Pauline Bonaparte

“ Bewildered, and blushing like a young maid, he avowed to his dear general that he also loved, and that he could hope for happiness and joy only if Napoleon’s younger sister, the beautiful little Pauline, would be his wife.
Bonaparte listened to him with a frowning countenance, and when Junot ended by asking his mediation with Pauline’s mother, Napoleon asked in a grave tone, “But, what have you to live upon? Can you support Pauline? Can you, with her, establish a household which will be safe against want?” ”

“ When the news of this action reached France in July, 1800, Napoleon was furious. He had just been made First Consul and would brook no equal. "He is a revolted slave, whom we must punish," he exclaimed; "the honor of France is outraged." Resolved to reduce the negroes again to slavery, he sent to Hayti a fleet of sixty ships and an army of about thirty-five thousand men, under General Leclerc, the husband of Pauline Bonaparte. Pauline accompanied him, and also several officers who had been former opponents of Toussaint. ”

“ The fact that his brother-in-law was accompanied by his wife, Pauline Bonaparte, for whom venomous tongues asserted that Napoleon cherished a more than brotherly affection, [pg.364] will suffice to refute the slander. Finally, it may be remarked that Bonaparte had not hesitated to subject the choicest part of his Army of Italy and his own special friends to similiar risks in Egypt and Syria. He never hesitated to sacrifice thousands of lives when a great object was at stake; and the restoration of the French West Indian Colonies might well seem worth an army, especially as St. ”

“ But the night of his famous ride up the Cariboo Trail where it skirts the Bonaparte Hills proved to him how wise a thing it was that he had long ago made friends, instead of foes, of the wolves, for if he had feared them, it would have been a ride of terror instead of triumph, as it was his love for them that helped him to do a great, heroic thing which made the very name "Leloo" beloved by every man, both white and Indian, in all the Lillooet country. ”

“ They took the man who was already the head of a monarchy to be simply the consul of a Republic, and, in their stupid ignorance, they made war against him, instead of incarcerating his energies in a general peace.
Thus Bonaparte gave way to Napoleon with his double-edged instinct for despotic rule and warfare, his two-sided nature, democratic and aristocratic, behind-hand, according to French notions, but in advance of European ideas; conservative in home policy, but a creature of progress in foreign affairs. ”

“ He strove to forget his domestic wretchedness by prosecuting, with new vigor, his schemes of grandeur. As he ascended the stairs of the Luxembourg, some of the guard, who had been with him in Italy, recognized his person, and he was instantly greeted, with enthusiastic shouts. "Long live Bonaparte." The clamor rolled like a voice of thunder through the spacious halls of the palace, and fell, like a death knell, upon the ears of the Directors. The populace upon the pavement, caught the sound and reechoed it from street to street. ”

“ Yet, even as First Consul, he exerted an influence that began to banish the customs and traditions of the Revolution, except in the single sphere of material interests; and he satisfied the peasants' love of land and money in order that he might the more securely triumph over revolutionary ideals and draw France insensibly back to the age of Louis XIV.
While the legislator must always keep in reserve punishment as the ultima ratio for the lawless, he will turn by preference to education as a more potent moralizing agency; and certainly education urgently needed Bonaparte's attention. ”

“ To him, everything the Revolution produced was the best; the murder of thousands and the ruin of millions were, with him, nothing compared with the benefit the universe would one day derive from the principles and instruction of our armed and unarmed philosophers. In recompense for so much complacency, and such great patriotism, Bonaparte appointed him, in 1797, a plenipotentiary from the Cisalpine Republic to the Congress at Rastadt; and, in 1802, a vice-president of the Italian Republic. ”

“ The politician and the counsellor are frequently applauded or censured for transactions which the intrigues of antechambers conceived, and which cupidity and favour gave power to promulgate.
It is very generally imagined, but falsely, that Napoleon Bonaparte governs, or rather tyrannizes, by himself, according to his own capacity, caprices, or interest; that all his acts, all his changes, are the sole consequence of his own exclusive, unprejudiced will, as well as unlimited authority; that both his greatness and his littleness, his successes and his crimes, originate entirely with himself ”

“ He is all action, and he is so in everything. See him fight, negotiate, decree, punish, all is the matter of a moment. He compromises with Turin as with Rome. He invades Modena as he burns Binasco. He never hesitates; to cut the Gordian knot is always his method.
Bonaparte could not endure to have his conduct predicated ”

“ The King of Prussia, the Emperor Alexander, and the Archduke Charles of Austria, sent him their friendly congratulations. Even Catharine, the haughty Queen of Naples, mother of the Empress of Austria, being then at Vienna, in ardent expression of her gratification to the French embassador said, "General Bonaparte is a great man. He has done me much injury, but that shall not prevent me from acknowledging his genius. By checking disorder in France, he has rendered a service to all of Europe. He has attained the government of his country because he is most worthy of it. ”

“ Much of this censure was well deserved by all of them—by Caroline and Elise and Pauline. But when we look at the facts impartially we shall find something which makes Pauline stand out alone as infinitely superior to her sisters. Of all the Bonapartes she was the only one who showed fidelity and gratitude to the great emperor, her brother. Even Mme. Mere, Napoleon's mother, who beyond all question transmitted to him his great mental and physical power, did nothing for him. ”

“ A new master in the art of war, greater than Condé, or Turenne, or Marlborough, or Frederic II., had suddenly arisen, with amazing audacity and faith in himself.
The deliverance of republican France from four great Austrian armies was a grand service; and Napoleon merited its gratitude and all the honors he received. He had violated no trust thus far. He was still Citizen Bonaparte, professing liberal principles, and fighting under the flag of liberty, to make the Republic respected, independent, and powerful. ”

“ The dignity of such a legislator will be self-maintained, and lasting. Upon him, the grateful french will confer those unforced, unpurchased suffrages, which will prevent that116 fate, which, in their absence, the subtilty of policy, the fascinations of address, the charm of corruption, and even the terror of the bayonet can only postpone.—Yes, Bonaparte! millions of suffering beings, raising themselves from the dust, in which a barbarous revolution has prostrated them, look up to thee for liberty, protection, and repose. They will not look to thee in vain. ”

“ It is true I am young, but I am all they have! And besides, I have set my heart on being of service to the poor little Citizen Dauphin in prison, if I can. We owe that debt to him and to his parents, who helped us in our hour of need."
"You speak truly!" said Bonaparte. "Your family is your first concern, and nothing appeals to me more than the desire to pay a debt, whether of money or gratitude. But should the opportunity ever come, I'll take you with me in the army, lad, for I like your spirit. Would that Paris had in her many more such! ”

“ Consequently its epoch is most interesting, being dramatic in the highest degree, having brought into prominence men and characters who rank among the great of all time, and having exhibited to succeeding generations the most important lessons in the most vivid light. By common consent the eminent man of the time was Napoleon Bonaparte, the revolution queller, the burgher sovereign, the imperial democrat, the supreme captain, the civil reformer, the victim of circumstances which his soaring ambition used but which his unrivaled prowess could not control. ”

“ Too honest to be seduced, and too brave to be intimidated, he is said to have incurred Bonaparte’s hatred by resisting both his offers and his threats, and declining to sell his own liberty as well as to betray the liberty of his fellow subjects. When, in 1800, Bonaparte proposed to him the presidency and consulate of the United States, for life, on condition that he should sign a treaty, which made him a vassal of France, he refused, with dignity and with firmness, and preferred retirement to a supremacy so dishonestly acquired, and so dishonourably occupied. ”

“ The fierce feuds at home, the greed and the class jealousies awakened by confiscation, the blasts of war and the blight of bankruptcy, would have severely tested the firmest of local institutions; they were certain to wither so delicate an organism as an absolute democracy, which requires peace, prosperity, and infinite patience for its development. Because France then came to despair of her local self-government, it did not follow that she would fail after Bonaparte's return had restored her prestige and prosperity. ”

“ Lemercier declared from his chair.
"Representatives of the people, you are in no ordinary circumstances," began Bonaparte, when at last he could speak. "You are sitting upon a volcano. Allow me to speak with the frankness of a soldier, the frankness of a citizen zealous for the welfare of his country; and suspend, I pray you, your judgment till you have heard me to the end. I was at ease and quiet in Paris when I received the decree of the Council of Ancients, which opened my eyes to the dangers that it and the Republic ran. ”

“ There is something so sudden, so inconstant observable in the French character, that a change is always probable; it is always safe to wager a hundred to one, in France, that any particular thing will not last: it is at the moment when the Government appears most firmly seated that it falls. We have seen the nation worship Bonaparte and detest him, abandon him, take him back, abandon him again, forget him in his exile, raise altars to him after his death, and then relapse from its enthusiasm. ”

“ Such at twenty years of age was Napoleon Bonaparte. Such he remained through the years of his young manhood, meeting all sorts of discouragements, facing the hardest poverty, becoming disgusted with many things that occurred in those changing days, when liberty was replacing tyranny, and the lesson of free America was being read and committed by the world.
He saw the turmoil and terrors of the French Revolution—that season of blood, when a long-suffering people struck a blow at tyranny, murdered their king, and tried to build on the ruins of an overturned kingdom an impossible republic. ”

“ Nowhere in the ancient seats of the Roman commonwealth, whose memory was now the cherished fashion in France, could anything more than a reflection of French revolutionary principles be discerned; the rights of man and republican doctrine were attractive subjects of debate in many cities throughout the peninsula, but there was little of that fierce devotion to their realization so prevalent beyond the Alps.
The sagacity of Bonaparte saw his account in these (p. 344) conditions. Being a professed republican, he could announce himself as the regenerator of society, and the liberator of a people. ”

“ While the admiral tarnished his fame on the Syren coast of Naples, his great opponent bent all the resources of a fertile intellect to retrieve his position, and even under the gloom of disaster threw a gleam of light into the dark continent. While his adversaries were merely generals or admirals, hampered by a stupid education and a narrow nationality, Bonaparte had eagerly imbibed the new learning of his age and saw its possible influence on the reorganization of society. He is not merely a general. ”

“ If you marry Montauran, I shall be delighted to serve the Bourbons in Paris, where I am already a member of the Clichy club. Now, if circumstances were to put me in correspondence with the princes I should abandon the interests of the Republic, which is already on its last legs. General Bonaparte is much too able a man not to know that he can’t be in England and in Italy at the same time, and that is how the Republic is about to fall. ”

“ This is the method of Napoleon's detractors, except when, in addition, they first magnify his wickedness, and then further distort the proportion by viewing his fine powers through the other end of the glass. We all know how easy great things are when once they have been accomplished, how simple the key to a mystery when once it has been revealed. Morally considered, Bonaparte was a child of nature, born to a mean estate, buffeted by a cruel and remorseless society, driven in youth to every shift for self-preservation, compelled to fight an unregenerate world with its own weapons. ”

“ 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 ”