spirit of revolution—he was certain of support at home, and under no absolute necessity to protract the war with foreign powers, one moment after they chose to make peace with the republic. As emperor, however, he has taken upon himself an obligation to wage eternal warfare; for by war alone can he maintain himself as emperor. ”

“ Modern Paris is, to a great extent, the creation of Napoleon III. He completed that material transformation of the city which had already been begun at the fall of the ancient monarchy. The student of the history of France need not be reminded how its people were oppressed by the absolute monarchs of France prior to the French Revolution. Napoleon III caused himself to be proclaimed Emperor by sheer force of arms, wading through blood. Since the first French Revolution, the French people were always fickle and thus a source of alarm to the Empire. ”

“ You, you have done nothing but submit to principles, to your conviction, to the truth; for such are your doctrines that Napoleon, four times elected by a great nation, must necessarily, in spite of your public denials, have found himself a sovereign in the bottom of your hearts. Look into your consciences!... Now, Napoleon has lost nothing but his throne; a reverse has snatched it from him; success would have fixed it with him for ever. He has seen eleven hundred thousand men march against him. Their generals, their sovereigns, have every where proclaimed that his person was their sole object. ”

“ They represented Napoleon Bonaparte in the light of a true son and heir of the Revolution, who had been raised by the will of the French people to great power in order that he might consolidate the glorious achievements of liberty, equality, and fraternity. According to the emperor himself, he had always been the friend of peace and of oppressed nationalities, the author of blessings which had flowed uninterruptedly upon his people until he had been thwarted by the machinations of the British and the sheer brute force of the European despots. ”

“ And in this most memorable reverse of Napoleon III., we invite our apostolic interpreters of Providence to note a special fact. The fallen emperor not only lives to realize the forfeiture of all his fame, differing herein from those who die before the loss, but has to endure the bitterness of witnessing the demolition of all the proud creations of his reign. He had raised France to the pinnacle of earthly greatness, had just crowned, as he himself phrased it, the glorious edifice his genius had successfully constructed. France is now dismembered, dilapidated, a mass of melancholy ruin ”

“ From the age of eighteen, he has faced the anger of Sylla and the hostility of the aristocracy, in order to plead unceasingly the grievances of the oppressed and the rights of the provinces.
So long as he is not in power, being exempt from responsibility, he walks invariably in the way he has traced, listens to no compromise, pursues unsparingly the adherents of the opposite party, and maintains his opinions energetically, at the risk of wounding his adversaries; but, once consul, he lays aside all resentment, and makes a loyal appeal to all who will rally round him ”

“ It is my impression that the Emperor Napoleon is a discreet and amiable man, but that he is not so clever as the world esteems him. The world places to his account everything that happens, and if it rains in eastern Asia at an unseasonable moment chooses to attribute it to some malevolent machination of the Emperor. ”