Napoleon III

“ It is singular that England, after exhausting her resources by a war of twenty years to dethrone Napoleon I., should become the firmest ally and friend of Napoleon III., who trampled on all constitutional liberty. ”

“ Fifteen years pass, years of war and convulsion unexampled in Europe since the cataclysm of the fifth century, the century of Alaric and Attila—and within that space, those fifteen years, what a revolution in all the sentiments, the hopes, the aspirations of men! The Consul Bonaparte has become the Emperor Napoleon, the arch-enemy of Liberty and of the human race. France, the world's forlorn hope in 1800, is, in 1815, the gathering place of the armies of Europe, risen in arms against her! ”

“ We should extend to Napoleon III. the same charity that we extend to men who have long been historical characters, and judge him by his actions and their results, and not criticise him by the canons of faction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thrice did the fickle goddess cast Napoleon to the ground in the first two years of his new life, only that his wondrous gifts and sublime self-confidence might tower aloft the more conspicuously, bewildering alike the malcontents of Paris, the generals of the old Empire, the peoples of the Levant, and the statesmen of Britain. Of all these triumphs assuredly the last was not the least. The Peace of Amiens left France the arbitress of Europe, and, by restoring to her all her lost colonies, it promised to place her in the van of the oceanic and colonizing peoples. ”

“ One of the strangest events to which the Eastern question has given rise is, that Napoleon III.—the “idiot,” as a noble lord in the present Cabinet was wont to call him—the penniless adventurer, the man regardless of all ties, of all faith, should be the person to remind the Conservative Governments of Europe of the treaties they themselves had framed, and to summon them to execute them faithfully. Louis Napoleon is no longer an outcast; nor is France isolated. ”

“ Napoleon was the great foe to be feared, for with his resplendent genius he was enthroning himself in the hearts of the people of all lands.
But no impartial man, in either hemisphere, can question that the right was with Napoleon. It was not the duty of the thirty millions of France to ask permission of the fifteen millions of England to modify their government. The kings of Europe, led by England, had combined to force with the bayonet, upon France, a rejected and an execrated dynasty. The inexperienced Republic, distracted and impoverished by these terrific blows, was fast falling to ruin. ”

“ When we remember the strength of dynastic prejudices, the influence of British money, the rising tide of German nationality and of hatred of Napoleon, the intense antagonism to French principles, the activity of royalist and clerical intrigue—it is difficult to escape the conclusion that had Napoleon yielded up what he had taken from Austria, he could have stopped at nothing short of a full surrender all along the line. And had he returned to France shorn of all that French blood had won, the storm of indignation there would have driven him from the throne. ”

“ Napoleon III., aspiring to imitate his uncle, also contributed important services, but was not equal to the task he assumed, and made so many mistakes that he can hardly be called a great man, although he performed a great rôle in the drama of European politics, and at one time occupied a superb position. ”

“ Napoleon III, the foremost monarch of his day in the West, excessively ambitious, inordinately proud, tricky and superficial, who is reported to have contemptuously flung down the Tablet sent to him by Bahá’u’lláh, who was tested by Him and found wanting, and whose downfall was explicitly predicted in a subsequent Tablet, was ignominiously defeated in the Battle of Sedan (1870) , marking the greatest military capitulation recorded in modern history; lost his kingdom and spent the remaining years of his life in exile. ”

“ I await tidings from you with as much impatience as I love you with tenderness.
"Josephine."
The birth of this prince, Louis Napoleon, whose renown as Napoleon III. now fills the world, and respecting whose character and achievements there is so wonderful a diversity of sentiment among intelligent men, took place in Paris. Napoleon was at that time upon the highest pinnacle of prosperity. The Allies, vanquished in every conflict, seemed disposed to give up the attempt to reinstate the Bourbons upon the throne of France. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From almost every promontory on the coast of the Republic, washed by the Channel, or the Mediterranean, the eye could discern English frigates, black and threatening, holding all France in a state of blockade.
One always finds a certain pleasure in doing that which he can do well. Napoleon was fully conscious of his military genius. He had, in behalf of bleeding humanity, implored peace in vain. ”

“ Brilliant though the panorama of Napoleon's life is after Tilsit, we view with wonder rather than approval the striking pictures as they present themselves one by one. We observe the wild enthusiasm of the French people for their Emperor after Ulm and Austerlitz and Hohenlinden. Even the battle of Trafalgar—a victory for England—does not dampen their ardor. But Napoleon himself grows careful, and tries to keep from the army the news of his loss on the sea.
Prussia is humbled, Austria wishes to make terms, Napoleon has some successes in Spain, and he hopes to injure England. ”

“ We have briefly epitomized Napoleon’s early career, his doings in the Revolution, in Italy, and in Egypt, unto the time that France’s worship of his military genius raised him to the rank of First Consul, and gave him in effect the power of a king. No one dared question his word, the army was at his beck and call, the nation lay prostrate at his feet—not in fear but in admiration. Such was the state of affairs in France in the closing year of the eighteenth century. The Revolution was at an end, the Republic existed only as a name; Napoleon was the autocrat of France and the terror of Europe. ”

“ Napoleon was the incarnation of the modern spirit which demolished thrones and set an iron heel upon crowned heads, giving the sacred titles of king and prince to soldiers who, even in palaces, still showed the swaggering brutality of the camp and the stable whence they sprang. Yet, just because an alliance with the Austrian house seemed in so many ways impossible, the thought of it inflamed the ardor of Napoleon all the more.
"Impossible?" he had once said, contemptuously. "The word 'impossible' is not French." ”

“ 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. ”

“ A revolution in 1830 deposed one king and set up another who was ready to rule under the terms of a constitution. In 1848 this monarchy was displaced [Pg 20] and the second French republic was established. But again a Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon I, seized the government and established a second empire, calling himself Napoleon III. He aped the ways of his great predecessor and tried by foreign conquest or annexation in Africa, Italy, and Mexico to dazzle the French people. ”

“ As soon as Napoleon was firmly seated in his consular chair, he sent an invitation for the chiefs of these royalist forces in La Vendee to visit him in Paris, assuring them of a safe return. They all accepted the invitation. Napoleon met them in his audience-chamber with the utmost kindness and frankness. He assured them that it was his only object to rescue France from the ruin into which it had fallen; to bring peace and happiness to his distracted country. With that laconic logic which he had ever at command, he said, "Are you fighting in self-defense? You have no longer cause to fight. ”

“ Under these circumstances Napoleon, then a young man but twenty-nine years of age, and who, but three years before, had been unknown to fame or to fortune, resolved to return to France, to overthrow the miserable government, by which the country was disgraced, to subdue anarchy at home and aggression from abroad, and to rescue thirty millions of people from ruin. The enterprise was undeniably magnificent in its grandeur and noble in its object. He had two foes to encounter, each formidable, the royalists of combined Europe and the mob of Paris. ”

“ He is adored by the vast majority of the French nation, and even his political opponents, if accidentally brought under the influence of his particularly winning and gracious manner, are, in spite of themselves, charmed and softened. There can be no doubt that Napoleon III. enjoys a well-merited popularity, and that there is throughout all classes a deep and earnest confidence that the honour and glory of France are safe in his hands. ”

“ Napoleon III, favoured by the immortal prestige of his glorious uncle, but far behind him in genius, though intellectually well gifted, as he proved it during his Presidential term of the second French Republic and during the first years he occupied the Imperial Throne of France, used the plebiscit to have his famous coup d'Etat of the second day of December 1851, prepared with consummate skill and carried out with great energy, ratified by the nation by an overwhelming majority of several millions of votes. ”

“ In truth, Napoleon showed profound insight into human nature when he judged the hatred of an order of nobility to be a mere passing spasm of revolutionary fever; and he evinced equal good sense in restoring that order through the chiefs of the one truly popular institution in France, the army. Besides, the new titles were not taken from French domains, which would have revived the idea of feudal dependence in France: they were the fruit of Napoleon's great victory; and the sound of distant names like Benevento, Berg, and Dalmatia skilfully flattered the pride of la grande nation. ”

“ The privileged classes of every country hated Napoleon, because his genius had given stability to the institutions that grew out of the revolution, because his victories had baffled their calculations, and shaken their hold of power. As the chief of revolutionary France he was constrained to continue his career until the final accomplishment of her destiny, and this necessity, overlooked by the great bulk of mankind, afforded plausible ground for imputing insatiable ambition to the French government and to the French nation, of which ample use was made. ”

“ After the coup d’état of 1851, and the establishment of the Second Empire, Napoleon III., without in any way discountenancing the old nobility of pre-revolutionary France or the new nobility of Louis Philippe’s creation, could not but show favour to the nobility of Napoleonic origin, whose numbers he increased by creations of his own. ”

“ A vein of irony and sly humor, at which our “volatile neighbors” are such adepts, runs through every page, and, Napoleon III. having been unfortunate, of course it is directed against him and his line of policy. There is nothing, it is said, so successful as success, and, now that the mighty Empire has failed, every good Frenchman with brains enough to write a pamphlet or a song considers that he is perfectly justified in heaping obloquy on everything connected with the late order of things. ”

“ It is two hundred and twenty years since a father was succeeded by a son in France,—a circumstance that Napoleon III. should lay to heart, and not be too sure that the Prince Imperial is to become Napoleon IV. There seems to be something fatal about the French purple, which has a strange tendency to spread itself, and to settle upon shoulders that could not have counted upon experiencing its weight and its warmth. Sometimes it is hung up for the time, and becomes dusty, while republicans take a turn at governing, though seldom with success. ”