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THE SOUL OF NAPOLEON
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THE REAL NAPOLEON
Front an eiigrmiiig by Vigiieiix
THE SOUL OF
NAPOLEON
BY
HAMIL GRANT
AUTHOR OF " SPIES AND SECRET
SERVICE"; EDITOR OF "THE LAST
DAYS OF THE ARCHDUKE RUDOLPH"
PHILADELPHIA
GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO.
PUBLISHERS
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BV THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED
EDINBURGH
NOTE ON THE GABRIELLI PORTRAIT
OF NAPOLEON
We invite the reader's attention to the so-called.
Gdbrielli portrait of Napoleon, executed by Vigneucc,
and here presented as a frontispiece. This portrait
was emphatically declared by the relatives of the
Corsican — including the Emperor's mother, his
sisters, and his uncle, Cardinal Fesch — to have been
the only one which bore anything like a truthful
resemblance to their august kinsman. Prince
Gabrielli, its original owner, and a distinguished
contemporary and visitor of Napoleon, attached
great value to the work on this account. As will be
seen, it bears small resemblance to accepted portraits
of the Emperor.
The majority of the artists who have transmitted
to us the traditional face of the Conqueror — ascetic,
severe and somewhat scowling — sought, it would
seem, to flatter Napoleon, regarding whose early
Classical obsession they were fully informed, by
giving to portraits of their illustrious sitter those
attributes of feature and expression with which
sculptors represent Romans of the heroic age. The
portrait by Vigneux dates from 1807, ivhen Napoleon
had well outgrown his worship of Antiquity.
Genius, we may be certain, in any case, has no
specific facial type.
H. G.
"Le plus bel eloge de cet homme
extraordinaire c'est que chacun
veut en parler, et que tous ceux
qui en parlent, n'importe comment,
croient de s'agrandir."
Pozzo DI BORGO.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAOB
The Genesis or Napoleon . . .17
The Rule of Heredity — Alan the Supersimian — Role of the
Spinal Column — A Cynical Truism — Napoleon's Splendid
Equipment — Lord Acton's View — Social Origins of the
Bonapartes — Their Middle-class Status — The Nursery of
Fame — Corsica and its Natives — Napoleon's Regard for
his Island Home — Bonaparte's Ligurian Avcestry — King
Theodore of Corsica — His Relationship to the Bonapartes —
Paoli and Bonaparte pire — The Bonapartes as Men of Law
— A Lawyer's Importance in Ajaccio — Ancestral Preten-
sions of Bonaparte pire — Phenomenal Types and New
Blood — Factious of the Mala and Buona Parte — Ajaccio
and Napoleon's Ancestors — The Aristocrats of the Pale —
The Provincialism of the Bonapartes — Their Love of
Learning — Their Esprit de Foyer — The Spirit of the Clan
— Napoleon's Mania of Superiority — His Jealousy of
Famous Men — His Opinion about CcBsar, Hannibal,
Alexander — Relations with his Master Generals — Le Harnais
Militaire — Napoleon's Master Passion
CHAPTER II
The Imperial Student . . . .49
Napoleon's Academic Training — The Curriculum at
Brienne — The Classical and Language Course — On Literary
Style — The Mathematical Studies — Religious Instruction —
At the icole Militaire — The Subaltern-Student of Auxonne
— Importance of History — Formation of Literary Tastes —
What Rousseau taught Napoleon — Machiavelli a Favourite
— Was Bonaparte a Mason? — Some Literary Attempts —
His "Heart's Library" — Some English Books
CHAPTER HI
The Imperial Critic . . . . 61
Frenchmen and Coriieille — Value of Napoleon's Criticism —
His Literary Likes and Dislikes — His Opinion of Corneille
and Moliere — A Discussio>i of Tragedy — Napoleon and
Raynouard — Concerning Voltaire — A Reading by Talma —
Napoleon and the Public Taste — Love and Tragedy — A
Literary Ghost — The Emperor's Criticism of the Mneid, Book
II. — His Opinion of the Iliad — Dislike of Shakespeare —
A Hypercritical View
10 CONTENTS
CHAPTER IV
PAGE
The Imperial Theatre . . . .75
Talma and Bonaparte — The Actor coaches the First Consul
— The Emperor coaches the Actor — Friendly Relations of the
Twain — Napoleon on Critics and his Love for Cinna —
Concerning Mademoiselle Mara and her Sister — An Un-
expected Scene — Mademoiselle Bourgoin and Chaptal — Ayi
Imperial Rebuke
CHAPTER V
Mademoiselle George . . . .87
Standards of Beauty — Lessifig's View — George an Ama-
zonian Type — Her Attraction for Bonaparte — Their First
Meeting at Saint-Cloud — Affected Nervousness of the
Actress — Napoleon as a Lover — Espionage of Talleyrand —
Bonaparte criticises the Actress — His Generosity to George
— A Visit to the Titileries — Josephine's Fit of Jealousy
— Napoleon's Coronation — George visits an Emperor —
Napoleon and his Bonnes Fortunes — Where George dis-
appointed her Lover — Her Veneration for Napoleon — A
Costly Rendezvous
CHAPTER VI
Napoleon and Weimar .... 105
The Cult of Napoleon — Goethe on the Corsican — The
Congress of Erfurt — Honouring the Sage — Lannes, Maret
and Goethe — Presentation to the Emperor — Ecce Homo '■ —
The Emperor and Werther — Politics and Fate — Napoleon's
Manoeuvre — Miiller on the Interview — Talleyrand's Version
of the Meeting — Preparations for Erfurt — An Imperial
Opinion upon Athalie — Goethe and Dedication — Talleyrand
on Napoleon's Learning — Johann von Miiller — The
Emperor on Christianity — Tragedy, the School of Kings —
Wieland is presented — Les genres tranches — History and
Romance — Wieland at the Palace — Tacitus and the Annals
— Napoleon's Opinion — Wieland's Eloquence — The Great
Painter of Antiquity — Livy and Tacitus — The World's
Happiest Age ?
CHAPTER VII
The Imperial Art-Patron . . . 129
A Specious Sentiment — Art, Merit, and the Napoleonic
Cult — The Corsican's Native Materialism — A Political
Monument — Artists a " Waspish Lot " — Art to Order —
Feeding the Fraternity — Economy in Public Architecture —
CONTENTS 11
PAGE
Chapter VII. — contd.
A Napoleonic Art — The Emperor's Dislike of Architects —
Some Prices paid to Famous Artists — The Corsican a Con-
noisseur without Pretensions — Insistence on the Napoleonic
Legend — How to hurt Englishmen — The Imperial Reclame
— Napoleon's Art Collectiofi at La Malmaison — A List of
Pictures
CHAPTER VIII
David, the Imperial Painter . . 141
David in 1797 — His Meeting with Bonaparte — A Visit to
the Atelier — A Soldier's Blunt Criticism — " These Military
Philistines " — David's Promotion — Bonaparte crossing the
Alps — David and his School — A Lover of the Limelight —
David and the Coronation — A Painter's Whole Ambition —
Girard and the Coronation Picture — A Happy Suggestion
— Pauline Bonaparte and Gerard — Napoleon's Satisfaction
— David and the Legion — The Douglas Portrait of the
Emperor — David and the Peerage
CHAPTER IX
Canova and Napoleon . . .157
Canova a Great Philanthropic Spirit — Bonaparte and the
Sculptor — Canova' s Independence — The Condition of Rome
— Modelling the First Consul — Napoleon as a Sculptor's
Subject — An Heroic Statue of the Corsican — Mars and
Venus — The Ingenue Pauline — A Chatsworth Treasure —
Canova and the French Capital — A Bust af Marie Louise
— The Farnese Hercules — The Pope's Art Patronage — The
Borghese Marbles — The Sculptor's Style — Napoleon and
Rome — The Corsican's Cautiousness — Art and Religion
— Protestants and Catholics — Arrogance of the Priests —
Napoleon on CcBsar — " The Great Man of the Great People "
— The Corsican and the Pope — Canova' s Advice to the
Emperor — Oligarchic Venice — A Candid Admission — The
Day of Wagram — Canova and Marriage — Monsieur de
Bouclon's Canonisation
CHAPTER X
The Imperial Musician . . . .179
Napoleon on Music — Italian Musicians versus German —
National Value of Opera — Napoleon no Musician — His
Plans for the Musical Art — The Eroica Symphony of
Beethoven — Salaries of Official Singers — A Siirprise for
Vatican Celibates — La Belle Grassini — The Southern
Temperament — Grassini's Disobedience — Proud Monsieur
Paer — Grassini, Wellington and Napoleon — An Intellectual
Singer
12 CONTENTS
CHAPTER XI
PAGE
Religion of Napoleon . . . .189
Modern Views of Religiosity — Newman and Manning —
Alen and the Atheistic View — Napoleon after the Egyptian
Campaign — Real Value of Religion — The Corsican's
Essential Unbelief — "An Instinct of Spiritualism " — A
Sound German View — The Chevalier de Beauterne — A
Napoleonic Press-Agent — The Napoleonic Expression —
Man's Simian Disposition — " Christ is no Man " — Beau-
terne's Puerilities — Cardinal Fesch on his Nephew —
Religion postulates a Calvary — Monsieur de Norvins —
Napoleon's Mind too positive for Belief — His Taste for
Religions Discussion — The Murder of Enghien — Napoleon's
Cynical Explanation — His Choice of National Religious —
His Political Horror of Atheists
CHAPTER XII
The Imperial Educationist . . .205
Action, the Royal Quality in Man — The Necessity of
Religious Training — Dislike of Precocity in Children —
Geography and History essential in Early Years — Linguistic
Talent no Test of Mentality — Are the Classics valuable ?
"Bending the Mind to Labour" — Value of Geometrical
Studies — The Age of Puberty and its Mystic Revolutions —
The Imperial Catechism — Monsieur de Portalis, imperio-
maniac — Napoleon and God — Some Questions and Answers
— Contempt for Ordinary Intelligence — Cardinal Caprara's
Rdle — Napoleon and his Opportunity — The Super-Caligula
CHAPTER XIII
Napoleon and Journalism . . .217
The Press after Brumaire — Difference between French and
English Journalism — Wholesale Suppression of Sheets —
Liberty of the Press ceases — Newspaper Morality —
Napoleon's Journalistic Precis — Monsieur Fi6vie, Chief
Censor — Le Moniteur becomes Official Organ — Napoleon's
Private Paper — Value of Official Organs — Government's
Duty to the Nation — Liicus a non Lucendo — A Newspaper
without News — Monsieur Suard, Editor — Le Journal des
Dibats — Napoleon and Fractious Editors — Le Mercure de
France — Monsieur de Chateaubriand — Napoleon's own
Press Agency — Beugnot and the Emperor — Les Idiologues
— La Route d'Antibes — The Adaptable Sub-Editor — The
CONTENTS 13
Chapter XIII. — contd.
PAGE
Hundred Days — Napoleon's Opinion of the Press — Caustic
Remarks on Journalists and Writers — His Earliest Venture
as a Newspaper-Owner — The Courrier de I'Armie —
Napoleon's Personal Corps of Special Correspondents
CHAPTER XIV
Bonaparte versus De Stael . . . 233
Bonaparte attracts de Stael — Bonaparte' s Natural Antipathy
for Coriune — Augeteau and Madame — Chez M. de Talley-
rand — Constant and Covinne — Benjamin's Little In-
advertence — De Stael and her Spokesman — Intrigues against
Bonaparte — High Political Ambitions — IJne Femme in-
comprise — Her Work on Literature — Constant is dismissed
— De Stael's Comment — Bernadotte and Corinne — Delphine
appears — Bonaparte's Comments — A Pen-Portrait of
Corinne — Madame at Weimar, in Vienna and Stockholm —
Corinne' s Regard for England — Her Son Augustus — Some
Fatherly Advice — Projected Visit to America — De I'Alle-
magne — A Machine a Mouvement — Napoleon disgusted with
her Views — Goethe and de Stael's Work on Germany — The
Visit to Russia — " The Conscience of Europe " — Stein and
de Stael — Her Essay on Suicide — Goes to London — Byron's
Opinion of Corinne — Death in 1S17 — Gourgaud and
Madame — Napoleon's Impartial Opinion of her Qualities
CHAPTER XV
BioGi — Chateaubriand — Stendhal . . 253
An Unstoried Celebrity — Biogi and Bonaparte — Philosopher
and Artist — Biogi a)id the Military Art — The Corsican's
Affection for him — Poisons and Antidotes — The Battle-field
of Rivoli — Berthier and Bonaparte — Biogi dislikes Army
Men — Bonaparte as Connoisseur — Gros and tlie Areola
Picture — Biogi's Description of the Corsican — M. de
Chateaubriand — The Vicomte and the First Consul — A
Mutual A ntipathy — Le Gdnie du Christianisme — Essentially
anti-Catholic — Chateaubriand's Egotism — The Little Man
and the Big Quarry — The Vicomte is dismissed — His
Colossal Vanity — His Obsession as to Napoleon — Some
Expressions of Opinion — " Napoleon and Myself" — Beyle,
alias Stendhal — His Literary Pedigree — The Individualistic
Touch — His Connection with Napoleon — Stendhal's Idolatry
— His Impartiality — France and the Empire — Napoleon's
Dead-heads — Stendhal and the ex-Empress Eugenie — An
Author's Discretion — Stendhal, Megalomaniac — Napoleon's
Trust in him — Afi Imperial Present — The "Soul" of the
Imperial Army — Stupid Officialdom — Napoleon, France's
14 CONTENTS
Chapter XV. — contd.
Greatest Man — His Best Achievement — " The Great
Emperor " — A Change of Temper — A Literary Man's
Philosophy — Napoleon diminishes — A Final Recantation —
" Napoleon was our only Religion "
CHAPTER XVI
Imperial Official Theatre . . . 273
One of Napoleon's Chief Ambitions — Instructions to Cham-
pagny — Authors and their Rights — Assurance of Remunera-
tion — Where Napoleon failed — Imperial Art mediocre —
Limitations of Patronage — Genius discovers itself — Always
its own Patron — Imperial Epoch tmfavourable to Art —
Some Liberal Awards — Tragedy, not Comedy — The
Thidtre-Franfais — Decree of Moscow — Napoleon a Real
Benefactor — Schools of Dramatic Art — His Liberality to
the Histrions — The Dresden Bill — His Practical Patronage
— His Friends among the Illuminati — Did he like Artists?
— Remarks by Rimusat — After Marengo — A Line from
Cinna — The Murder of Enghien
CHAPTER XVII
Conclusion ..... 288
Kircheisen's Bibliography of Napoleon — One Book wanting —
The Temperamental Aspect of Bonaparte — The ' Napoleon"
Test of Nationality — A Modern Imitator — The Imperishable
Corsican
Bibliography ..... 289
Index ...... 298
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE REAL NAPOLEON. By Vigneux
TALMA AS NERO
MADEMOISELLE GEORGE
THE CORONATION. By David
THE CHATSWORTH NAPOLEON. By Canova
PAULINE BONAPARTE AS VENUS VICTRIX.
By Canova
MADAME DE STAEL, 1804. By Godefroy
DAEDALUS AND ICARUS. By Canova
'
Front
ispiece
To face
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15
CHAPTER I
THE GENESIS OF NAPOLEON
The Rule of Heredity — Man the Supersimian — Role
of the Spinal Column — A Cynical Truism — Napoleon's
Sple?idid Equipment — Lord Acton's View — Social
Origins of the Bonapartes — Their Middle-class Status
— The Nursery of Fame — Corsica and its Natives —
Napoleon s Regard for his Island Home — Bonaparte's
Ligurian Ancestry — King Theodore of Corsica — His
Relationship to the Bonapartes — Paoli and Boriaparte
pere — The Bonapartes as Men of Law — A Lawyer s
Importance in Ajaccio — Ancestral Prel elisions of Bona-
parte pere — Phetiomenal Types and Neiv Blood —
Factions of the Mala and Buona Parte — Ajaccio and
Napoleon's Ancestors — The Aristocrats of the Pale —
The Provincialism of the Bonapartes — Their Love
of Learning — Their Esprit de Foyer — The Spirit of
the Clan — Napoleon's Mania of Superiority — His
Jealousy of Famous Men — His Opinion about Ccesar,
Hannibal, Alexander — Relations with his Master
Genei-als — Le Harnais Militaire — Napoleon's Master
Passion
REPRODUCTION of the immediate and
normal stock is the rule of heredity,
the experts tell us ; whereas reproduc-
tion of the remote and phenomenal is
the exception. The supersimian called Man
inherits intuitions, instincts, predispositions and
temperamental traits from his ancestors, even
as he reproduces their physical attributes and
tendencies. This being the case, we deduce
correctly when we say man's destiny is not so
much what is to be, as what has been, and
those eugenists are probably right who declare
the drab and unpoetical truth — namely, that in
the last analysis man's spinal cord is his very
self, his nature and potential — that which fits or
unfits him for the fight in life, which determines
his character, his courage and his driving force,
which makes him the clever or the inept animal
among the human herd, which decides for his
annals as they shall be — humble, mediocre, or the
opposite. Fontenelle, the distinguished nephew of
the great Corneille, told the unhappy truth, we fear,
when he said that for supreme success or domination
in the world there was one prime requisite, and
he named it when he wrote the phrase: "a
callous heart in a sound body." Put this axiom
of worldly wisdom beside one of the profoundest
and most cogent verdicts we have yet seen
contributed to the explanation of the eternal
Corsican — in effect, that the wonderful mind of
Napoleon was lodged in a wonderful body,'
^ Napoleon : The Last Phase.
i8
GENEALOGY OF NAPOLEON 19
and we find ourselves on the way to divining the i
personality of the being whom Cardinal Newman \
once described as a Miracle of Nature,
And yet Lord Acton was, after all, right : the
more we study the Corsican in the light of histori-
cal documents, the less a Colossus does he appear,
though perhaps he grows nearer, being found to be
so human a creature, to the sympathetic student's
heart. Not only as a man and a statesman does
he lose stature, as we investigate the method by
which he sought at all costs to stamp one vast
impression of himself upon the page of History ;
he even dwindles as a soldier, and the day has
gone for good, we think, when men could solemnly
accept such a verdict as the following, rendered
by Lockhart and subscribed to in the main by
two generations of the Victorian century :
" Nations yet to come will look back upon his
history, as to some grand and supernatural
romance. The fiery energy of his youthful career,
and the magnificent progress of his irresistible
ambition have invested his character with the
mysterious grandeur of some heavenly appear-
ance ; and when all the lesser tumults and lesser
men of our age shall have passed away into the
darkness of oblivion, history will still inscribe one
mighty era with the majestic age of Napoleon."
Given the theory of ancestral environment, the
genealogy of Napoleon becomes of first-class
importance if we wish to understand, or come
near to an understanding of, that momentous
personality which to a large extent has set the
20 THE GENESIS OF NAPOLEON
fashion in spectacular greatness ever since its
appearance in the world at the close of the
eighteenth century. In the case of great men,
says Stendhal, biographers are apt to fall into
one of two excesses : either they attribute a
fabulous ancestry to their heroes, or else out of
sheer envy and malice, they seek to show that
those of whom they ^vrite were of far lower and
meaner origin than was actually the case. This
has been so with Napoleon, though all attempts
either to exalt or to abase him in respect of his
ancestry, have resulted only in forcing us to
recognise the truth of La Bruyere's assertion —
namely, that there are no families in the world,
whether exalted or plebeian, which, could we
accurately trace their pedigrees, would not be
found to touch the loftiest origins, at one particular
point, and the lowliest at some other.
The Bonapartes had already been several genera-
tions in Corsica when Napoleon was born, and his
four great-grandfathers, Bonaparte, Paravisino
(Paravicini), Ramolino and Pietra-Santa were all
of grandparents born in the highland canton of
Lunegiana, under the Ligurian Apennines and
about forty miles direct east from Genoa. There
is little doubt, we think, for all the attempts to
confer an exalted social ancestry upon Napoleon,
that his forbears for six generations before his
birth had occupied in Corsica a local position
corresponding, we may suppose, to the minor
lairds of Scotland, and there is no question that
the subsequent ennobling of certain Corsican
TRIBE OF BUONAPARTE 21
families about 1770 — including the Bonapartes —
by a royal decree of Louis XVI., was due solely
to the policy of bringing the newly annexed
islanders into social and political alignment with
the system in France, even as Napoleon was to
ennoble certain of his " gentle peasants " of
Holland in 1810. That in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, the tribe of Buonaparte had
occupied high political position in Italy, is much
less certain than that their name had been inscribed
on several civic golden books, like that of Treviso,
simply because members of the race had filled
more or less important magistracies and alderman-
ships in their home towns ; and on the whole we
are of opinion not only that so titanic an energy,
physical and mental, as that of Napoleon could
never have sprung from a very ancient line of
leisurely or even refined aristocrats, but that
this very energy, whether in its personal, its
political or in its social symptoms, bore at all
times the impress of having come from the common
source of nearly all names which achieve a universal
fame — to wit, the educated or upper classes, as
apart from the patriciate, and of course education
here means very much more than mere instruction,
or academic learning.
Corsica is far from being without its ancient
chronicle, and Seneca is said to have declared of
its inhabitants that their first law was the law
of vengeance. A Corsican writer of the Middle
Ages, Petrus Cyrnoeus, already told the world
that " the Corsicans are a factious race and live
22 THE GENESIS OF NAPOLEON
only for glory. Vengeance is the mainspring of
their code of honour, and in order to avenge an
insult or an injury, they will move heaven, earth
and hell to obtain full satisfaction. Whether he
be dead or alive, beware of the Corsican who has
not avenged himself on an aggressor." The stories
of Corsican vendette^ we are all acquainted with,
and even Napoleon was the object of one of these
throughout his career, his enemy, Pozzo di Borgo,
a distant relative by marriage, never having
forgiven him the fact that when both were
candidates for a colonelcy of Corsican national
guards, the preference had been given to the future
emperor. We are inclined to think, however,
that too much importance has been attached to
Pozzo' s diplomatic activities during the Empire,
more particularly when it is asserted that ideas
of vengeance were really the inspiration of his
enmity for Napoleon, as well as of the many
intrigues by which he sought to destroy the
imperial fabric. The method of attaining to fame
by attacking one who has already attained to fame
has, it is well known, been a favourite one among
doomed mediocrities of all ages, and the Emperor's
relentless compatriot does not appear ever at any
time to have proved insensible of his opportunity.
Napoleon has been accused of having had no
love for Corsica, just as he has been accused of
looking upon France " as a throne rather than a
nation," to quote an illustrious Russian. Here,
in point, is what the Emperor himself, when at
St Helena, had to say of his native island :
A RACIAL PUZZLE 23
" The Corsicans have always had something
in them of a race apart, and this is due to their
insular position, which preserves them from con-
tact with the mixed peoples of the mainland.
Corsican highlanders possess an energy of char-
acter and a firmness of soul which are entirely
peculiar to them. And as for the beauty of that
little island — nothing could exceed it. Even the
very presence of its soil I could note with eyes
closed, and I have never known its like anywhere.
I can see myself there in my earliest years and
my first affections, tricking my way round the
mountain precipices, cUmbing the loftiest peaks,
careering down the passes and playing in the
silent valleys, ever the most devoted of partisans
in my family's feuds, and taking sides with all
my kith and kin in a vendetta which went back
seven generations. ... I even thought of taking
refuge there in 1815, and am certain that I should
have won over all the inhabitants, who would
have accepted me as their King and who would
have been to me as one great family. Do you
think that even fifty thousand of the Allied troops
would have ventured to attack me there ? And
even if they had, to what end — to gain what ? "
Are the Corsicans to be numbered among the
racial puzzles of the w^orld ? They are said to
have sprung originally from some remote Iberian
stock, and characteristics which have been found
among the people of Albania, of the Basque
countries and the Berbers of Northern Africa,
are admitted by anthropologists to be common
24 THE GENESIS OF NAPOLEON
to the inhabitants of the island. In the course
of the early ages, the Phoenicians — as in Ireland,
be it noted, which is famous for its reproduction
of the Napoleonic type — the Carthaginians, the
Ligurians and the Iberians founded smkll and
nomadic colonies, until the Greeks finally estab-
lished a civilisation there some six centuries
before Christ. Subsequently, on account of their
piratical practices, they were driven thence by
the people of Etruria, who succeeded in finally
and permanently impressing their cachet on the
islanders. The Bonapartes, as we have seen,
were of Ligurian origin, and in the earliest days
of Roman civilisation, the people of Liguria were
held to be of Germano-Gallic rather than Italic
stock, which was short and broad-headed, while
the Ligurians were tall and long-headed — the
family type of the Napoleons, to which their
great chief proved, however, an exception. All
writers, ancient as well as modern, agreed in
attributing one salient characteristic to the
Corsicans — namely, that they appeared to con-
sider themselves superior to other races, and
would voluntarily engage in no servile or menial
work ; the native was sober, obliging, hospitable,
grateful, a firm friend, a terrible enemy, logical,
practical, inclined to be sultanic in his treatment
of women, intriguing and always very curious to
know what the other man was doing, expansive
with his friends, silent and reserved ^\4th strangers.
A German writer, Razel, declares that until the
eighteenth century no Corsican generation had
THE PROUD ISLANDERS 25
existed which had not known either invasion or
civil wai' — an important point.
Diodorus Siculus said of these islanders that
the hardest Roman slave-masters dared not
subject them to the ordinary tasks of other
helots on account of their rebellious and intract-
able character. "They will not live in slavery,"
says Strabo, " and if they do not kill themselves
before submitting to the degradation of low
menial work, they so conduct themselves as to
make their masters regret the money expended
on their purchase." After the fall of the Roman
Empire, Corsica, in the seventh century, they
teach, came under the domination of Constan-
tinople and then received that strong religious
impress which informs the general character of
the native with a mysticism that is hardly to
be differentiated from superstition. Charlemagne
handed them over to the Popes in the tenth
century, and the Saracens carried fire and sword
through the island in the eleventh, after which a
feudalism of a Germanic type settled for some
centuries upon the country, administered and
inspired in the main by high Ligurian officials.
Nevertheless the spirit of the clan was ever so
powerful a characteristic of Corsican society, that
the feudal lords practised a larger liberalism in
their exactions from, and their dealings with,
the proud islanders than was customary, under
the system, with less independent races. Every
Corsican became a rebel at the first sign of
oppression on the part of his lord, and so there
26 THE GENESIS OF NAPOLEON
grew up a society of men who would acknowledge
no masters — another important point.
It is not surprising, therefore, to find them in
1730 declaring an entire independence of Genoa
and, at the outbreak of hostilities, inaugurating
a theological council which, by assertixig that
justice was on the side of the revolting islanders,
gave to the who'e uprising the character of a
holy war. The Genoese called in the help of
several corps of German troops of the Emperor
Charles VI., under the command of the Prince
of Wurtembcrg, who was only too pleased to sign
a treaty of peace with the invincible islanders in
1732. In 1736 a German adventurer of noble
birth. Baron Theodore von Neuhof, arrived in
the port of Aleria, and having assured the popular
leaders of his possession of great influence at the
courts of Europe, offered to undertake the final
liberation of the island from Genoese tyranny.
Eventually, after the distribution of considerable
largess, Theodore was named King of Corsica,
and besides founding a nobility, also inaugur-
ated many civic reforms, invited foreign in-
dustrialists to take up residence in Corsica,
disciplined the army and ultimately attacked
Genoa. Success did not attend on his extra-
insular military expeditions, however, and he
soon found himself obliged to have recourse to
his great diplomatic and political friends on the
mainland. He left the island, appointing a
regency of four persons, one of whom was
Jacopo Ornano, a blood relation of the Bonapartes.
CHARLES DE BONAPARTE 27
Theodore came back in 1738, but only for a
short while, and left again for the Continent,
entrusting all interests to his great-nephew Baron
Drost, who afterwards, be it noted, married a
lady of the Bonaparte tribe. The King again
returned to the island in 1743, provided with
plenty of arms and munitions ; he had grown
despotic, however, during his exile, and being
badly received by the popular leaders, went back
to London, where he was arrested for debt and
spent several years in the Fleet, until released by
the good offices of Horace Walpole. All of which
we mention only to show that the adventure of
bold and successful usurpation was certainly
not lacking among the inspirations which sub-
sequently moved the young soldier of Italy to
exalted self- promotion.
In the stirring days when Paoli took command
of affairs in Corsica, he employed the services
of Charles Bonaparte, father of Napoleon, as
personal secretary. This gentleman had married,
at the age of eighteen, a beautiful girl of fifteen,
Letitia Ramolino. It is worth noting that apart
from the fact that this alliance was a genuine
love match — always an important condition for
the children issuing — it contained many other
elements of a Romeo-and-Juliet type, since the
Ramolini were really of the Genoese faction, while
the Bonapartes were of the insurgent side —
Guelphs and Ghibellines, again, on a minor scale,
or Capulets and Montagues of Verona. Like the
honourable wife and mother she ever proved
28 THE pENESIS OF NAPOLEON
herself, Letitia gave up her life with singular
devotion to the interests of her husband's
people, and ruled the family home at Ajaccio
with the impartial severity and justice of a Roman
matron. The old home of the Bonapartes no
longer exists, it may be said, for all the venal
assurances of the local ciceroni. The actual
house, near the site of the present one, was much
smaller, and the Bonaparte family rented only
half of it at that— some indication, we may
presume, that their means were of a limited
extent.^ In 1771 Charles Bonaparte, who was
a Doctor of Law, had been appointed a kind
of executive judge [giudice assesore) to the high
court of Ajaccio, a town which boasted at that
time a population of 3000 inhabitants. The
name Napoleon was common enough in Corsica
in several families with which the Bonapartes
were connected, and w^as spelled impartially
Napoleone, Nabulione, Lapulione, Napollone, and
was probably derived from the old Genoese
patronymic Nebulone.
The Bonapartes had relatives in nearly all
classes of the local society, but the majority of
the allied families were small landowners who also
engaged in the wine and corn trades. Charles
Bonaparte, as a member of the high court — with
£40 a year as a stipend ! — was admittedly the
^ It has been estimated that the Bonapartes lived for several years
on less than ^loo a year. Those who are at all acquainted with the
tndnages of provincial Italy are well aware that such a sum is often
made to go to very respectable lengths — for middle-class Italians.
AN ISLAND COmiUNITY 29
head of the family aUiance, more particularly
when he had been chosen member of the com-
mission of twelve representative Corsican nobles.
There is no doubt whatever, we think, that though
Bonaparte yere was disposed to be something
of a spendthrift and a high liver, he was a man
of considerable refinement, great literary tastes,
ever looking to the advancement of his family.
To this end, indeed, he engaged in several schemes
which caused his integrity to be called in question
more than once, and like the good time-server he
was, saw no harm in making the public treasury pay
the limit for his services. So we find him writing
to M. de Calonne, in 1784, asking for assistance :
" I am the father of seven children, Monseigneur,
the eighth already on its way, and being almost
without fortune for the reasons herein mentioned,
have the honour to solicit your protection and
your justice in favour of my poor family. . . ."
In no country in the world is the principle of
equality and fraternity carried into practice to the
same extent as in Corsica, says Prosper de Merimee
in his work En Corse, and if real democracy has
a home anywhere, it is certainly in this island
where the employers and employed live on terms
of tribal famiharity, the result being that "rich
and poor," to quote the Frenchman, " hold the
same ideas, since they are always exchanging
them." The wealthiest man in Ajaccio in those
days was, it is recorded, worth about £8000 — a
certain Signor Baciocchi, of whose family the
world has also heard.
30 THE GENESIS OF NAPOLEON
It is fairly well established now that the
Bonapartes of Ajaccio had but few documents
going to prove that their line had once been
•"Nk^ either a very ancient or a very splendid one. The
alliances which the family had made since their
J arrival on the island were in all probability what
the French term " tres honorables," meaning
very respectable, but by no means very exalted.
Charles Bonaparte would appear to have been
highly proud of his connection with the minor
squires Bozzi and Ornano, through which con-
nections the oldest Corsican blood was trans-
mitted to the Napoleons. By Letizia's side, they
claimed descent from the mighty Colonna gens
of the twelfth century, and in the days of his
own greatness Napoleon emphasised this claim
on behalf of his then exalted tribe. With regard
to the many expedients to which Bonaparte
pere resorted in order to establish beyond question
the nobility of his blood, it has to be remembered
in his lasting favour that by proving a patrician
ancestry, he not only guarded against the possi-
bility of seeing his patent revoked — an unconscion-
able dishonour to a Corsican — but also assured to
his sons and daughters the best possible education
at governmental expense, as so-called King's
scholars. If, as we are assured on high authority,
the Corsicans were genuine democrats to a man,
we may be certain that Charles Bonaparte was
moved to make his ancestral pretensions rather
that his children might benefit, than for any
advantage he was likely to derive himself from
"DIE WUNDERBARE SAFT " 31
doing so. We are not aware, at all events, that \
anyone has ever accused a single member of the
Imperial family of having shown traits of that
social meanness which goes by the name of
snobbery. The patent of nobility granted to
the House of Bonaparte by the Government of
Louis XVI. was made out, it may be said, not so
very long ago, as family pedigrees count — namely,
in 1771 — a year which, Scotsmen will hardly require
to be told, saw the birth of the author of Waverley.
We express a personal view, of course, when
we venture the opinion that it is only the really
new families that ever produce phenomenal types.^
And by the term new we mean those families
which have up til] their production of a rare
entity — nigroque simillima cycno — remained in
quiet obscurity, unknown, not unhonoured, but un-
sung. Very old and well-known races of the world
must necessarily have gathered in the process of
the ages, not only experience, but also all the
philosophic outlook — mostly sceptical, if not con-
temptuous and altogether pessimist — with which
experience, in the long run, cannot fail to invest
the wisdom of reflective men. Such a philosophy
of scepticism is wholly adverse, however, to great
^ We admit a certain vagueness here. Our opinion is based on
the assumption that blood has no absolute standard, or specific type,
but that the varieties of its quality must be as the number of human
kinds and characters. Consequently the fusion, or combination,
which is likely to produce a human phenomenon — and mankind has
produced but a few, historically considered — would normally recur
about once in every two or more cycles, as History has shown, we
think. Assuming certain figures, it is a simple "probability" sum.
32 THE GENESIS OF NAPOLEON
performance in any domain of human activity,
seeing that in the longest space of time allotted
to man, hardly more than the bases of any
enduring fame can be securely laid. Who had
heard — apart from Marius, himself not a Csesar
— of the family of Julius before the conqueror
of Gaul had brought the Julian gens into promi-
nence ? What sort of men did Cromwell come
from ? Who was Luther's grandfather ? How
long were Aristotle's ancestors resident at Stagira ?
What were the Habsburgs doing before Rudolph's
day ? Or who, apart from a few musicians, ever
heard of the Wellesleys before Wellington's age ?
Or of the Churchills before the days of Marlborough?
We are of opinion, consequently, that Nature
provides her portents from especial fusions of
new blood based on the selective principle. This
idea leads, of course, to the conclusion that no
man who is not especially called to great perform-
ance can by any labour of his own achieve a high
destiny, or renown. Nor do we think that oppor-
tunity, or environment, or luck, or any other of
many moot conditions can explain the advent
of an overwhelming personality in the world.
Blood — the wonderful juice, as Goethe called it —
seems to us to provide the key to the mystery
of individual phenomenalism on the earth, and it
appears to be new blood at that. All of which
leads us to the view that there is really nothing
subjective in creation, and that man is merely
an instrument through which nature expresses
itself and its design.
" QUO PATRE ORTUS ? " 33
The story of the Bonapartes and their origin
appears to be a case in point. It seems to be
established that the tribe of Buonaparte cannot
trace a clear descent, under that name, before the
twelfth century. It was only during the quarrels
of the Guelphs and GhibelHnes that families came
to be known either as members of the good side
or Imona parte, or as members of the mala parte
or bad side, entirely according to the political
point of view of the particular partisan. The
Bonapartes, as a result of these quarrels, issued
with the patronymic Buona Parte for their family
name. What it had been before those days no
one apparently knows for certain, though, of
course, conjecture is not wanting ; some genealo-
gists tracing their origin to the hereditary Roman
Caesars, others to the Byzantine Caesars, some
giving them affiliation with the Orsini and
Colonna houses, while others go back the whole
way to the great House of Macedon. But if the
original family had been of high standing or great
antiquity, there would have been no possibility
of its concealing itself, for any political reason,
under the generic sobriquet of a faction. Hence
we are inclined to the view^ that the original
Bonaparte tribe was either of the modest middle
classes, or else of the nameless or foundling type,
and consequently belonged to the new tyjDC which
we have tried to suggest. All honest attempts
to trace their ascent before the twelfth century
to the Janfelds, podesia at San Stefano, or to
Castruccio Castracani, the dictator of Lucca,
34 THE GENESIS OF NAPOLEON
have been unsuccessful. Indeed we have nothing
positively certain of the Bonaparte family until
they had become fairly settled in Corsica, and
the first public document which bears the signa-
ture of a Bonaparte is dated 14th May 1485 —
about the time when Richard III. was making
his last stand for the crown of England.
The Bonapartes moved to Ajaccio about the
first decade of the sixteenth century, where a
certain Francis Bonaparte was generally kno^vn
to his fellow-citizens as the Moor, whether from
his bronzed complexion, or from the fact that
he had served under Ludovico Moro, we know
not. He had a son Gabriel who served in the
Genoese mercenaries and afterwards became a
priest and subsequently a canon of the diocese.
An illegitimate half-brother of this gentleman,
Luca by name, once had his face severely slapped
by an Ornano in the streets of Ajaccio. He
waited some years for his vendetta and then
murdered the assailant on the steps of his home,
affixing the offending hand, pierced by a dagger, to
a panel of the hall-door. Blood of this particular
cuvee cannot but have contributed to the for-
midable personality of the great descendant.
Even up to 1550 the Bonapartes considered them-
selves, as immigrants from Liguria, to be of much
superior stock to the islanders, and one Jerome
Bonaparte, a son of the aforesaid Gabriel, the
priest — whom we may charitably suppose to
have become a widower before he took Orders —
appears about 1579 as a strenuous supporter of
MEDIEVAL PETTIFOGGERS 35
a kind of social and political Pale which was
established to the exclusion of the islanders and
in favour of the immigrants from the mainland.
One Pozzo di Borgo took up the cause of the
islanders, and thus prepared the way for a political
vendetta which was to declare itself on a higher
level, more than two centuries later, between
descendant members af the same two clans.
This Jerome Bonaparte, a lawyer by the way,
married the daughter of a prosperous landed
proprietor, whose inheritance he added to by
lucky speculations as well as by successful claims
to property formerly in the possession of his bride's
family. It is about the time of this worthy that
we find the Bonaparte tribe engaged in the wine
and corn trades, among them Augustus Bona-
parte, brother of Jerome, who w^as also an elder
of the community of Ajaccio, and once dis-
tinguished himself by cornering the bread supplies
to his own personal profit. For the most part,
however, the Bonarpartes engaged in the pro-
fession of attorney, a business calculated, we
suppose, to give its practitioners more than
ordinary opportunities for studying human
nature. The Corsican attorney of the sixteenth,
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was, more-
over, a man of considerable prominence in his
community and corresponded, in a large measure,
to the municipal solicitor of our own time, his
role being socially, politically and commercially of
first-class importance within his own environment.
The profession required much energy in those
36 THE GENESIS OF NAPOLEON
days, for the local attorney counted for some-
thing in little things as well as big. Even the
hiring out of a dun cow or the sale of a little
patch of land required a contract. However
modest their means, a Corsican couple would
scorn to enter into the marriage contract without
first visiting a lawyer. And even promises of
marriage were registered at his office, for the
failure of one of the two contracting parties to
keep the plighted word would inevitably mean
a bloody family feud. Then the office of
the lam^er was the especial rendezvous of the
parolanti, or interveners, the people who under-
took to settle matters, to talk the other fellow
over, or to compromise a quarrel, or even to bring
together the parties to a vendetta, in order to
debate the question whether, after all, there was
any real motive for vengeance on either side —
the results of all such matters being duly recorded
by the essentially impartial pettifogger who, of
course, did not fail to collect his honorarium.
He also it was who engrossed the petitions sent
up to the higher powers by the little people, and
if a man thought his forte was that of street-
sweeping, the lawyer drew up his formal request
to the municipal authorities and forwarded it
with his own recommendation to the proper
quarter. A notorious bandit of veteran standing,
anxious to make his soul, as the saying is, and
desirous of seeing the old home before he died,
would send an agent to the lawyer from his
mountain lair, offering to surrender to the civic
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 37
powers a portion of his plunder, provided his
previous offences were condoned and the ban of
legal excommunication removed. On another
occasion the attorney might draw up a deed after
the following fashion : —
" The noble and magnificent Giuseppe Carbone
having on May 5 slain a bandit, and having
therefore acquired the right, according to the
civil and criminal statutes of the island of Corsica,
to designate for reprieve any other bandit now
under sentence of death, desires that clemency
shall be extended to Carolo Perfetto recently
convicted of murder and perjury."
The noble and magnificent Carbone, having
performed this act of justice, returns home with
a clear conscience, not unmindful of the fact that
he has assured himself a firm ally in Carolo
Perfetto, should he ever require assistance in a
little matter of blood-letting, or even in a case
where well-considered perjury would be likely to
help his fortunes over the rough spots.
Francis Bonaparte succeeded Jerome as the
lawyer of Ajaccio, but does not appear to have
added to the family wealth, and it would appear
that from 1625, when this ancestor sold the
property of La Villetta, near Ajaccio, the terri-
torial possessions of the Bonapartes began to
dwindle very rapidly. In 1632, indeed, the
record shows that he was forced to pledge a small
golden relic, with his arms engraven on the same,
for about twelve shillings. Francis was, in due
course, succeeded by his son, Sebastian Bonaparte,
38 THE GENESIS OF NAPOLEON
whose eldest, Charles, became the father of
Joseph Bonaparte. This worthy married a
daughter of the squirearchic Corsican family of
Bozzi in which the baptismal name Napoleon
was common and whose ancestors had served
under the French King Henri II. when the English
lost Calais in the middle of the sixteenth century.
This is the point at which the Italian Bonaparte
stock receives its first infiltration of pure Corsican
blood : by the small but ancient territorial
properties which enter into the family with that
alliance, the Napoleons become Corsicans of
Corsica, and the old prejudices of the Genoese
Pale pass for ever. A son of this marriage,
Sebastian Nicholas, became the husband of Maria
Tusoli, a daughter of one of the fiery factionaries
of the island and also a Corsican of the purest
blood. They had three children, Joseph, Napoleon
and Lucien, and from the marriage of the first
of these, Joseph, with Maria Paravisino. sprang
Charles Bonaparte, the father of the mighty
Napoleon. Letitia, his wife, was of the Ramolini
tribe, whose ancestors were squires of Istria and
officers in the armies of Venice.
It is clear, therefore, from all which precedes
that at no point of the known line do there
appear to be any conditions which might contri-
bute to a transmission of artistic leanings in the
Bonaparte family. On the contrary, everything
seems to mark the men out for professions which
are the extreme opposite of anything artistic ;
while the women, wholly unlettered and in the
GENS BUONAPARTIANA 39
main somewhat jmysannes in speech, in manner
and in their meticulous housewifery, seem to be
chosen for their " points " and as hkely in all cases
to " throw " healthy children. All their men,
indeed, are apt and clever animals and all their
women unfailing breeders, the only spiritual
tendency observable in any of the stock being
the insistence with which each father decides that
the sons shall have the best possible scholarly
education, without which, they are fully well
aware, no inferior can climb to higher social rank.
"The Bonapartes," says de Rocca, in effect,
"were not the richest people in Ajaccio; they
were not even the best-born. On their arrival
there, they occupied a very modest position in
the town, but had derived from their Genoese
ancestors that taste for letters and learning with-
out which no man can change his condition in
life. Beside this individual ambition we find a
kind of racial ambition, a patient seeking for self-
perfectioning which maintains them on a level
above their contemporaries. In their little sphere
they distinguish themselves by qualities of culture
which raise them even when their means are dis-
appearing. This solicitude for the family's future
displays itself in the anxiety and craftiness with
which they seek out patrons and protectors for
their children ; as, for example, in their choice of
prosperous and well-placed godfathers and god-
mothers for their offspring.
" This esprit de foyer, this tenaciousness of the
Bonapartes in moving all influences in order to
40 THE GENESIS OF NAPOLEON
assure to their children a better place in life, this
tireless object from generation to generation — all
such effort is seen at its highest in Charles
Bonaparte, whose son, Napoleon, is marvellously
served by fortunate circumstances in his begin-
nings : he is just noble enough to qualify for a
king's cadetship and a free education which will
be much superior to anything which his rivals,
the Republican generals, will have received.
Thanks to the democratic community from which
he springs, he cannot, when the Revolution
begins to decimate them, be accounted one of
the officers of the ci-devant. Had he come
from Touraine, he could never have gone through
the reign of terror and not been proscribed. It
is the Corsican spirit of the clan which makes
Napoleon give a throne to his brothers and
sisters, and he distributes crowns among them
just as the Corsican elders distribute their civic
patronage among their own kith and kin. With-
out seeking to decide what Napoleon owed in
his mental formation to his ancestors of Corsica
and Liguria, we may say that the foresight of his
fathers prepared him for his destiny, while his
native island furnished him at once with the
elements of his grandeur and his destruction."
The true Corsican's mania of superiority
obsessed the Emperor to the end of his days, as
his judgments of all great men clearly show, and
we have covered much ground in our quest of a
single criticism of any great historical character,
which might be said to possess an impartial ring.
" WHO BUT MUST LAUGH " 41
" Napoleon," declared Madame de Remusat,
" was jealous of all the great men of the world.
He feared all signs of superiority and few who
were near him ever failed to hear him express a
predilection for mediocrities."
When at St Helena his secretary, Baron
Gourgaud, once mentioned Louis XI. and Henri
IV. as being possible rivals in respect of per-
sonal popularity in France. The fallen Emperor
answered, as the Baron tells :
" Saint Louis was an ass ; a just man, if you
will, but he never achieved anything worthy of
note. And as for that goat's-beard Henri IV. —
he was an old fool. Louis XIV. was certainly the
greatest King of his race. He and myself alone
will count in our history ; only he and I had such
great armies," and he does not fail to point out
that Napoleon differed from Louis in one important
consideration — namely, that the former com-
manded his legions in person, and that the Roi-
Soleil was never anything but a chef de parade.
The Emperor does not deny that Alexander.
Hannibal, Caesar, possessed " qualities." Never-
theless his criticism of their various campaigns
goes to indicate that their wars possessed nothing
of the splendour and eclat, whether in conception
or results, of his own. Alexander, he admits,
calculated profoundly, executed boldly, led with
judgment ; but " we cannot point in the case of
the Macedonian to any manoeuvre which can be
said to be worthy of a great general." Alexander
appears to be simply a brave soldier — a grenadier
i
42 THE GENESIS OF NAPOLEON
like Leon Aune, this guardsman being about the
equivalent of our own famous Shaw of the House-
hold Cavalry, who fell at Waterloo. Hannibal
he admits to have been the boldest and most
audacious of all the conquerors of Antiquity — so
adventurous, so sure, so great in all things, as he
says of the Carthaginian who had crossed both
the Pyrenees and the Alps.
" Yet, voyez-vous, this march of Hannibal from
Collioure to Turin was quite a simple matter — a
mere holiday tramp ; and as for the difficulties
of the passage of the Alps, why, there were really
none," is a commentary reported by Damas
Hinard in his Opinions de Napoleon, vol. i., p. 79.
Contrary to accepted historical opinion, which
places (we think) the Carthaginian, as a patriot
and a strategist, higher than all other conquerors,
whether modern or ancient. Napoleon declares
him inferior to Turenne and Conde, a comparison
which would place him on a plane about equal to
that of Marlborough. Turenne would, had he
suddenly arrived on the field of Wagram, have
at once understood the tactical dispositions,
Napoleon explams. But not so Hannibal.
In regard to Caesar, whom the world has long
been taught to look upon as the nearest known
approach to the perfect prince among men :
Napoleon deals with the Roman Colossus in an
especial manner, for Caesar, he thinks, is the only
spirit of all time that in any way challenges his
own glory. Caesar, too, is inferior as a general
to both Turenne and Conde and, par consequent.
" —IF SUCH A MAN THERE BE ? " 43
much less than the vietor of AusterHtz. And
Gourgaud shows us how the Emperor even envies
the great JuUus his renown as an historian ; for
after dictating a series of commentaries to his
secretary, he turns to the latter, saying :
" There you have something worth more than
Caesar's. He gives no dates ; I do." And, we
are assured by Hinard, the Emperor disliked to
be told that it was Caesar's habit to take his
ordinary rest on the night preceding a great
battle.
As for Gustavus Adolphus, the only respectable
commander produced by the Thirty Years' War,
in our opinion :
" In eighteen months," pooh-poohs Napoleon,
" this wonder gained one battle, lost another and
was killed in a third. They are, indeed, not wrong
who say ihat history is a romance. Men still
talk of the wondrous exploits of this Swede, and
of ourselves they will say— perhaps nothing'!
Yet Gustavus added nothing to the technical
science of war ! "
And, again, Charles XII. was a man who showed
no results for his career ; the Marechal de Saxe
— the soldier who met the Bloody Duke at
Fontenoy — was brave " but not by any means
an eagle." Even Frederick the Great — to whom
Napoleon surely owed his ideas about horse
artillery — fails to meet with the approval of the
Corsican, who declares in almost the same words
which old Wurmser had used about himself in the
Italian Campaign of 1796 :
44 THE GENESIS OF NAPOLEON
" Frederick breaks all the rules of war. What
distinguishes him is not so much his skill in
manoeuvres as his audacity. There was nothing
very fine in his tactics at Rosbach, and cer-
tainly he is not in the same class with Turenne.
Frederick, for all his great military qualities, did
not understand the proper use of artillery."
So, then, we see that Alexander is only brave
and that Hannibal, Caesar and Frederick are not
on the same level as Turenne, Napoleon, of course,
being, by construction, above them all. He is
not more generous in dealing with his own lieu-
tenants, whose glory he will only allow to reflect
his own, as Madame de Remusat tells us in her
Memoir es, adding, " and if they distinguished
themselves, he would say that they only did their
duty." When Davout, who had just won the
battle of Auerstadt, really the decisive factor in
the Jena Campaign, met his Emperor at Head-
quarters, the day after, Napoleon, who had had
sufficient time to compare and appraise the re-
spective merits of Auerstadt and Jena, looked at
^ his lieutenant very darkly, saying :
^ "Vous n'avez pas mal fait — You didn't do
so badly."
He is careful, too, to move his generals from
one force to another, in order that none shall
become too popular with any particular army.
There shall be no " X of the Army of Y," as there
had been a Bonaparte of the Army of Italy— if
Napoleon can help it. In speaking of Hoche,
whom, with Marceau, French experts rate on a
" WHO WOULD NOT WEEP " 45
level equal to all that Bonaparte proved himself
to be in Italy, the Emperor declared that, had it
come to a definite rivalry between them, Hoche
would have been crushed. Moreau, Napoleon
admitted, was the only general sprung from the
Revolution who was capable of causing him any
anxiety. Yet he gives no credit to Moreau for
the victory of Hohenlinden, which, far more than
Marengo — too distant from the campaign's real
political objective, Vienna — decided the sub-
mission of Austria to Bonaparte's plans in 1800.
Napoleon at St Helena described this great battle
as a mere " rencontre heureuse," which — of course
— disclosed no military talent.
Then there was Massena — whom Disraeli,
through the mouth of Sidonia, claimed as a fellow-
Hebrew from the tribe of Manasseh : " Massena,"
said Napoleon, " possesses military talents before
which we must bow." This general, it will be
remembered, fought a three-day battle against
the Russians under Korsakoff, at Zurich, in 1799,
defeated them and saved France from invasion.
Yet when Massena in 1804 wished to take the
title Due de Zurich, in memory of the exploit which
had won him the admiration of all France,
Napoleon declined to sanction the choice on the
ground that the suggested title was too German
for a good Frenchman ! Massena had to content
himself with the dukedom of Rivoli, which re-
called a first-class Bonapartian exploit. Thie-
bault, an admirer of the Emperor, tells us that
the Corsican never quite forgave Massena, who
46 THE GENESIS OF NAPOLEON
among soldiers and the people, held a reputation
hardly inferior to that of Napoleon himself, and
in order to destroy the Marshal's prestige with the
public, sent him to conquer Portugal with forces
entirely inadequate for the objecb in view.
Furthermore, in order to make any likelihood of
his great lieutenant's success all the more remote,
two hot-heads like Ney and Junot, men whom
only Napoleon himself could command, were
given him as coadjutors. Massena, adds
Thiebault, was too astute not to see through his
master's motives, and at first refused to undertake
the mission. Thiebault's conclusion is one that is
of interest in these days of great military exploit :
'' II semhle que le harnais militaire est idIus
lyropice quaucun autre a provoquer, chez quiconque
le porte, cette rage de gloire et cet entrainernent a
speculer sur la defaite du rival qui j^orte ombrage.^^
To which we may add another opinion in point
from the excellent Monsieur de Remusat, who
writes in the following strain, to his equally
excellent wife : —
"It is amusing to hear these military men
discuss one another ; how they run each other
down, showing, or seeking to show, for how much
good luck counts in successes which are won ;
and tearing to shreds every reputation which
outsiders like ourselves would have thought to be
established on the most solid foundations."
Taine was assuredly right when he declared
that all independence — even its possibility —
offended Napoleon, and that he could tolerate
" —IF ATTICUS WERE HE ? " 47
around him only such spirits as wilhngly hugged
the chains of their slavery. Napoleon himself
admitted his obsession more than once, and com-
pared himself at times to an artist, or to a lover :
" I love power," he told Roederer, " but I love
it as only an artist loves his art."
And on another occasion :
" I have only one passion and one mistress —
France. I wake with her, I sleep with her. My
only mistress is power, and I worked too hard in
winning her, to allow myself easily to be robbed
of her, or even to be envied for possessing her."
Or again :
" Ambition is so much a part of my tempera-
ment, of my constitution, that it has become the
very blood of my veins and the very air which
I breathe."
CHAPTER II
THE IMPERIAL STUDENT
Napoleon's Academic Tramijig — The Curriculum at
Brienne — The Classical atid Language Course — On
Literary Style — The Mathematical Studies — Religious
Instructio?i — At the Ecole Mililaire — The Suhaltern-
Sludent of Aiuvonnc — Impoiiance of History — Forma-
tion of Literary Tastes — What Rousseau taught
Napoleon — Machiavelli a Favourite — Was Bonaparte
a Mason ? — Sojne Literary Attempts — His " Heart's
Library" — So7ne English Books
CERTAIN French writers, among them
Monsieur Gustave Mouravit, agree in
thinking that the psychic side of
Napoleon is best divined from a study
of his private hbraries. Supposing this method
to be a fair test of the intellectual or spiritual
formation of an individual, we cannot fail to
derive much profit from tracing his literary
tastes back to the days of his early training
at Brienne, where the young Corsican spent
six years. French provincial colleges, whether
military or civil, have not, even in respect of the
various curricula followed, changed very much
within the past hundred years or so, and those
who have, as so many Britons now do, passed
a few years in a congregational school on the
Continent, will have no difficulty at all in recon-
structing for themselves the Academy of Brienne,
severe and semi-monastic, where the youthful
Bonaparte began his first steps in polite learning.
Then, as now, the so-called literary course began
with the seventh, or grammar class, after which
the pupil started his cours d^humanites. As a
King's Cadet and an officer-to-be, young Bona-
parte naturally chose the classical side, and in
due course ascended through " Sixieme Latine,"
Fifth, Fourth, Third, Second, to First, or
" Rhetoric." Latin was an essential — though
Napoleon in after life admitted to Wieland and
Goethe that he was no great Latinist.
Roman authors read all varied according to
the Forms, the lower taking very simple works
50
" EN SIXIEME LATINE " 51
like those of Eutropius, or easy passages from
the Selectse or Colloquia of Erasmus, the Fables
of PhsediT-is. The middle forms read the Lives of
Cornelius Nepos — De Viris lUustribus, we presume,
the Eclogues, Caesar's Commentaries, Sallust's
Jugurtha and Catiline. The higher classes
read the Twenty-First Book of Livy, Cicero's
Catiline and Pro Milone, the Odes and the Satires
of Horace, the First, Second and Sixth Books of
the ^neid, and the Fourth of the Georgics.
The pupils in Rhetoric, we are told, were
taught that there were three kinds of Oratory —
namely, (1) the judicial ; (2) the demonstrative
and (3) the deliberative. Three kinds of literary
style — (1) the sublime style — " dont Vecueil est
Venflure, fatras loompeux de paroles steriles " ;
(2) the moderate style, like that of Telemaquey
and (3) the simple style, of which La Bruyere
was the chief model, and of which the literary
professor of the Minimes acuminously observed :
" ce style est j^lus difficile a attraper qiCon ne se
V imagined Literature was taught with evidently
more care for the training of the pupil's cultivable
mind than is the case in British Public Schools,
and a satisfactory knowledge was required from
each youth concerning the main characteristics
and methods of thought and expression of Homer,
Virgil, Lucian, ^sop, Phsedrus, Theocritus,
Milton, Voltaire, Tasso and Camoens. Voltaire's
Essay on Epic Poetry, passages from the Death
of Caesar and the Henriade were among the
compulsory subjects, though Corneille, Racine,
52 THE IMPERIAL STUDENT
Fenelon, Bossuet, Massillon, Flechier and Boileau
were naturally the favourite authors in this
congregational academy. The oracle of the
Minimes was Boileau. A work by the Abbe
Vertot, entitled History of the Knights of Malta,
was looked upon as a classic and was learned by
heart ; Greek and Roman history, lectures on the
story of France from the days of the early kings
and an account of the "prodigious conquests " of
the British in India made up the History course.
Geography was studied somewhat perfunctorily,
though considerable attention was devoted to the
British Isles. There was no mention of Physics
or Natural History, but German was a fairly
general subject and the Mathematical schools
were good so far as they went, which was, for
the highest Form, in Algebra, to Logarithms and
the Theorem ; in Geometry, to advanced studies
of the Straight Line and Circle ; in Trigonometry,
to the Solution of Triangles.
Religious instruction was also given in the
form of discourses on difficult points in the
Catechism and, of course, there were classes in
Bible History, which the students for the most
part looked upon as the most tedious of all
lectures. Napoleon was not lacking in piety,
Chuquet tells us, when he first arrived at Brienne ;
but it is also certain that the general tone of the
school towards religious matters was well cal-
culated to kill any devotion he may once have
entertained for the Church, and he left there a
confirmed unbeUever, even as most of his con-
DEVOTIONAL SPRINTERS 53
temporaries, who, after the manner of the esprits
forts so fashionable in that age, affected, more
especially in the upper lecture-rooms, to ridicule
all matters connected with spiritual belief. It
will interest those who have experience of this
kind of foreign school-life to learn that the most
popular professors among the priests were those
who went through the daily Mass with the greatest
dispatch. Thus a certain Pere Chateau, for
example, was able to gallop through the ceremony
au pas de charge, taking only four minutes and a
half to celebrate a *' dead " mass ; a certain Pere
Berton, an ex-grenadier, by the way, was a good
second favourite, with a record of from nine to ten
minutes ; while a very old stager, Pere Genin,
could even beat the Missal hi less than fourteen
minutes by the clock.
On leaving Brienne and proceeding to the
Military College in Paris, young Bonaparte's
studies concerned themselves almost wholly with
technical acquirements, and if the Corsican de-
voted much time to other reading, we are not
informed of the nature of the works which engaged
his interest. It was not until 1785, when he was
already a subaltern in the artillery, that he read
Rousseau's Co7ifessions which, he afterwards
admitted, much affected his world-philosophy at
the time. It seems a startling fact in these days
of rapid military promotion, but it is true that
Bonaparte remained for over five years a second
lieutenant before he received his first step.
During these years — which were divided between
54 THE IMPERIAL STUDENT
his regimental service and Corsica — the young
subaltern gave himself up to all kinds of study
which was likely to contribute to his intellectual
formation, including original literary w^ork.
" My sense of time-economy was always large,"
he declared subsequently to the Prince-Primate
at Erfurt, " and even when I had nothing to do,
I was quick to realise that I had no time to lose."
When on garrison duty at Auxonne, he read
scores of historical works, including, as he tells us,
Marigny's History of the Arabs, several works
dealing with the government of Venice, Buffon's
Natural History, Mably's Observations on the His-
tory of France, a work on Frederick the Great,
Baron Tott's Souvenirs of Turkey, Barrow's
History of England, ^lirabeau's Lelires de Cachet,
Plato's Republic .
The literary tastes of Napoleon may be said
to have formed themselves during his garrison
years from 1785 to 1791, and the possession of
an extraordinary memory helped him to retain
all that he read. It was about this time, too,
that he began to show his preferences in regard
to the theatre. He was no lover of the play of
the comedy-of -manners type, and even of Moliere's
plays he could say that they were mere drawing-
room gossip — commerage de salon. His idea of
the educative in the drama was based upon the
stern realities of life, on destiny and on all those
conditions of existence which reveal men unto
themselves and force them to fight against the
adverse fate which is ever ready to overwhelm
INFLUENCE OF ROUSSEAU 55
the resigned and the supine. Like all true
Italians, he was a lover of Tragedy, and it is a
matter of record that himself, Joseph, Louis,
Lucien and their sister Elisa enacted many of the
masterpieces of Corneille and Racine at one time
or another in private. Voltaire, Napoleon always
held, was deficient in a proper understanding of
men, their motives and their passions, and failed
— like Tacitus — to appreciate the real nobleness
which invariably inspires the ambitions and
enterprises of all great men. Paul et Virginie
attracted his interest in these days, as naturally
did Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois. Men who
associated with him at that time tell us how it
was his habit to read aloud and so improve his
French accent, which always remained bad — so
much so indeed that sergeants, in reading the
military orders of the day, used to mimic his
pronunciation and say enfanterie for infanterie,
and emphasise the ton nasillard which character-
ised their young Corsican officer.
Rousseau, the author of the Social Contract, of
the Confessions and of Emile, counted for much
in forming his philosophic outlook about this
period, and helped him to attain that clear insight
into men's character which distinguished the
great intellectual rebel himself. In the days of
Auxonne he thirsted, like Rousseau, after Justice
and Liberty, fully agreed with Emile that
" society was bad and much corrupted by ex-
cessive civilisation," and sighed for the purity
of character which he found among the heroes of
4
J 56 THE IMPERIAL STUDENT
c^ 9 his favourite Ossian. And strong with the idea
V '>^ that the Corsicans were the modern types of the
ancient GaeUc warriors, he decided to write a
history of his native island. In 1789 he trans-
lated Boswell's Account of Corsica and con-
cluded from a searching study of Cromwell that
-J^ " revolutions provide a good opportunity for men
*<^ ^who have audacity and courage." His study of
Machiavelli pleases him, and from that philosopher
he takes a phrase which is afterwards to help him
generously on his life's journey :
" It is better to be brutal with Fortune than
to approach her with respect ; for Fortune is a
woman, and he that seeks to win her must use
> ^ violence rather than diplomacy."
y"^ All and everything touching on the campaigns
" -» of the great captains of the world helps to fill
^ up the busy days of mind-building, and he comes
^^ to the conclusion as a result of his researches in
'^ military history that :
^ " In the last analysis, it is the soldier who
governs ; one can only master a horse with boot
and spur." The horse meaning, of course, the
People.
Chuquet is of opinion that Bonaparte became
a Mason about the Valence period, and draws the
conclusion therefrom that at any rate he had
ceased to be a Catholic on taking up his com-
mission ; a point of view which overlooks the
fact that at the close of the eighteenth and the
beginning of the nineteenth century — the Age
of Reason — Freemasonry counted all sorts and
WANTED— A UTOPIA 57
conditions of prominent men within its fold,
many of whom outwardly professed anti-Masonic
religions and many who followed none at all.
There is little doubt, in any case, that he was as
favourable to Freemasonry as he was at heart
antipathetic to Jewry, and in all probability
haabeen initiated at some time or other into the
lower degrees. About 1790, Lucien tells us, he
wrote an essay in which, as Voltaire in his own
day had done, he sought to show that the life i
and teachings of Apollonius of Tyana — a mystical ^
contemporary of Christ — exceeded in their in-
fluence on the then existing world all that which
had been exerted by the Bethlehemite.
It was in 1791 that the Academy of Lyons
decided to award a prize, equal in value to about
£60 of our own money, for the best essay dealing
with the essential conditions of human happiness.
The young officer — then in his twenty-third year
— became a candidate for this award, and in due
course sent in his contribution, the sentiments of
which indicated his revolt against the animalism
of Rousseau, who maintained, it will be remem-
bered, that food, a female and rest were all-
sufficient for a man's happiness. Bonaparte
advocated the necessity of reasoned sentiment
in the world as the proper inspiration of social
happiness and progress — sentiment being the
prmcipiu7n of society and reason the force which
held it together. Self-isolation was opposed to
nature ; sympathy was as much a craving of
man's soul, as food for his body ; action was
58 THE IMPERIAL STUDENT
always superior to philosophy, even as sane
enthusiasm is always above philosophic indiffer-
ence, and reasoned self-expression is, en somyne,
the end of each man's life — these are, in effect,
some of the points of view he advances as requisite
for his new Utopia. He did not win the prize
which was declared to be, if somewhat discursive,
at least full of sound philosophy. The winner was
Denou, eight years older than Bonaparte, a man
who subsequently played a prominent role as a
politician and an intellectual on a lower stage than
his vast contemporary.
In 1793 Commandant Bonaparte, of the 12th
Battery of La Fere, published at his own expense
his Souper de Beaucaire, a discussion, between five
typical representatives of the social body, which
treated of the existing political situation in
France, and with especial reference to the city of
Marseilles, which then aspired, it would seem, to
play in Europe the role which had once belonged
to oligarchic Venice. That such a condition of
affairs could exist, indicated clearly the inherent
weakness of the French Government, and the
military representative at the Beaucaire supper-
table — Bonaparte, of course — goes on to show that
France can be saved only by a vigorous policy
which shall prove acceptable to the whole of the
nation, provided it be able to assert itself and
re-establish order everywhere — a policy in which
the sword must be allowed to play a capital role,
given the conditions of the day, suggests our
pragmatical officer, as we might presume. This
NAPOLEON'S LIBRARY 59
pamphlet went the way of the majority of ecrits
de circonstance ; it made no sensation in the
world, and a day was to come when Napoleon
could use bad language on his hypercritical and
caustic brother Lucien reminding him of certain
of the popular sentiments he then advanced.
" Oubliez-lc," he would shout at the mocking
Lucien ; " oubliez-le — forget it ! " ; and then goes
on to lecture him on the virtue of gratitude
among brothers.
In concluding this chapter, we think it well
to mention that the fallen Emperor's library
at St Helena was bequeathed to the Duke of
Reichstadt. It contained somewhat fewer than
500 volumes, which, we may suppose, were the
favourite works of the wonderful soldier —his
*' heart's library," to which the great disrated
could turn at any time for recreation, forgetful-
ness or consolation. The first masters of French
literature were nearly all represented, for a part
if not all of their masterpieces, and there lies not
a little pathos in the fact that the works on which
his youthful mind had fed at Brienne ever held the
first place in his interest. Historical tomes were
numerous, and among English books we find a
translation of Gibbon, a translation of Paradise
Lost and Hamilton's Memoirs of de Grammont.
There is also a Bible in eight volumes and a
history of Bonaparte as First Consul, in three
volumes. These apart, it is History — History
everywhere, the story of human action to which
he was to contribute so vast a chronicle himself.
60 THE IMPERIAL STUDENT
At the death of the Duke of Reichstadt, in the
third decade of the nineteenth century, all these
volumes passed into the possession of the
Emperors of Austria, and are now shelved in the
vast Hofburg Library in Vienna in a special
section devoted to the legend of this mighty
adversary of the House of Habsburg.
CHAPTER III
THE IMPERIAL CRITIC
Frenchmen and Conieille — Value of Napoleotis
Criticism — His Literanj Likes and Dislikes — His
Opinion of Corneille and Moliere — A Discussion of
Tragedy — Napoleon and Raynouard — Concerning
Voltaire — A Reading by Talma — Napoleon and the
Public Taste — Love and Tragedy — A Literary Ghost
— The Emperor s Criticism of the Mneid, Book II. —
His Opinion of the Iliad — Dislike of Shakespeare —
A Hypercritical View
FRENCHMEN are agreed, we think, in
assigning to Corneille the place which
Enghshmen give to Shakespeare, or
Germans to Goethe ; and, as every school-
boy knows, in France, England and Germany,
there may be found large bodies of opinion
which, excluding all possible competitors, home
or foreign, accord their champion, as against
the rest of the world's illuminati, a position
corresponding to that which certain theological
universities are wont to confer on their most
distinguished scholar — namely, the degree of
Solus. Although we prefer to leave to profounder
judges of the literary arts all decisions in matters
of this nature, and though far from accepting the
literary criticism of the great soldier as possessing
much value beyond that of an extraordinary
judge of human nature and human motives, we
maintain, nevertheless, that the judgments of so
important a student as Napoleon may always
be placed with, at least, corrective results beside
those of really competent professional critical
judges, and competent critics, it may be said, are
nearly as rare as Napoleons. xA.s he has assured
us himself, Napoleon was no great admirer of
Shakespeare ; his regard for Goethe we have
dwelt upon in another chapter, and shown that
it Avas based partly on the psychological study of
Werther and partly on the second-hand opinions,
given to him by Talleyrand, by Lannes and by
other men of purely political affairs, regarding the
tremendous prestige that the Sage of Weimar
62
SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA 63
enjoyed among the conservative elements of
Germany, Avhich then, as now, made the most
of its chosen literary instruments.
Shakespeare, said Napoleon, in effect, would
never have enjoyed the universal renown which
was his, had it not been that Voltaire, an exile
in England desirous of flattering Englishmen,
introduced the study of the English dramatist
to Frenchmen. Hamlet^ the exile boasted, he
only saw played once in his life, Macbeth twice,
Othello once, and what he had seen of Shakespeare
had not encouraged him to further study of the
English style of drama. On the other hand,
he had seen Le Cid eight times, Polyeucte six
times, Cinna twelve times, CEdvpe nine times.
The English dramatist he considered to be lacking
in political insight and to possess a genius which
was more applicable to the study of bourgeois
or provincial situations and conditions than
adapted for intrigues enacted on a grand and
imposing plane, and held that the colonising
gifts of the British, by spreading the English
language, had done more towards universalising
the Bard of Avon than any intrinsical genius
shown by his works.
" Corneille was, on the contrary," said
Napoleon, " at the supreme head of all the
tragical poets of all time. He had divined the
real nature of politics, and had he been trained
to affairs, would have made a great statesman.
It is not his versification that I admire most, but
his great sense of actualities, his vast knowledge
64 THE IMPERIAL CRITIC
of the human heart, the profundity of his poHtical
nous. France owes to the sentiments which he
has voiced many glorious results. The fatalism
of the ancients Corneille has replaced by the
reasoned philosophy of State-politics, and he
is the only one among the poets of France who
has seized upon this truth. Had he lived in my
time I would have created him a prince." So
enthusiastic, indeed, was the Emperor for the
great French poet that at one time he expressed
his intention of ennobling the living descendants
of Corneille and of granting them suitable pensions
for the maintenance of their dignity.
Of Moliere's comedies he was no great admirer,
since tragedy, in his opinion, was the only form
of the drama which had a really educative value,
or any inspiration worthy of the name. Tartuffe,
he admitted, however, to be one of the master-
pieces of the stage, yet a piece for which he would
not himself have granted a theatrical licence,
owing to the way in which it ridiculed devotional
piety. Racine he esteemed very highly, and had
witnessed Bajazet seven times, Iphigenie ten
times, and Phedre on an equal number of occa-
sions. Mithridate, in respect of its famous plan
of campaign, he declared to be worthless, although
as a work of art this drama appealed to him,
Racine representing, in his view, on the whole,
the somewhat " easy-going philanthropism " of
the latter half of the seventeenth century.
Raynouard's Templiers he witnessed three times,
and disapproving of it for political reasons, com-
NAPOLEON OBJECTS 65
manded the author to come to the Tuileries in
order to discuss Tragedy with him. The char-
acter of King PhiHppe-le-Bel, in this piece, had,
it may be said, been depreciated, although in the
opinion of the Emperor he had been a good King
and France had not been too rich in good
monarchs. He had, said Napoleon, been the
first to put the Pope in his place, and had worked
for the people in his attempt to destroy the Order
of the Templars — composed mainly of younger
sons and possessing the third of the kingdom's
wealth — which had ceased to possess any utili-
tarian value, but had become dangerous to
the State. The Emperor's conversation with
Raynouard throws an interesting light upon his
conception of the drama.
" You should have represented the King," said
Napoleon, " in the act of declaring to a Council
of his Ministers that he intended to abolish the
Order. The Grand Master would then refuse to
dissolve the Brotherhood and Philippe would
finally be compelled to sentence him to death."
" My conception," replied Raynouard, " was
to make the King a weak character in order to
enhance the dramatic situation by leaving the
spectator in doubt whether the King would prove
harsh or merciful to the Order — whether he would
suppress it, or not."
" But," objects the Emperor, " the King in
this case represents the nation, and the nation
is opposed to the Templars, who are a band of
oligarchs working for their own interest and
66 THE IMPERIAL CRITIC
against that of the people. The latter must,
therefore, be on the side of their real representa-
tive — the King. Your correct dramatic situa-
tion would have been to show Philippe bringing
about a magnificent and spectacular coup d'etat
by abolishing a veritable impei'ium in imperio.
A King of France can be put on the stage only
to be admired. Again, you must get this point
into your head — namely, that Politics plays in
modern drama the role that Fate played in the
drama of the Ancients."
And the Emperor goes on to show where the
poet's technique fails in the following lines
which Philippe addresses to the rebelHous Grand
Master : —
" Choose between my clemency and my hatred —
The scaffold awaits you ! "
" That," cries Napoleon, " is altogether wrong !
A King does not talk of his hatred, but of his
justice. He may consign to the scaffold, but
never talks of one."
On the subject of Brutus, the work of Voltaire,
whose style the Emperor declared to be full of
turgidity and tinsel (de boursouflure et de clin-
quant) and whose temperament was incapable of
understanding men and matters, or the move-
ment of the passions. Napoleon said :
" The Romans were guided by the love of their
country, just as we are by our honour. Now,
Voltaire does not depict the true sublimity of
Brutus sacrificing his children, despite his own
DISLIKE OF VOLTAIRE 67
agony, for the safety of Rome ; he makes of iiim
a monster of pride sacrificing them at a great
crisis solely to the glorification of his own name.
The whole tragedy is of a kind, and Lucretia
becomes a madwoman who almost glories in
the seduction which must make the ages talk of
her."
And of the same author's Mahomet he tells us
that the Prophet is nothing better than an im-
postor who might have been brought up at the
Ecole Polytechnique ; he is made to murder his
father — an entirely wrong idea, says Napoleon,
who adds that really great men are never
ciniel without necessity. Altogether Voltaire's
Mahomet is too little for Napoleon, who gives
instructions on one occasion to Monsieur de
Fontanes saying :
" / will reconstruct the plays and you can
look after the versification."
Legouve was another dramatist who came under
Imperial criticism, when his Death of Henri IV.
was submitted to the Censor. Talma was com-
manded to read the play and the Imperial family,
including Josephine, was present for the occasion.
A line sonorously declaimed by the great tragedic
actor awakens the Imperial ire. It runs :
" Je tremble — je ne sais quel noir pressentiment. . . ."
This is too much for Napoleon's conception of
kingliness ; he interrupts Talma at once, declar-
ing that the phrasing must be altered :
" A King may tremble," he explains, " since
68 THE IMPERIAL CRITIC
he is a man like other men ; but he should never
admit it."
The words are accordingly changed and Talma
goes on to describe how some bloody villain
creeps forward and plunges ten inches of dagger
into the royal chest.
" Le pauvre homme ! L 'excellent homme ! "
cries Napoleon, with obvious after-thoughts,
while poor Josephine, ires cmue, turns on the
opportune tear.
A certain Nicolo Buonaparte, a resident of
Florence, wrote a comedy in 1568, called La
Vedova (The Widow), and Napoleon, with praise-
worthy family pride, wished to have the play
translated and produced in Paris in his day. It
was found, however, that the work was far too
indecent even for that age, and accordingly was
not acted. Nevertheless, Napoleon made few
mistakes in his judgments as to what the public
really wanted, and the views of the people,
dramatists always admitted, in nearly all cases
coincided with those of the Emperor, a fact which
may recommend itself to many psychologists of
History, who tell us, with considerable cogency,
that the great leaders of any epoch are almost
invariably men who constitute in themselves a
kind of resume of the mentality and tempera-
mentality of the age in which they live. Arnault
once read his Dom Pedro, or The Prince and the
Peasant, to the Emperor, who was far from
charmed to hear an agricultural labourer giving
counsel to a sovereign.
A LITERARY GHOST 69
" Your peasant is a tribune of the Plebs," he
told the author, " and I don't care for him."
So, too, thought the first-nighters, who hissed
the piece rather severely on its presentation. It
was the opinion of the Corsican that Corneille
alone knew how to make kings act and talk, j^
verse being only the embroidery of the dramatic
stuff, as he expressed it in his excellent native
mother-wit. To Baour-Lormian, who had written
a tragedy called Mahomet II., Napoleon, dislik-
ing the piece, declared that love scenes were of
no use in tragical pieces, and that the serious
dramatist should rely on history rather than
on romance for his effects. What the author
wanted was large conceptions ; the word-painting
and the ringing phrase could wait.
We must not overlook the tradition that
Napoleon was himself the composer of a tragedy
called Hector, the authorship of which was said
to have been officially attributed to an alleged
literary ghost. Luce de Lancival. This gentle-
man, who had already written several plays, was
without apparent reason one day given the
Legion of Honour and a pension worth £300
a year. Some obscure pamphleteer sought in a
publication to show that Lancival's Hector was
really the work of Bonaparte himself, who had
once wiled away the empty hours of his incar-
ceration in the Temple, many years before, in
composing this tragedy. On attaining to supreme
power he resurrected his lucubration, confiding
it to Lancival for alterations and repairs. The
70 THE IMPERIAL CRITIC
dramatist did all that was required of him,
tenderly edited Hector and submitted it, in his
own name, to the Theatre Franyais, where it was
swiftly turned down with Homeric honours. A
few days afterwards, during a rehearsal, an aide-
de-camp arrived at the theatre with the following
letter addressed to the director : —
" The mummers (histrions) of the Theatre
Fran^ais will immediately start rehearsing the
tragedy Hector, which they had the audacity and
ill-taste to refuse. Signed : Nap." When we
have added that the above story appears in a
pamphlet entitled, Bonaparte, his Family and his
Court, by a Chamberlain malgre lui, we think the
credibility of this pamphleteer becomes a little
more than suspect.
Brother Scots will be interested to hear that a
play entitled Edward in Scotland, by Alexander
Duval, was enacted in 1802, and the audience
much applauded a scene in which the Pretender
retorts to an English colonel, who proposes as a
toast the death of all who support the Stuarts :
" I drink the death of no man," says Charles
James, and the public applauded, thinking of the
exiled Bourbons, no doubt. Bonaparte went to
see the play and Duval affects to think that the
First Consul shed a tear over the sufferings of the
poor Stuart exile ! Bourbon partisans who were
present, like the Due de Choiseul, took every
available opportunity of making demonstrations,
and Bonaparte had the play withdrawn. Some
indication of the political temper of those days
VIRGIL EXAMINED 71
is also shown in the extra-theatrical comedy
which attended on the representation of a play
called U Antichambre, by Dupaty, in which the
Consular court comes in for considerable ridicule,
Bonaparte himself being mimicked, as well as
members of his family. In his first anger
the Consul sentenced the author to exile in San
Domingo, but pardoned him as he was taking
ship at Brest for the West Indies.
The Imperial critic on one occasion delivered
his opinion of Virgil in the following words : —
*' The Second Book of the ^Eneid is held to be the
masterpiece of this epic, and it certainly deserves
the reputation, considered from the point of style.
I cannot, however, rate it very high from other
points of view. Thus, the wooden horse may
have been a popular tradition, but to introduce
it into an epic poem is ridiculous and entirely
unworthy of a grandiose theme. You will find
nothing like this in the IHad, where everything
conforms strictly and truthfully to the real
practice of war. How can we imagine the
Trojans so stupid as not to have thought of send-
ing a fishing-smack to the island of Tenedos, in
sight of Troy, in order to assure themselves if
the thousand ships of the Greeks had reached
there, or if they were on their way to attack the
city ? How can we believe that Ulysses and his
friends were such fools as to risk putting them-
selves into the hands of their enemies by cribbing
themselves in that ridiculous wooden machine ?
And supposing the^iorse to have contained even
72 THE IMPERIAL CRITIC
one hundred armed men — how could such a
weight have been moved to the walls of Troy,
across the bay and over two rivers which were
overlooked by the very towers of the citadel ?
" The tragic episode of the sons of Laokoon,
however impressive, cannot excuse the absurdity
of the narrative, which really shows that the
destruction of Troy and the entire action of the
Second Book were executed and accomplished
within the space of a few hours— an achievement
which must in practice have required at least a
fortnight. Had Homer described the fall of
Troy he would not have treated it simply as
one treats the taking of a fort. Homer had
seen war, whilst Virgil had simply thought out
his ideas of war like a schoolmaster who knows
his book. It took Scipio seventeen days to raze
Carthage to the ground ; and Moscow was burned
out only after eleven had passed. The Third
Book is but a copy of the Odyssey, while the
Fourth lacks every agreement with the dramatic
unities.
" The Iliad," said Napoleon, " is like Genesis
and the Bible, and is for all time. Homer was
at once a poet, an orator, an historian, a legislator,
a geographer and a theologian. He is the
Encyclopaedist of his epoch. The universal
approval which men have given him has been
well won and I have always read him with
enthusiasm. A contrast which much struck me
in Homer was the coarseness of social habits and
the ethical grandeur of ideas — heroes hunting
THE BARD OF AVON 78
game and dressing their own food, yet moving
worlds to vast endeavour with their eloquence."
And here finally is what the Emperor had
to say of the Bard of Avon, whom he had
read, we imagine, only through the medium of
translations :
" Certain French people fall in love with
England at first sight, and are willing to accept
one single opinion as sufficing to settle finally
the matter of England's literary glory. But
Shakespeare was forgotten for two centuries even
in England. It pleased Voltaire, then in Geneva
and seeing much English society at the time,
to praise the English poet in order to flatter his
great friends from London. It became the fashion
to call Shakespeare the greatest writer of all
time. I have read Shakespeare, however, and
can say that there is nothing in him which
approaches either Corneille or Racine. It is
impossible indeed to read his plays seriously.
Myself I find them so feeble as to be almost
pitiful. As for Milton, there is only his address
to the Sun and a few other pieces which count
for anything ; the rest is mere rhapsody. And
I much prefer Vely to Hume. France has no
cause to envy England for anything ; even
her own citizens desert her as soon as they
can."
Napoleon once objected to La Fontaine's famous
fable of the Wolf and the Lamb on the ground
that it taught might to be greater than right,
and was consequently bad for children. It was
74 THE IMPERIAL CRITIC
immoral, he further held, because the wolf was
not choked when he devoured the lamb !
In History he stood out for Machiavelli, saying :
" Tacitus wrote novels. Gibbon is a brawler.
]Machiavelli is the only historian worth reading."
CHAPTER IV
THE IMPERIAL THEATRE
Talma and Bonaparte — The Actor coaches the First
Cotisid — The Emperor coaches the Actor — Frie7idly
Relations of the Ttvain — Napoleon on Critics and
his Love for Cinna — Concerning Mademoiselle Mars
a7td her Sister — An Unexpected Scene — Mademoiselle
Boiirgoin and Chaptal — An Imperial Rebuke
IT is unfortunate that Talma, the Kean
of the French stage, should have left us
next to nothing in the way of records
dealing with his long and uninterrupted
intimacy with Napoleon whom he had known
in the days which followed on the Toulon
episode, when the young Corsican was an un-
employed ex-commandant in Paris. There are
letters extant — suspect, it must be added — in
which the poor officer writes to the affluent and
friendly actor, asking him if he has a few dollars
(ecus) at his disposal, and it is to Talma, we think,
that young Bonaparte confessed that he had once
put his watch in pawn for a couple of pieces of
gold. Of all the celebrities on the stage of that
period. Talma alone enjoyed an intimacy with
Napoleon, which came near to that possessed by
Duroc, the Earl Marshal of the Empire, and the
only individual to whom the Corsican allowed
the privilege of free brotherly speech with him-
self. The Emperor at St Helena gave the dis-
claimer to the many stories which charged him
with having been a bad borrower, when he said
that he and Talma only became acquainted in
1800. Talma also denied the suggestions. Others
assert that they had known each other since
1790.
Whatever the facts, and they are not of very
great importance, there is no doubt that in 1802
Talma began to pay very frequent visits to the
First Consul, in the course of which, it is said, the
great actor used to give the chief of the State
TAL.MA AS NERO
THE SCHOOL FOR KINGS 77
lessons in princely deportment, a course of in-
struction the real significance of which could not
have escaped the astute Frenchman. Admirers
of Bonaparte who attributed all god-like gifts to
their hero, denied that the Corsican had ever
sought instruction from an actor how to play the
monarch, and if the lessons were ever given, it is
to be feared that Napoleon was no very apt pupil,
since sound tradition has it that he was the least
graceful or imposing of princes in respect of
presence and courtly bearing. Nor can it be said
that Napoleon derived much benefit from Talma's
lessons in elocution, for, to the end, the great
soldier, whatever he may have been in private,
or in the council chamber, was a failure as a public
speaker — except on the eve of conflict. That the
Corsican really took lessons in deportment and
elocution from his great contemporary is, how-
ever, our own fixed belief, and we see no reason
either for refusing to believe the fact or for
holding Napoleon up to ridicule on this account.
We have noted that, like the admirably thorough
being he ever was, Bonaparte had studied out the
essential character and personality of princes ;
and it is more than likely that he did not confine
his study to learning only the half of his role.
On his own side, Napoleon was very free with
instructions to the great tragedian. For example,
after seeing Talma in the Death of Pompey in
1805, the Emperor — ^^vho had really been an
emperor since 1800 and cannot be accused of too
much anxiety to show his sense of the new honour
78 THE i:\IPERIAL THEATRE
— addressed the actor as to his role in the
following terms : —
" You ^vork your arms too freely and are too
full of gesture. The head of an empire is more
economical of his movements ; he is fully aware
that a sign is an order, that a look means death,
and is therefore sparing of both. There is also
in the play a verse the meaning of which escapes
you, Talma, who seem to be too convinced, too
sincere when you declaim the line :
" ' For me, who think a throne to be an infamy . . .'
" Caesar, when he speaks these words, does not
mean the least of them, and talks in this strain
only because he is surrounded by Romans to
whom he wishes to convey the idea that he has
a horror of kings. He is, however, far from
thinking the throne contemptible. On the con-
trary, it is the first object of his whole life. You
must not make a Caesar talk as a Brutus would
talk."
Again, after witnessing Britannicus, Napoleon
criticises Talma in the following words : —
" Your acting of Nero does not quite satisfy
me, and in that role I should like to see more of
the conflict between a bad character and a good
education. You should make fewer gestures ; a
nature like Nero's has little external show, being
too self-centred. Nevertheless, I like the simple
and natural forms which you have restored to
tragedy. When men of exalted rank are moved
by passion, their language becomes more energetic
TALMA AT COURT 79
without being less natural. For example, you
and I are now conversing in an ordinary way ;
nevertheless we are making history."
When the First Consul becomes FiUiperor, Talma
fears to present himself at the Imperial Court
until the new sovereign, noticing his continued
absence, asks if the great actor is angry with him
for any reason. After which Talma presents him-
self and pleases Napoleon because he dresses in
appropriate good taste for his courtly role. So
Napoleon takes the opportunity of continuing his
instructions to Talma, and we get the following
monologue : —
" Talma, you often visit me, and you can see
things as they are : Princesses deprived of their
lovers, Princes who have lost their States, Kings
degraded by war from their sovereign rank,
Generals who aspire to and beg for thrones.
Around me you can see fallen ambitions, never-
ceasing intrigues and rivalries, sorrows and afflic-
tion — all covered with courtier-like maskery.
Here, assuredly, is Tragedy enough for anyone ;
my Palace is full of it, and even I am myself the
most tragical figure in this big cast of tragedy.
Well now ! Do you see any of us strike attitudes,
or affect the airs and poses of grandeur, or hear
us cry out in our triumphs or in our anguish ?
No, indeed ! We are all perfectly natural and
speak just as ordinary men speak when moved
by interest or by passion. And it was in just the
same way that the great makers of history acted
in their own day and in the process of their own
80 THE IMPERIAL THEATRE
tragedies. There, now, you have something on
which to meditate ! "
4 All of which makes the reader rather sorry for
f ^ the actor to whom Napoleon thought it necessary
.^ to address so crude a sermon of banalities — if he
^ ' ever did ; and we very much doubt it.
Talma once pretended to discern in the profile of
Alexander the Great, as shown by a rare cameo,
some resemblance to Napoleon — a likeness which
certainly did not exist, if ancient coins tell the
truth. The Emperor professed to be pleased and
presented Talma with the cameo. Napoleon
many times paid the great actor's debts — to a
total amount, according to the Imperial account-
books, of half-a-milhon francs, or £20,000. Cer-
tainly Talma was never guilty of ingratitude to
the Corsican. In view of the number of knight-
hoods which have been distributed within later
times to the various prominent actors and singers
of our own age, by European sovereigns, it is
interesting to learn from the Memoirs of Las Cases
that Napoleon once declared it had been his
intention to decorate Talma with the Legion of
Honour, and that only the fear of a public outcry
against such an official distinguishing of a mere
actor caused him to alter his decision. It was
from Talma that Bonaparte on his return from
Italy to Paris purchased the hotel in the rue de
la Victoire — formerly rue Chantereine — and it
was in this house that the actor made up a list
of entertainers whom, he suggested the General
should take with him to Egypt : Rigel, a pianist of
THE R6LE ;0F the critic 81
note ; Grandmaison, a poet ; Villoteau, a baritone
— the type of male voice which Napoleon most
favoured, we may state — and Arnault, a dramatic
poet and author of Les Venetiens, who admitted
that the Corsican had collaborated with him in
the composition of that play.
It was also to Talma, who had just presented
his friend the poet Lemercier, that Bonaparte
declared that criticism which was not con-
structive was of no value whatsoever, since, as he
said, a valet-de-chambre can find words for simple
or gratuitous criticism. One of the visitors
objected that the matter of good taste might
possibly be beyond the intelligence of a menial,
and Napoleon answered :
" That is just another conventional term —
good taste ! What can the matter of good ~^
taste mean to a man who works on original lines \
as apart from novelty and the bizarre ? To me
it is of the last concern what another person
thinks, especially in accidentals. Give me sound '1
argument and sound thought and I am with you.
I have tried to read Virgil, but he bored me, and
Ossian I read simply because, like the waves of the
sea and the winds of the forest, he represented
rough Nature to me. French dramatists and
authors attach too much importance to what the
critics are likely to say of them, and the result is,
they are handicapped by the fact that, on starting
to write, their own natural expression is already
suffocated. A great author must write to please / .
himself and without regard to standr.rds which
82 THE IMPERIAL THEATRE
are only conventions set up by mediocrities who,
possessing no bel essor, cannot get beyond the
art-Hmitations by which they seek to fetter
loftier spirits. That is why I place Corneille
first among all French poetic dramatists ; he
had seen nothing of the great world and worked
far away from the madding crowd. Yet who can
approach him when he excogitates the heart of a
prince, or the soul of a leader of men and presents
him on the stage ? Truth — the discovery of new
truth — is originality, not novelty, not new affec-
tations, not the setting-up of standards which
come to-day and pass to-morrow. Human nature
always remains the same ; there were no
conventions in the Garden of Eden."
To Constant, the great man's body servant, we
owe the recollection that a volume of Corneille
was always placed on the Emperor's table when
a visit was paid by Talma, and Napoleon would
open the tome at Cinna and frequently quote
from that masterpiece the lines :
"Cesar, tu vas regner. Voici le jour auguste
Ou le peuple romain pour toi toujours injuste."
On another occasion Lemercier presented him
with a copy of his play Agamemnon, which the
Corsican criticised with great severity, declaring
that it was entirely lacking in courtly sense.
" Strophus has no business to reprove Clytem-
nestra," he says. " Strophus is only a valet."
Lemercier objects : " Strophus is a friend of
Agamemnon ; he is a dethroned king."
MADEMOISELLE MARS S3
" Psha ! " returns the Imperial upstart ; " at
Court only the King counts. The rest are but so
much valetry."
In Voltaire's Merope, he objects also to the line :
"The first of all kings was a victorious soldier,"
and forbids Chaptal to allow that piece to be
produced because, as he declared, the people had
not intelligence sufficient to apprehend the real
meaning latent in that truism. Said he :
" For me the man who raises himself to a throne
from nothing, is the first man of his age. It is
no question of luck, but only merit, on the one
hand and recognition of merit on the other."
The relations of Napoleon with the two sisters
called Mars are not very well established, though
it is accepted as historical that on one occasion
while in the company of the younger and more
famous sister, Napoleon, at three o'clock in the
morning, had his first epileptic stroke, the whole
household, including the Imperial consort, being
awakened to attend at the Emperor's bedside,
where Josephine pretended to go into an hysterical
fit at the sight of her hated rival, chasing the
latter half-naked down the stairs to the entresol
and threatening, according to the record, with
much shrill vituperation, to " scratch her face,"
to "pull her hair," to "slit her nose"— all in
the accepted style of the perfect lady who toils
beneath the moon and sleeps beneath the sun.
Mademoiselle Bourgoin was another who passed
under the notice of Napoleon. This damsel
84 THE IMPERIAL THEATRE
was the paid mistress of Chaptal, who acted as
Minister of the Interior at the time and was an
intimate and frequent collaborant of the Emperor.
Bourgoin once received — very unexpectedly —
her summons to attend on Caesar's pleasure,
and on presenting herself near midnight at the
Palace was shown direct to Napoleon's bed-
room, where, to her consternation, she found
Chaptal deep in statistical business with his
Imperial master. Poor little Bourgoin, who
misjudged the occasion, thought well to attempt
a little coquetry on her own account, all the more
so since Napoleon had not even turned his head
to look at her. As she sought to attract his
attention, the Emperor, without raising his head
from the table, ordered her to — undress ! The
chorus-woman set about divesting and laid her-
self on the Imperial couch. Napoleon then made
*, some pretence at finishing up for the night and
retiring, whereat (says the chronicler) old Chaptal,
small wonder, began to sweat at every pore of
his body. The Emperor changed his mind,
however, and with his Minister started on some
new task which lasted a couple of hours. In the
meantime the actress lay blinking in bed, much
mystified by proceedings in Avhich she was entirely
counted out, considerably hurt in her woman's
pride, and wondering where on earth she was
to come in — and when, and how. At last the
girl attempted a remark, but had hardly opened
her mouth when Napoleon interrupted her
brusquely :
MONSIEUR DE CHAPTAL 85
"Get up and go home," he said. "I do not
want you." And the seance closed.
The authority for this story is Chaptal himself
in his Memoirs ; nor does he fail to inform us
that he sent in his resignation on the day following
this studied and indeed cowardly outrage on the
part of the Corsican, since the Minister was not in a
position to defend himself. It is of Mademoiselle
Bourgoin, by the way, that Napoleon at Erfurt
made the remark to the Emperor Alexander :
" Visit that woman and to-morrow all Europe
will know what your physical proportions are
from the ground up. Besides, I am concerned
about your health " — an exquisite remark which
carries its own commentary with it.
When Mademoiselle Chameroi, a well-known
dancing-woman at the Opera, passed to her
reward, the Vicar of Saint-Roch refused to receive
her coffin in his church or to celebrate Mass for
the repose of her soul. Napoleon immediately
instructed the Archbishop of Paris to suspend
the Vicar for three months in order, as he said,
to give him time to meditate on the fact that
Jesus Christ had taught men to pray for poor
sinners, and to cultivate the divine attribute of
charity to all.
CHAPTER V
MADEMOISELLE GEORGE
Standards of Beauty — Lessiiig's View — George an
Amazonian Type — Her Attraction for Bonaparte —
Their First Meeting at Saint-Cloud — Affected Nervous-
ness of the Actress — Napoleon as a Lover — Espionage
of Talleyrand — Bonaparte criticises the Actress — His
Generosity to George — A Visit to the Tuileries —
Josephine' s Fit of Jealousy — Napoleon's Coronation —
George visits an Emperor — Napoleon and His Bonnes
Fortunes — Where George disappointed her Lover —
Her Veneration for Napoleon — A Costly Rendezvous
IF the author of the Laocoon was right,
then we may readily agree that there are
certain subjects that do not altogether
lend themselves to the painter's art. Wlien
Helen raised her veil and thought that act a
sufficient answer to the angry Senators who
accused her of having brought calamity and de-
vastation upon Troy, the lady showed thnt the
opinion she entertained about her own beauty
was not a poor one. But could the first of
painters present the most easily satisfied among
us with the picture of a Helen who might be
admitted to be worth a ten-year war, or show us
a beauty the very absoluteness of which must
appeal to all tastes ? Assuredly not ; and we
should ourselves prefer the poet to tell us of this
miracle of loveliness, leaving it to the reader's
imagination to conjure up the ideal of so fair
a creature — although Lessing teaches otherwise.
Portraiture has of course dealt, though not
generously, with Mademoiselle George — correctly
so spelled — a favourite mistress of Napoleon, and
on contemplating various pictures which represent
this actress, we are led to believe either that the
Corsican's taste was poor, or else that the por-
traitists of that time were weak in reproducing
their sitters. As represented by the various
artists whom we have seen, George would seem
to have resembled one of those handsome but
hard-faced Irishwomen of the larger size, and the
reader may not require to be told that certain
profound experts in the anthropological science
88
MARGUERITE-JOSEPHINE 89
have seriously questioned the absolute femininity
of the woman of Ireland, the theory being that she
suffers from an excess of m.asculine temperament.
Like the majority of women who have attained
to lofty rank in the dramatic and singing pro-
fession, Mademoiselle George was born of actors
and made her first appearance on the stage at
five years old — about 1790. At the opening of
the Consulate she was in her twenty-second year,
and already possessed an important prestige
among contemporary actresses — a prestige which
was mainly due then, as it is now and ever was,
to cleverly organised reclame or press-agency
work. Her vogue among the stage-door brother-
hood was great — much greater than she admits
in her Me7noirs — and it is to be feared, alas ! that
Marguerite-Josephine, to name her, had dropped
the pitcher very early in life. When Bonaparte
first met her she was the mistress-in-chief
of a certain Prince Sapieha, and although she
emphasises the fact that a maiden aunt used
to look very carefully after her morals, there is
valid ground for the presumption that this old
virgin was herself really no better than she
should have been. The First Consul first saw
George as Clytemnestra in Iphigenia, and so
pleased was he with the personality and perform-
ance of the young actress that he sent Constant
— his valet ! — to her house, after the play, with
instructions to solicit her to call at Saint-Cloud on
the following night — a fair sample of the Corsican's
diplomacy in delicate matters of the kind,
90 MADEMOISELLE GEORGE
George, at this point in her MemoirSy goes into
a ridiculous description of her " emotions " on
hearing from the body servant that the First
Consul wished to meet her. We must respect
the intelligence of the actress, however, when she
tells us that her curiosity in regard to the young
Conqueror overcame all other sentiments ; for the
feeble brain of an ordinary stage-woman could
not have thought out this little bit of soul-
analysis if she had not really felt it. She informs
Constant of her willingness to wait on the Consul
at the hour indicated. Then, she says, the whole
night preceding her visit was one long misery.
What could the First Consul want with her, she
wondered. And besides, could he not come
to her ? Perhaps it would be better, after all,
to write and decline, and then she tries to think
what she ought to wear — white or pink ; a
confection or something muslin and simple ? Oh,
these dictators — ^what dreadful men they must
be ! And at last she drops off to sleep. About
eight o'clock her maid awakes her, and noting
Mademoiselle's bad humour, assures her that other
rivals on the stage — Volnais, Bourgoin, Mars —
would much envy her when they heard of her
good fortune. George, somewhat consoled, orders
her carriage for the Bois, visits her coiffeur^ her
tailor and goes on to the theatre, where she
meets Talma — mon hon Talma. The actor and
the manager, Fleury, both congratulate her, the
latter with some narquoiserie^ assuring her that
she wears an air of conquest.
THE WAY TO SAINT-CLOUD 91
The actress goes home and arrays herself in
what she describes as a white musHn neglige,
a lace veil and a cachemire, and on arriving at the
theatre, to wile the intervening hours away,
meets the actress Volnais, who is also out for a
rendezvous.
" Do you intend to see the whole play out ? "
says the latter, referring to the fashionable piece
then being acted.
" No — ^will you ? " asks George.
" Nor I," replies Volnais, " I have something
on about nine o'clock " — meaning presumably
that she was to meet General Junot, for the
rendezvous was with him.
The Consular carriage called for George at
eight o'clock, with Constant, the valet, in attend-
ance, and the coachman was the famous Cesar,
about whom so many obvious jokes used to be
made. It is a long journey to Saint-Cloud —
four miles ? — and Constant, under no illusions,
presumably, as to the quality of this hardened
actress's " trepidation," laughed when she told
him that she felt very much humiliated — *' which
I thought somewhat impertinent on his part,"
writes the lady. On arrival at the Palace,
Roustan shows her into — a large bedroom. As
she nurses her nervousness, the First Consul makes
his appearance — in white breeches, black socks,
green uniform with red facings and the famous hat
crushed under his arm. His first act was to tear
her veil away and tell her that he had sent her
£120 after hearing her in some recent play.
c
92 MADEMOISELLE GEORGE
" I thought," said he, " that you might have
come in person to thank me. But e\'idently
you are proud as you are fair."
At this point the actress complains that the
Hghts are too many for her, and Bonaparte
summons Roustan to put most of them out, after
which, as is usual A\nth him, he wants to know
all about her. George tells the story and does
not conceal her relations with Prince Sapieha.
The First Consul extracts a promise that she will
visit himself occasionally.
" He certainly w^as pleased with me," writes
George, "if he was not quite in love," adding
simply : "I begged off on this occasion, but
promised faithfully that I would return. He put
on my veil for me and then kissed me on the
forehead, at which I began to laugh, telling him
he had kissed a present given me by Sapieha,
wiiereupon he tore the veil into a thousand
shreds and trampled on my shawl, took the ring
from my finger, crushing it beneath his heel and
even pulling off a little chain I wore. Then he
summoned Roustan, ordering him to fetch a new
veil and a shawl and telling me I was to wear only
what he gave me."
This was the first interview with the First
Consul, and Constant took the actress home
again. In the course of the next day. Talma
called on her and, in answer to her hesitations,
told the actress that she must be very foolish
not to take advantage of her good fortune. Like
the good Frenchman he was, moreover, the actor
" ELECTRICITY OF L0\^ " 93
advised George, if she feared any embarrassments
as a result of her Uaison with Bonaparte, to get
married right away. He persuaded her, in any
case, to pay her promised visit to Bonaparte, and
accordingly George returned to Saint-Cloud that
night.
On this occasion Bonaparte, according to the
actress, took great pains to spare her all shock
to her sense of what Avas proper, and indulged
in sentimental comedy to the extent of asking
the young actress if she was not conscious of the
electricity of love ; finally putting the question :
" Do you not love me a little ? " George assures
the chief of the State that she loves him not a
little, but that his role in life is so large that she
can only count for a small item in its evolution,
and that although he is First Consul, she cannot
allow him to trifle with her. She reminds him
that they are playing Cinna on the next day, and
that consequently she must be home betimes
in order to get a full night's rest. Bonaparte
reluctantly consents to her departure before (as
he says) she has given him a proof of her willing-
ness to be his friend, and insists that, Cinna
over, his carriage shall take her back to Saint-
Cloud, when he will expect her to sacrifice to
Venus.
" He dried my tears," says Georgina, who
promised to keep the appointment for the next
day and again returned home.
Cinna was duly acted on the succeeding night,
and Bonaparte was present. At the rendering of
94 MADEMOISELLE GEORGE
the famous line, declaimed by ^Emilia, the part
taken by Mademoiselle George :
" I have seduced Cinna and can seduce others,"
the actress came in for some enthusiastic applause,
at which, she says, she became purple, fearing
that the Consul might accuse her of having
been indiscreet. He was, on the contrary, very
kind when they met at Saint-Cloud, where Bona-
parte kept her till seven in the morning, himself
acting as her servant when it was time for the
actress to go — even to the extent of helping to
rearrange the bed in which they had lain. The
lady did not see her lover for some days, and then
they met by arrangement in the woods of Saint-
Cloud, when Bonaparte complimented her on
looking so well by daylight, at the same time con-
fessing naively enough that so many women had
deceived him by candle-light. For a considerable
period, the actress deserted her Prince for the
First Consul, and it does not appear that the
former became disconsolate, for during the first
fortnight of their liaison he made no particular
inquiries about his fair Georgina. In the honey-
moon of their connection, Bonaparte, the actress
tells, showed the greatest delicacy in his dealings
with her. He was at once "violent and tender"
— to quote the hetaira — never omitted to make
their bed in the morning, helping her even with
her toilet, putting on her shoes, and "as I
wore silver garters which buckled and were
"TALLEYRAND, TRIPOTIER " 95
difficult to fix on, he had special garters ordered
for me — of the elastic style."
About this time, too, the ex-Bishop of Autun,
Monsieur de Talleyrand, began to be somewhat
troublesome to her, Mademoiselle George tells us,
and used to advise her to receive twice a week
a la grande mondaine. The actress assured her
diplomatic mentor that she was quite satisfied
with the society of artists and had no ambition
to shine in a circle so much above her own.
Monsieur de Talleyrand, according to Georgina,
was a meddlesome person {tripotier), and it was
very hard to penetrate his motives, which, in this
case, probably aimed at nothing higher than
espionage upon the First Consul, the diplomatist
being willing to allow the actress a small social
role in return for inside information. Georgina,
who appears to have been sincerely attached to
Bonaparte to the very end of her days, soon
acquainted her lover with his Minister's advances,
and the First Consul was puzzled.
" What is that viper Talleyrand up to now ? "
he wonders. " He wants everyone to be as
crooked as he is himself, and likes to make
mischief everywhere. You are quite right to
have nothing to do with society."
Bonaparte then criticises some role of hers
in which she plays her part without passion,
and advises her, if she wants to learn what the
sentiments of a mother are like, to become one.
The actress tells us, too, that Bonaparte once sent
her to a sage-femme in the Faubourg in order to ^
96 MADEMOISELLE GEORGE
// learn from that worthy some of the secrets of
maternity ! A few days before his departure for
the new camp at Boulogne, they spend a night
together, playing like two children on the hearth-
rug before the fire. Bonaparte tells the actress
of his approaching departure, and fearing that
she may want for money during his absence,
stuffs several handfuls of bank-notes down her
corsage^ the amount, says the actress, being for
£1600. On his return from Boulogne she visits
him at the Tuileries, where the Consul has a
private apartment at the top of the Palace,
looking out over the great city. On making her
way up to this cabinet particulier, Georgina drops
an overshoe and sends Constant to fetch it,
which he does. The Consul appears and is as
kind as ever, nor does he fail, says the actress, to
help her to undress and to dress again, acting with
his natural sense of order, like a trained femme
de chamhre.
It was during one of the many visits of this
actress to the First Consul that occurred the
famous scene in which Madame de Remusat
shows how jealous of her great husband Josephine
could be at times. On one occasion — well after
midnight — Madame Bonaparte, strong with an
intuition that the First Consul was not quite
alone in his small apartment on the floor above,
aroused Madame de Remusat, her lady-of -honour,
and with a lighted candle, the two women picked
their way up the private staircase, Madame de
Remusat thoroughly ashamed, she tells, of the
ADVICE FROM MURAT 97
role which she was forced to play. As the pair
crept up the stairs, a slight movement was heard,
and Josephine, seized with sudden fright, declares
that it must be Roustan, the mameluke, a monster,
she says, who is capable of killing them both at
sight. This warning is quite enough for Madame
de Remusat, who turns about without further
parley, escaping back to their quarters ; her
mistress soon follows, and both women burst out
laughing at their own discomfiture.
Shortly before the establishment of the Empire,
Mademoiselle had to complain of the inattention
of her great lover wlio, during one long fortnight,
did not summon her to his Palace. Georgina
thought that the liaison was drawing to its in-
evitable end, and on visiting the theatre on the
same occasion as Bonaparte, when she occupied
the box opposite his, affected not to be aware of
his presence. Murat, acting by instruction, we
may imagine, paid her a visit during the last act,
and taking advantage of her offer of a seat in her
carriage, advised the actress, on the homeward
journey, to call upon the First Consul as he liad
asked her to do. Georgina visits her patron,
accordingly, and learns from his lips that he cannot
see her for some time, but that he will always
look after her interests. Talma assured her, on
the day after this visit, that the Consul was to
change his exalted rank for a still loftier one, and
that it was reasonable policy on the part of the
Emperor-elect to use circumspection ; besides,
he added, Bonaparte was not the man to allow
98 MADEMOISELLE GEORGE
his love affairs to spoil his real role in the
world.
A few months afterwards Georgina, with her
somewhat commonplace family, was an eye-witness
of the Imperial procession to Notre Dame, 2nd
December 1804. Cinna was to be staged by
Imperial command, within ten days of the Corona-
tion ; Georgina played her usual part of Emilia, and
with great success. Not till five weeks had passed,
however, was the actress to meet the Emperor,
who received her with the same unaffected kindli-
ness as in the old Consular days. Poor Georgina,
unused to courts and with much of the naivete of
the bourgeoisie in her conceptions of what was
proper form, attempted a courtly role which did
not please the master.
" Stilted manners do not suit you, Georgina,"
said the simple soldier. " Be as you used to be —
unaffected and frank."
For all his studied plainness, the actress found,
nevertheless, that the Emperor had displaced the
Citoyen Consul, that the new style of drama
seemed to her, she says, to be acted on a higher
and more imposing plane, and Georgina quickly
realised that she could never find happiness in
such surroundings. Madame Duchatel, a lady-
of-honour, in any case, soon attracted the
Emperor's notice and Mademoiselle George only
met her old lover at very rare intervals thereafter.
Her relations with Napoleon lasted about two
years in all, and it is fairly well established that
the Corsican divided the favours of the actress
NAPOLEON AND WOMEN 99
with a considerable number of flaneurs of note
in Paris. In all probability this fact revealed
itself to the First Consul only after a lengthy
acquaintance with Georgina, and accounted for
the sudden enough rupture of the alliance.
Frenchmen as a rule are most hypercritical
of each other in regard to what they call bonnes
fortunes, and Voltaire has told us that they do
not easily forgive any man his success among
womankind. Accordingly, we may well believe
that the young Conqueror of Italy soon became
an object of the sarcasms of ordinary men, and
more particularly on account of the fact that
in the Consular period he was unusually thin
and weakly-looking, while his height — actually
five feet six and three-quarter inches, in English
measurement, or about five feet three inches
according to French standards — was poor among
the existing race of Frenchmen, who were then of
lofty stature, like their Gallic ancestors, and whose
subsequent decrease in stature Avas due, in a large
part, to the ravages caused by the Imperial wars
among the manhood of France. In a capital
which in those days — if we are to trust the writers
— had raised cuckoldry to the proportions of a
social art, we may be certain that the mistress of
so great a man could not escape the aggressive
attentions of men whose existence depended so
largely on new sensations. It was among this
peculiar race of beings that Napoleon earned the
reputation of being a niais — where women were
concerned.
100 MADEMOISELT.E GEORGE
The Emperor, it would seem, objected in Made-
moiselle George to two characteristics which, he
very correctly said, showed that she came of a
" race grossiere,^^ or common race — namely, her
large hands and feet, and only overlooked these
defects in consideration of other first-class quali-
fications which she possessed for the role of
hetaira. During their association the soldier gave
his mistress many thousands of pounds, and even
several years after the rupture, sent her a present
of £400 on his name-day. The actress admits
that he always paid her himself, sparing her the
ordeal of calling on his banker, a fact which
showed that Bonaparte possessed better taste in
such matters than the late Marquis of Steyne.
Although, in 1808, Georgina deserted Paris for
Moscow, under circumstances which she recounts
herself. Napoleon had her reinstated at the
Comedie Franc/aise in 1813, and even had her paid
the salary she had forfeited over a jDcriod of five
years.
During the Hundred Days, Georgina wrote to
her old lover, offering to hand over to him certain
letters which incriminated Fouche, and Napoleon
sent a confidential man to fetch them, asking him
on his return if the actress had complained about
the state of her affairs. Georgina had not men-
tioned that she was in poor circumstances.
Nevertheless the Emperor sent her an order for
£800 on his privy purse. To the very end the
actress spoke well of the Corsican, but not as a
woman talks of an old and favoured lover ; rather
,-«"•
^
MADHMOISKLLB GEORGE
After till ciii<riiviii_:<
" L'HOMME HVIMENSE " 101
as a favourite official might speak of a departed
sovereign. She admitted that Napoleon saw in
herself only the beautiful animal, and forgot her
once she passed from his society. On her own
side, she saw nothing in the Corsican but the demi-
god, and the incarnate spirit of triumph ; least of
all, the lover or the lovable. An English writer,
treating of her relations with and her regard for
Napoleon, expresses himself as follows : —
"Up to the last George could never speak of
Napoleon without a break in her voice — a tlirill
of genuine emotion. It was not her lover she re-
called, but the great Emperor — Vhomme immense,
as she called him, with real art. She spoke of
him with timid reverence, and seemed to have
forgotten that he had once thought her beautiful,
and had told her so. This reticence was not the
tardy modesty of old age, for she spoke freely of
her other lovers — ^^vhat a crowd of celebrities !
Talleyrand, Murat, Ouvrard, liUcien Bonaparte,
King Jerome, the Emperor Alexander I., Prince
Sapieha, Count Benckendorff, Prince Demidoff,
Coster de Saint-Victor, Jules Janin, Alexandre
Dumas, Tom Harel, and countless others. It
was rather that she saw in him, not the part he
had played to her, but the part he had played to
France ; like those nymphs of old who, honoured
by the embraces of a god, were so dazzled by the
blinding light of his glory that they never even
beheld his face."
George has earned the reputation of having
once given a favoured lover a rendezvous which
102 MADEMOISELLE GEORGE
proved the costliest on record. Here are the
facts as retailed by one of the chroniclers :
" Among the many celebrities on whom her
charms made an impression was Ouvrard, the
great Imperial financier and army contractor.
Already mider the Directory, Ouvrard's fetes at Le
Raincy and then at Rueil, were the talk of Paris.
Twice a week the coriJS de ballet of the Opera were
entertained ; an enormous white marble bath
served for their ablutions, and each lady left with
a present of fifty louis. George once cost him —
as he himself related — £84,000 for a single visit.
Ouvrard had invited her to sup at Rueil, but that
very same evening Bonaparte had given her a
rendezvous at Saint-Cloud, and she informed the
financier that she would have to postpone her visit.
Ouvrard was furious, and vowed he would not yield
to a shrimp like Bonaparte, whom he had known
as a poor Captain of Artillery, and who had been
only too happy to be invited to his house in the
early days of the Directory. So he insisted upon
George coming to Rueil, adding as a postscript
that she would ' find £4000 in the folds of her
napkin ' at supper. She could not refuse this.
The Consul would have to wait. So, pleading a
sudden indisposition she was rapidly borne to
Rueil in one of Ouvrard's carriages. The Emperor
had his spies and heard of it. Ouvrard received
a summons to appear forthwith at the Tuileries.
Here he was promptly ushered into the Chief's
presence.
*' ' Monsieur, how much did you make out of
AN ARMY CONTRACT 103
your contract for the army at the beginning of
the year ? ' Bonaparte demanded.
" The financier, knowing it was useless to lie,
repUed : ' £160,000, Sire.'
" ' Then, sir, you made too much ; you will
immediately pay £80,000 back into the Treasury.
Bonjour, Monsieur ! ' "
CHAPTER VI
NAPOLEON AND WEIMAR
The Cult of Napoleon — Goethe on the Corsican — The
Congress of Erfurt — Honoiiring the Sage — Lannes,
Maret and Goethe — Presentatio7i to the Emperor —
Ecce Homo ! — The Emperor and Werther — Politics
and Fate — Napoleon s Manoeuvre — Midler on the
Interview — Talleyrand' s Version of the Meeting —
Preparations for Erfurt — An Imperial Opinion upon
Athalie — Goethe and Dedication — Talleyrand 07i
Napoleon's Learning — Johann von Midler — The
Emperor on Christianity — Tragedy, the School of
Kings — Wieland is presented — Les genres tranches
— History a?id Romance — Wieland at the Palace —
Tacitus and the Annals — Napoleon s Opinion — Wie-
land' s Eloquence — The Great Painter of Antiquity
— Livy and Tacitus — The World's Happiest Age?
THOSE who hold that the cult of
Napoleon is a certain indication of a
shallow mind — and their number grows —
must find themselves in some difficulty
when they attempt to provide us with an apology
for Goethe's ecstatic worship of the world's fore-
most exponent of the strenuous life.
" Napoleon," said the German, " always lived
in the ideal and nevertheless was not conscious of
the fact ; he denied the ideal and refused to admit
its reality, while all the time he sought with ardour
to realise it. His reason, so lucid and incorrupt-
ible, could not, however, perpetually support the
essential contradiction involved, and his words
are often of the highest import, as for example,
when he describes an idea as a child of Reason ;
or when he declares that each idea gives birth to
another and that the influence of a fruitful idea
can never die. Therefore, he declares, he himself
must live, since he has given a new impulse
and a new^ direction to the march of human
progress."
When the entire Continent was organising itself
for the destruction of the mighty disturber of the
peace of Europe, Goethe alone, of all the great
literary spirits of Germany, openly expressed his
grief that France, which he looked upon as his
" second Fatherland," was about to be invaded
by the gathering coalitions, and privately made
no pretence at disguising his opinion that with the
passing of Napoleon must also perish the active
spirit of Liberty for some generations to come.
io6
HERE ECKERMANN 107
His faithful house-friends, Miiller, the Chancellor,
and Eckermann, the author, have also chronicled
on many a page his veneration for the man of
action. Eckermann on one occasion lamented
that he had never seen Napoleon in person, and
Goethe replied by telling the Schriftsteller that
he had indeed missed a sight worth seeing.
" Did he look like something ? " inquires the
simple Eckermann, entirely in the style of the
conversationists of Ollendorf's German Grammar.
" He was something," replies Goethe pontific-
ally, " and looked what he was."
" Napoleon was the man ! " declares the
German Sage another day. Das war ein Kerl —
always enlightened, always clear and decided and
endowed at every hour with sufficient energy to
carry into effect whatever he considered advan-
tageous and necessary. His life was the stride of
a demi-god from battle to battle and from victory
to victory. It might well be said of him that he
was found in a state of continual enlightenment.
On this account his destiny was more brilliant
than any the world had seen before him, or perhaps
will ever see after him."
At this point in the conversation, Eckermann
chronicles, Goethe poured him out a glass of
wine, inviting him to help himself at the table;
encouraged by which hospitality he fires off the
following typical German sentiment at the poet :
" Still it appears to me that Napoleon was
especially in that state of continued enlighten-
ment when he was young, and his powers were
1
r-
108 NAPOLEON AND WEIMAR
yet on the increase — ^when, indeed, we see at his
side divine protection and a constant fortune.
In later years, on the contrary, this enUghten-
ment appears to have forsaken him, as well as his
fortune and his good star."
''Que voulez-vous ? ^^ returns Goethe, bursting
into exotic French, " I did not write my Love-
songs or my Werther a second time," and goes on
ponderously to explain in effect to the voracious
Eckermann that Napoleon was as great as he
was simply because he was not less great than
he might have been. And Eckermann swallows
this pearl of wisdom, but wisely goes on cutting
BrotschniUen, like Werther' s lady, and does not
contradict.
" Napoleon," Goethe declares on another
occasion, " had studied my Werther as a criminal
judge studies his documents and in this spirit he
discussed it with me" — a view which is hardly
supported by extant records of the famous con-
versation which took place on 2nd October 1808
at Erfurt, whither, it will be remembered. Napoleon
summoned a Congress of celebrities of all sorts,
less with the object of really dealing with the
political situation, we may suppose, than with
the deliberate intention of summarising for
posterity, in one impressive pageant, the signific-
ance of his mighty march across the field of human
action.
Among the crowd of royal and princely person-
ages whose presence at Erfurt was chronicled by
the Moniteur, especial attention was given to the
ECCE HOMO ! 109
name of Monsieur de Goethe, who is paragraphed
more generously than many a minor sovereign.
" The Court of Weimar has brought us the cele-
brated Goethe," writes the Paris paper's special
correspondent. " A minister of the Duke of
Weimar, this author is still young, although his
reputation is of ancient date. He is an assiduous
attendant at the theatre, where he has had an
opportunity of seeing our actors in Andrornache,
Britannicus and Zaire ^
Marshal Lannes had stayed at Goethe's house
in 1806 and had conceived a great admiration for
the German. On the latter' s arrival at Erfurt, the
famous soldier had hastened to pay his respects,
and they subsequently saw much of each other.
Goethe also made the acquaintance of the Minister
Maret, on whom the German poet produced so
profound an impression that he spoke of it to
Napoleon. Goethe was accordingly summoned
to the presence of the Emperor and made his
appearance at the Imperial residence where, in an
ante-chamber, he was presented to both Savary
and Talleyrand. After some delay, the poet
entered the presence. Napoleon was at breakfast,
Talleyrand standing at his right and Daru to the
left.
" The Emperor makes me a sign to approach,
and I advance to within a suitable distance," the
poet tells us, " when Napoleon, having looked at
me fixedly for a few moments, says, ' You are a
man,' — whereupon I bow."
Goethe, it is certain, was very proud of this
110 NAPOLEON AND WEIMAR
peculiar expression of Napoleon's praise. A
certain Graf von Reinhardt wrote to him in
November of the same year, saying that people
were discussing the phrase used by the Emperor,
adding : "I can well believe Napoleon capable
of feeling and speaking as he did." Goethe
replies to this letter in December, commenting
on the Emperor's " wunderbares Wort," which
he facetiously compares with the world-historic
Ecce Homo! — adding that he is pleased with the
Conqueror's good opinion of him.
Having inquired as to his age and assured him
that he carried his sixty years well. Napoleon
turns the conversation to the subject of Werther,
and cites a certain passage, asking the poet why
i he had worked out an idea which was opposed
' to truth and nature. After listening to a lengthy
disquisition as to this detail, Goethe admits that
the Emperor is perfectly right and that the passage
is inconsistent with truth. Napoleon declares
j that the chief fault of the French Theatre is that
ij it attaches no value to the necessity of keeping
close to natui'e and truth. Voltaire's Mahomet he
declares to be "a bad piece," because truth is
sacrificed to the spectacular and to artifice, after
which the Emperor goes into the minutest details,
showing how a world-conqueror can only be re-
presented faithfully as long as his role is played
on a lofty and grandiose plane. In expatiating
on this idea, he expressed his disapproval of all
dramatic work in which Fate plays a capital role :
" Such works," he declared, " belong to the
DISPUTED PASSAGES 111
obscure ages. And besides — ^\vhat is meant by
Fate ? Politics is Fate — la politique est lafatalite.''
Here Napoleon rose from the table and
approached the poet.
" By a sort of manoeiwre,'' says Goethe, mth
a typically German lack of humour, " Napoleon j
separated me from the others and, turning his
back on the company, began to question me on
matters of personal interest to myself."
And so the great soldier, who had shown the
quality of his manoeuvres at the little affairs of
Austerlitz and Jena, having given the man of
Letters a kind of private show of his art, proceeds
after his fashion to inquire if Goethe is married
and what are his exact relations with the Grand-
Ducal house of Weimar.
Goethe, it may be observed, would never allow
himself to be drawn into indicating the particular
passage in Werther to which the Corsican had taken
exception, as stated above, and to authorities
who questioned him on the subject he was wont
to return the tactful enough suggestion that as
literary men, they were surely equal to the task of
locating it. The Chancellor Mliller claimed, how-
ever, to be in a position to solve a problem w^hich,
in Germany at least, has proved itself fruitful
of endless and, indeed, purposeless discussion.
Napoleon, according to Miiller, assured Goethe
that he had read Werther seven times, and always
with renewed pleasure. In order to confirm his
words, he quoted abundantly and finished by
blaming the poet for having made disappointed
112 NAPOLEON AND WEIMAR
ambition, equally with his hopeless love for
Charlotte, the motive which drove Werther to
suicide.
" That," says the Emperor, " is not true to
nature, and you have weakened for the reader
the idea which he had formed of Werther's great
love for Charlotte."
There is no finality about this solution given
by the Chancellor, it may be said.
Talleyrand, in his Memoirs, gives another
version of the interview at Erfurt, relating how
Napoleon assured the officials that it was his
intention to astonish Germany with his Imperial
magnificence. And while discussing his pro-
jected journey to Erfurt, he summoned M. Dazin-
court, then director of his Imperial theatre,
when the following dialogue took place : —
" I want the Comedie Fran9aise to come to
Erfurt with me," says the Emperor.
" For comedies or tragedies ? " inquires
Dazincourt winningly.
" For tragedies, of course," replies Napoleon
testily. " Our comedies would be no good in
Germany, where the French genius is not under-
stood."
" Of course your Majesty will want everything
on a very grand scale ? " suggests the director.
" We could, for instance, give Athalie, Sire ! "
" A fig for your Athalie ! " cries Napoleon
irritably. " You certainly, Dazincourt, do not
understand a man like myself. Do you think
I am going to Erfurt to suggest the role of a
CINNA'S APOLOGIA 113
Joash to these Germans ? Athalie ! "What a
horrible idea ! But enough — tell your best tragic
actors to prepare for a journey to Erfurt. Athalie^
indeed ! How stupid these old fogies are ! "
he adds, as Dazincourt bows himself out. " But
it is really my o^vn fault — -I should not consult
anyone. If he had even said Cinna, which is a
truly good piece ! " And then he turns to
Monsieur de Remusat, who is present, saying :
" I was never much good at recitation ; but
tell me, Remusat, does not the following passage
occur in Cinna ?
" ' Tous ces crimes d'Etat qu'on fait pour la couronne
Le ciel nous en absout, alors qu'il nous la donne ? '
How do the next lines go ? Get a Corneille,
Remusat."
" Inutile, Sire,'^ replies Remusat ; " I remember
them," and goes on, French-fashion, to declaim :
" Et dans le rang sacre ou sa faveur I'a mis,
Le passe devient juste et I'avenir permis.
Qui peut y parvenir, ne peut etre coupable ;
Quoi qu'il ait fait, ou fasse, il est inviolable."
" Splendid ! " cries the Emperor, with en-
thusiasm ; " more particularly for those hard-
headed Germans, who never change their ideas,
and who still blether about the death of the Due
d'Enghien : we must broaden their moral views,
and the sentiments of Corneille are the proper
sentiments for men with melancholy ideas, like
the Germans. We must have Cinna for the first
114 NAPOLEON AND WEIMAR
day, and you, Remusat, can look up tragedies for
the other days. Of course, you will let me know
before deciding on anything."
According to Talleyrand, in his account of
Goethe's interview, there is no mention of the
phrase " voiis etes un homme! " ; and, by the same
authority, Goethe does not allow Napoleon to
overlook the claims to high literary rank of
Lessing, Schiller, Wieland. The Emperor ex-
presses a wish to meet the last-named, and advises
the poet to study the plays which are being acted.
Goethe tactfully evades the suggestion that he is
the man to chronicle and describe for posterity
the Congress of Erfurt, as the Corsican suggests,
and declines to dedicate anything to the Emperor
of Russia on the ground that when he first
decided to devote himself to Letters, he also
took the resolution never to dedicate a work
to anyone, so as not to have to regret it, as he
explained.
" The great writers of the age of Louis XIV.
were not hke that," objects the Emperor rather
coldly.
" True," replies Goethe, " but it is not so
very certain that they never regretted their
dedications." Which reply settles the matter.
On Napoleon's making an inquiry about
Kotzebue, the poet appeals for mercy for that
unfortunate pamphleteer and patriot. The
Emperor assures his visitor that he has no
sympathy with men like Kotzebue. Goethe seeks
to move him.
A CAPTIOUS CRITIC 115
"Adieu, Monsieur Goet'!" says the Corsican
curtly, and draws the interview to a close.
The selection of the tragedies presented at
Erfurt had, says Talleyrand, been made with
great care and much art. Each historical subject
was made to point a political moral that applied
to those spacious days. Thus, in Mithri dates,
the hatred of that Prince for Rome suggested
Napoleon's hatred of Britain. The ideas of
immortality, of greatness, of destiny, which run
through Ijohigenia, served only to emphasise the
characteristics of the central figure of the Con-
gress. In Voltaire's Mahomet, especial instruction
had been given for the delivery of lines like the
following : —
" Qui I'a fait roi ? Qui I'a couronne ? La Victoire ! "
and :
" Au nom de conquerant et de triomphateur,
II veut joindre le nom de pacificateur."
Talleyrand, who was a first-class hater, must
be held suspect in what he says of coevals.
There is so remarkable a coincidence, however,
between his way of looking at Napoleon and that
of de Bourrienne — a fidelity of detail in all matters
which present the picture of the upstart, that we
cannot refuse to look at what he has to say of
Napoleon's pretensions to play the role of bel
esprit. The Emperor, says the Prince, in effect,
used to devote considerable time to " working
up " recondite, or at least learned, conversational
4^
116 NAPOLEON AND WEIMAR
matter with which he surprised his company, when,
the occasion being astutely chosen, he would
spring it, impromptu-fashion, on some unprepared
unfortunate. He never had before him the fear
of a positive contradiction, since his exalted
position always enabled him to choose the means
of interrupting a conscientious objector to his
opinions, and in foreign countries, especially, it
was his habit to discuss matters which possessed
a bearing and suggestion altogether outside the
intellectual range of a military man.
Indeed, adds Talleyrand, the presence of a
Montesquieu or a Voltaire would have had no
terrors for Napoleon, whose self-assurance arose
perhaps from vanity, perhaps from the splendour
of his career. At Berlin in 1807, for instance, the
Prince tells us how the victor of Friedland had
addressed one of those intellectual omnivores
whom Germany so frequently produces. His
name was Johann von Miiller, and among his
productions were a few trifles like a compre-
hensive Bellum Cimhricum and a General History
of the World, in twenty-four tomes. Napoleon
requested him off-hand to fix the principal epochs
of human thought and action, and, impatient of
the historian's pause for consideration, set about
doing so himself. Says Talleyrand :
" I can still see the astonished face of Professor
Miiller, as Napoleon went on to show how the
rapid propagation and development of Christianity
had caused a reaction of Greek ideals against
those of Rome ; how cleverly Greece had adapted
THE r6LE of tragedy 117
herself to an intellectual role once her national
political grandeur had passed — conquHe qiCelle
avail ejfectuee en saisissant ce germe bienfaiteur
qui a eu tant d'' influence sur Vhumanite entiere " —
meaning, of course, the triumph of Christianity
over Pagan culture.
" Napoleon must have learned this last phrase
by heart,'' adds the sceptical Talleyrand, " for
I heard him repeat it in exactly the same words to
M. de Fontanes and also to M. Suard."
" Philosophers," concluded Napoleon to Johann
Miiller, " exhaust themselves in building up
systems ; but they shall look in vain for a better
philosophy than that of Christianity which has
reconciled man with himself and his fellows and
guaranteed order in all the world." A view
which few men of good intent would be found
to quarrel with, if only Christianity were what
Christianity was meant to be.
V Chancellor von Miiller — no relative of the late-
mentioned — a kind of president of the High Court
of Justice at Weimar, and a close friend and
confidant of Goethe, adds a few more details
concerning this historic interview.
" Tragedy," said the Emperor, " is the school
of kings and nations ; it is in some respects more
important than history and by far the highest
achievement of the poet. You, 'Monsieur Goet',
ought to write a Death of Ccesai\ but in a more
grandiose and elevated style than that of
Voltaire. Indeed, such a work might well become
the central task of your life. In such a tragedy
118 NAPOLEON AND WEIMAR
you would have to show the world how Caesar
could have achieved the happiness of mankind if
he had only been given the time to execute his
mighty conceptions. Come to Paris, Monsieur
Goet' ; I want you to come, and there you will
not fail to see a vaster vision for your powers of
observation, besides finding limitless treasure to
draw upon for your poetical inspirations."
And when the Sage had bowed himself out, the
Emperor, Miiller tells us, turned to Berthier
and Daru with the words : " That is a man ! "
Goethe himself maintained a profound silence
on all the incidents of the interview, and the
Chancellor remained in doubt whether this was
owing to his natural reserve or whether it was
inspired by a feeling of delicacy and propriety,
born of his perfect knowledge of the hypercritical
society amidst which he lived. The invitation
which Napoleon had given him to visit Paris
engaged Goethe's consideration for a long time,
and (says the Chancellor) he asked many questions
about the customs of Paris, about the arrange-
ments to be made, and only abandoned the idea
on reflecting that so long and tedious a journey
might prove too trying for his advanced age.
" It was in the very last years of his life,"
concludes the Chancellor, " that Goethe gave me
the details of his interview with Napoleon, and
it was not till a few days before his death that I
was able to induce him to give me permission
to amplify the laconic fragments of his own
Annals."
LES GENRES TRANCHlfeS 119
The Imperial cortege in due course moved on
to Weimar, where Miiller was able to present
Wieland to the Conqueror. This luminary
occupied in those days in Germany very much
the same position that Voltaire had occupied in
France of his age, and, indeed, on his presentation
to the Emperor, Napoleon assured him that he
was known in Paris as the Voltaire of Germany.
" Which of your writings do you like best ? "
was the first question.
" Sire," replied the simple scholar, " I attach
no great value to any of my productions. I
wrote according to my heart."
'' But," persisted Napoleon, "there must be one
particular work to which you give preference over
the rest."
Wieland named his Agathon and Oberon, where-
upon Napoleon went on to make his famous re-
mark about genres tranches— o, correct rendering
of which phrase we prefer to leave to the literary
connoisseurs. The great soldier objected, it seems,
to Shakespeare's method, which " mixed tragedy
with comedy, the impressive with the burlesque,"
and, turning to both Wieland and Goethe, said :
" I am surprised that acute minds like yours
do not cultivate a style tranche, or exclusive.
Why, in your Agathon, Monsieur Wieland, do
you indulge in that equivocal tendency to mix
romance with history, and history with romance,
since all work of this kind tends to cause con-
fusion in the reader's mind ? I am aware," admits
the Emperor graciously, " that I am fighting against
120 NAPOLEON AND WEIMAR
great odds — all the more so because my remarks
apply to Monsieur Goet' as well as to yourself."
" Your Majesty may allow us to remark,"
replies Wieland, " that there are very few French
tragedies that are not a mixture of history and
romance. As regards my own work, I sought to
instruct and so I needed the authority of history ;
accordingly, I sweetened the pill of prolix learn-
ing by mixing stern reality with the imaginative
and the pleasing. Men's ideals are sometimes
better than their actions, and romances which
describe good men often describe them as better
than they really are, I think. Compare, Sire, the
Siecle de Louis XIV. with TSUmaque, in which
you will find the best lessons both for the governors
and the governed."
" I find," rejoins Napoleon, " that those who
represent righteous men in fiction always end
by proving that righteousness is only a chimgera.
History indeed has suffered much in this respect
from historians themselves."
The conversation is interrupted here by M. de
Nansouty, who announces the arrival of the courier
from Paris.
Wieland himself relates how on the occasion of
a great gala reception at the Grand-Ducal palace,
which he had not attended. Napoleon had a
carriage especially sent for him, and the man of
Letters, without delaying to change his ordinary
attire, at once proceeded to the Palace. Here he
arrived about eleven o'clock and was immediately
taken to the presence of the Emperor, who, in
TACITUS ATTACKED— 121
consideration of the great author's seventy-five
years, good-naturedly overlooked his skull-cap
and slippers. For over an hour, Napoleon, in the
presence of a motley group of celebrities, discussed
the ancient classics with the old scholar, paying
particular attention to Tacitus, and in con-
nection with this academic rencontre, it is note-
worthy that Talleyrand affects to believe that the
Emperor had burned much midnight oil in prepar-
ing his case against Wi eland and the Roman.
Tacitus, it may be remarked, is said by properly
accredited authorities to be the first of the
psychologists of history and a profound analyst
of ulterior motives in political action. Accord-
ingly, he found but little honour with the Corsican
whose prejudice favoured the unquestioning spirit
among the critics.
" Tacitus," he said, " has taught me nothing.
Can you point out a greater or a more unjust
detractor of humanity ? In the simplest actions
he finds criminal motives. All his emperors are
monsters of iniquity inspired by different varieties
of evil genius, and they were not at all bad judges
who declared that the Annals are not so much a
history of Rome as an abstract of its criminal
records. Everywhere one is confronted with
accusers and accused — men who commit suicide
in the bathroom to escape punishment. Tacitus
is always decrying the informers (delatores), yet
where is a greater scandalmonger than himself ?
And the style — one long night of obscurity ! I
am no great Latinist myself, but the obscurity
122 NAPOLEON AND WEIMAR
of Tacitus is quite obvious to me in the ten or
'\ twelve Italian or French translations which I
; have read, and I have come to the conclusion
/ that this lack of clearness in his style arose from
sheer inability to see things as they really were.
I have heard him praised because he has inspired
tyrants with fear. He has inspired kings, in my
view, with the fear of their subjects, and that is
a bad thing for a nation. N'ai-je pas raison.
Monsieur Wieland ? But really I am monopolis-
ing you — ^we have not come here to talk about
Tacitus." And, casting a glance at the moving
scene before him, he calls attention to the Emperor
Alexander :
" See how well he dances," Napoleon observes,
and takes a pinch of snuff.
" I do not know why we are here, Sire," replies
the simple Wieland, " but I do know that your
Majesty makes me at this moment the happiest
man alive."
" Well, then, answer me," says Napoleon kindly.
" Sire," returns the writer, " from the way in
which your Majesty talks, I am led to forget that
you are twice a sovereign, and only see in you the
man of Letters. I know that you do not disdain
the title, for I have not forgotten your pride in
being a Member of the Institut. 1 will, therefore,
answer the man of Letters, and although I felt at
Erfurt that I defended myself but feebly against
your criticisms, I hope to make a better defence
of Tacitus.
" Of this historian," Wieland continued, " I
— AND DEFENDED 123
agree that his chief aim is to punish tyrants ; but
if he denounces them, he does not denounce them
to slavish men, who would revolt only to change
tyrants. Tacitus denounces tyrants to the
justice of history and to the human race, for it is
said by philosophers that the human race must
be tried by suffering until its reason acquires the
force which its passions have up till then held."
" Yet where is this force of reason ? " asks
Napoleon. " I look for it on all sides and see it
nowhere."
" Sire," repHes Wieland, " it is not so long since
Tacitus has come into fashion, and that in itself
indicates a marked advance of the human mind ;
for during centuries, Academies would not read
him, any more than Courts, and the slaves of
taste were as much afraid of him as the advocates
of despotism. It is only since Racine called him
the great painter of antiquity that your universities
and ours have felt disposed to inquire into the
possibility of his being really so. Your Majesty
declares that in reading Tacitus, you find de-
nunciation, assassination, robbery on all hands.
But, Sire, that is exactly what the Roman Empire
was when governed by the monsters whom
Tacitus so severely flayed. The genius of Livy
followed the Legions of the Roman Republic
throughout the world ; that of Tacitus con-
centrated itself on the law reiDOii:s (grejfe), and
it was here that the real history of the Empire
was to be found. It is indeed, in these alone that
we can read the historv of nations of those
124 NAPOLEON AND WEIMAR
unhappy ages, when princes and their subjects,
opposed to one another in principles and ideals,
lived in terror of each other. In such times there
is little else to chronicle but the daily records of
the criminal courts — ^when death at the hands
of the public executioner comes to be regarded
almost as the natural way of leaving life.
" Sire, Suetonius and Dion Cassius have
chronicled a far greater number of crimes than
Tacitus ever chronicled, but they chronicle them
in a style which is wholly devoid of energy,
whereas nothing is more terrible than the stylus
of Tacitus whose genius inclines before the spirit
of justice alone. As soon, indeed, as he perceives
the presence of Good — even in the reign of that
monster Tiberius — he swiftly seizes upon it and
gives to it the salience which he gives to everj''-
thing he touches. He can even praise a fool like
Claudius, where praise is really due, and this
august attribute of justice, Tacitus extends with
unerring impartiality to all conditions — to the
Republic as to the Empire, to subjects as well
as to their princes. By the quality of his genius,
one would think him capable of attaching himself
to the Republic, and his opinions about Brutus,
Cassius, Codrus would seem to confirm this view.
Yet, w^ien he speaks of the Emperors who suc-
ceeded in reconciling what was thought to be
irreconcilable — namely. Empire and Liberty — we
can feel that this system of governance appeals to
him as the fairest discovery of history."
Here a certain movement in the large group
FOREWARNED ! 125
of courtiers signifies, we may suppose, not so
much admiration at Wieland's probably prepared
eloquence as a desire to emphasise the obviously
implied compliment to Napoleon — truly an un-
deserved compliment, if ever was.
" Sire," the Sage continues, "if it is true to
say of Tacitus that tyrants are punished, once he
has portrayed them, how much more truthful is
it to say that righteous princes are rewarded once
he has traced their picture for posterity ! "
" I fight against odds. Monsieur Wieland,"
admits the Emperor darkly. " You sacrifice no
advantages, I see, and you must have known that
I was no admirer of Tacitus. Do you, by the
way, correspond with Monsieur Johann de Miiller
whom I met last year in Berlin ? " Napoleon
was much too astute, we can fancy, not to
have seen that all Wieland's eloquence had been
prepared against contingencies.
" Yes, Sire," replies the German very candidly.
" Ah, then, confess," laughs Napoleon, " that
he has written to you on the subject of Tacitus."
"It is true," admits honest old Wieland, " it
is indeed through him I learned that your Majesty
liked to discuss Tacitus, and also that you did not
admire him."
" I will not admit yet that I am beaten," de-
clares Napoleon ; "a thing I never admit very
easily. I return to-morrow to Erfurt, and we shall
resume our discussion about Tacitus. I have a
suflicient stock of ammunition in my arsenal to
show that for all his investigation of the motives
126 NAPOLEON AND WEIMAR
i of great men, he did not sufficiently develop the
h causes and the intimate springs of important
events. He did not study deeply enough the
mystery of facts and ideas, and failed so to adjust
them in the chain of events as to enable posterity
to judge correctly and impartially.
" History, as I understand it," Napoleon goes
on, " must be able to seize upon individuals and
1 nations and present them as they were in their
' own day. The historian should take into account
the external circumstances which must necessarily
have exercised a great influence on their actions,
and see clearly the limits of their influence. The
Roman Emperors were by no means so bad as
Tacitus has described them. I much prefer
Montesquieu to the Roman ; the Frenchman is
more just and his judgments nearer to truth."
It was then nearly midnight and Wieland began
to feel the strain of expressing himself in a language
which he was not accustomed to speak. " I
took the liberty," he says, '' of asking the Emperor
if I might retire."
" Allez,^' replied Napoleon graciously ; " bonne
nuit ! "
The Emperor, on another occasion, asked
Wieland which age he considered to be the happiest
for mankind — a question he had also put to the
! historian Miiller, at Berlin, in 1806, when the
Prussian gave liis verdict in favour of the ages of
^y the Antonines. In his turn, old Wieland replied,
with admirable wisdom :
" A decisive answer is not possible to such a
WIELAND'S WISDOM 127
question. The Greeks, judged by their general
culture and by the poUtical freedom which they
enjoyed as citizens, had their ages of great
prosperity. Rome counted among her princes
more than one who might be called the good angel
of humanity. Other nations, too, can boast of
having had great and wise governors. Yet it
seems to me that the general history of the world
travels ever in one great circle, in which good and
evil, virtue and vice succeed each other continu-
ally. It is the duty of the philosopher to bring
out all the good there is in each age, so as to make
the bad supportable."
CHAPTER VII
THE IMPERIAL ART-PATRON
A Specious Sentimefd — Art, Merit, and the Xapoleonic
Cult — The Corsicans Native Materialism — A Political
Monument — Artists a " Waspish Lot" — Art to Order
— Feeding the Fraterniti/—Ecoti07ny in PmLUc Archi-
tecture — A Xapoleonic Art — The Emperor s Dislike
of Architects — Some Prices paid to Famous Artists —
The Corsican a Connoisseur without Pretensions —
Insistence on the Napoleonic Legend — How to hurt
Englishmen — The Imperial Reclame — Napoleon s Art
Collection at La Malmaison — xi List of Pictures
NAPOLEON once declared to Decres
that he did not want his reign to pass
and leave a single man of merit un-
recognised — a specious sentiment the
sincerity of which becomes accurately measurable
when we study the case of Madame de Stael, and
consider his mode of distinguishing Monsieur de
Chateaubriand. Merit which did not contribute
to the Napoleonic legend w^as, in the eyes of the
Corsican, no merit at all, and the established
mediocrity of all those who formed part of the
circle of his art patronage, whether as writers or
poets or painters, may be put down, sans phrase,
to the fact that artistic genius is a quality which,
on the highest planes, can achieve its particular
results only when it remains independent of, and
even uninspired by, objective sources. Certainly
the inspirations of a fighting soldier are not
calculated to assist its progress in any surround-
ings, or in any age — least of all such inspirations
as came from Napoleon, whose artisticity was
that of the geometrician or the mathematical
expert, wholly uncoloured by sentiment, entirely
lacking in the warmth of a higher or poetic vision,
and limited altogether to the actualities of current
circumstance. Accordingly, when he decided that
the Art of the first Imperial age of France should
bear an Imperial cachet, he limited its expression
not only as an artistic force, but also as one which,
had it been left to work out its original genius,
must have contributed by its own richer results
to the greater glory of his reign.
130
POLITICAL ARTISTRY 131
Despotism, it has been said, fears neither
mathematicians nor artists, and while anxious
for the advancement of all matters aesthetic, the
Corsican gave his patronage to the Fine Arts for
much the reason that inspires the great new-rich
art -collectors of to-day — namely, self-glorification,
not at all praiseworthy, and certainly not always
artistic. We could cite, if necessary, many proofs
here in point : he hastened on the building of
the Louvre, for example, because, as Bausset
(quoting the Emperor himself) says, it was neces-
sary, in view of his relatively ambiguous position
among the sovereigns of Europe, to possess a
grander palace than other kings. When Vignon
proposed his Temple of Glory, Napoleon agreed
on the condition that the edifice should be
completed within four years, because, as he
said :
" This monument is to some extent a political
monument, and must therefore be finished quickly,
so as to count for something in the national con-
ditions of the day."
No American raiser of sky-scrapers ever carried
business-like expediency to a higher point than
this, we think. And, as will be seen in due course,
if he associated with artists and treated them with
an amiability which one divines to be really
foreign to his nature, it was certainly not for any
regard for a class of beings who are to a great
extent a race apart, and as such could win
no sympathy from Napoleon's regimental mind
with its plans arrctes and its essentially fixed
132 THE IMPERIAL ART-PATRON
notions. In regard to the artistic brotherhood,
indeed, we can well conceive of Napoleon de-
scribing them in the phrase attributed to Lord
Melbourne — " a waspish lot." All his affected
intimacies with writers, painters, sculptors and
musicians were calculated solely to make them
contribute to the magnificence of his legend.
Only this and nothing more.
" The Emperor," says a writer of that time,
" is most anxious to unite to the glory of a great
sovereign, the reputation of an enlightened pro-
tector of the Arts, which distinguished Pericles,
Augustus and Louis XIV., and the mot d^ordre to
the officials of the world of Art is to work towards
this end."
Talented artists were to be won over to official
views about art matters by good salaries, as well
as by the prospect of being permanently employed.
At one time he considered triumphal arches as
so many extravagances ; after 1806, however,
when his mania for immortality became an en-
during obsession, he decided to erect four such
monuments, with the object, as he himself declared
in his own cynical fashion, of feeding Sculpture for
at least twenty years to come. And in a public
manifesto, the essentially unartistic Modernist and
Philistine speaks when he declares that in view
of the valuable prizes which are being offered to
art workers, France has a right to expect that
her artists shall produce masterpieces ! Contem-
poraries do not fail to note the real parsimony
which marks his treatment of painters and
ECONOMY IN ART 133
sculptors, and a letter of his, addressed to the
Minister of the Interior, recommends that function-
ary to see to it that only the most economical
styles are to be encouraged. To the same official
he writes the following order in March, 1808 : —
" I should like to have a bridge constructed
leading to the Invalides. One like the Pont des
Arts would come to about £30,000 and must soon
repay its cost. Once completed, its shares could
be sold and the money devoted to other civic
improvements."
Historical writers have not omitted to note
that, wherever possible, he razed such monuments
and edifices as were likely to recall the glories of
previous French sovereigns, and to this tendency
on his part may be attributed the destruction
of Marly, of Chantilly, of the Abbey of Saint
Martin of Tours, of Cluny, the disappearance of
all of which historical grandeurs dates from the
Consulate. Many of his intimates — if such a
being ever possessed an intimate — declared that
he not only was incapable of appreciating Archi-
tecture, but that his antipathy extended even to
the greatest exponents of that art, his expressed
opinion being that they were on all counts inferior
to engineers. To those who advocated the con-
struction of spectacular edifices, and cited the vast
constructions of Louis XIV., as contributions to
the prestige of that monarch. Napoleon more than
once replied, with much cogency, that the renown
of a king lay not in monuments which the servility
of one age readily raised to his glory, and which
\
134 THE IMPERIAL ART-PATRON
the insouciance of another demohshed with equal
readiness. One reason for his dislike of architects
was said to be the extravagance they showed in
estimates submitted for projected constructions ;
in which estimate their sense of necessary expendi-
ture came into violent conflict wdth that of the
Imperial economist — a trait which suggests that
the Corsican himself had few illusions that his
reign was not to be a lengthy one ; a reflection, too,
which becomes all the more insistent when we
consider the fact that the Luxembourg's decora-
tions were all executed in simili, as the artists
put it, meaning that the walls and the pillars
were painted to resemble marble, the candelabra
to look like bronze, and so on.
Heavily remunerated artists of the present day
would certainly not think the following payments
extravagant, considering the high status of the
painters : For his picture of the Jaffa jDlague
victims, Gros received 625 guineas ; Vernet, for his
battle of Austerlitz, £800 ; David, for his Corona-
tion and The Oath canvases, £4800. Imperial
portraits had a regulation rate of remuneration —
namely, £240 — while the " stock " portrait of the
Emperor, to be placed in town halls and pre-
fectures, cost just £120. Painters who executed
miniatures of the sovereign received £20 to £24.
Full-sized pictures of marshals and high officials
went at £160. David's portrait of Pius VII.
brought in £400 for the original and £480 for two
copies by himself. For his battle of Quiberon,
Hennequin received £160, in 1804, and artists
THE PRACTICAL CORSICAN 135
who executed pictures of the Imperial horses
received £5, 5s. for each effort, while Vernet as a
special favour got £10. Sculptors received £600
for a large work, and full-length statues cost
£400, the price of busts being £116.
It is only fair to the memory of the Corsican
to say that in matters of Art he never posed as
a connoisseur, and if the charge of mediocrity
hangs over the art productions of his age, it has
to be remembered that in the majority of com-
missions, the artists and the subjects were the
choice of ministers who, like true business men,
distributed their patronage usually in considera-
tion of an honorarium. The great soldier, under
no illusions as to his own aptitudes or tastes in
aesthetic matters, never affected to be moved by
any inspirations in regard to such matters. In
architecture, in painting, in sculpture, the appeal
made itself essentially to the natural objectivity
of his mind. In a building, for example, he looked
for solidity, rapidity of construction and economy
He was, indeed, so insistent on the first of these
qualities, as likely to contribute towards the
immortalisation of his own name, that had he
possessed greater patience, said David, on one
occasion, he must surely have built in granite.
He was also a consistent advocate of iron for
bridge-construction as well as for domes, even
suggesting the employment of that metal for the
pillars of the Pantheon. Swiftness in execution
— ^this was a prime requisite of all his conceptions,
and the fact carries its own explanation, showing,
\^
)
136 THE IMPERIAL ART-PATRON
as it does, that his vanity, far more than any
consideration of the aesthetic, counted in all his
architectural projects. In June, 1810, he wrote
to Montalivet urging him to greater activity in
the building of the Arc de Triomphe :
" I want to finish with this structure," he said,
" and if you cannot work more quickly, I will
make a supplementary appropriation of £24,000
to enable you to do so."
Daru, supposedly the connoisseur of the
Imperial entourage, once wrote to the directors
of the Musce des Gobelins informing them that it
was Napoleon's desire that artists should confine
themselves to historical scenes depicting the story
of France, and it was in much the same strain that
he urged David to give up painting the classical
ages and confine himself to national — that is,
Napoleonic — subjects. Again, in organising
various competitions among artists, the Emperor
insisted on historical subjects dealing with France
as the first condition of successful candidacy.
The sculptors were officially informed by a decree
of 1806 that in the matter of bas-reliefs and
statuary, the choice of subjects was to be made
from : (1) the exploits of Napoleon ; (2) from the
story of the Revolution ; (3) from the history of
France. A premium was to be placed on any
work which should humiliate England and Russia,
and William the Conqueror was suggested as a
model always likely to touch Englishmen in their
tenderest susceptibilities. In 1805 he wrote to
Talleyrand urging that ^linister to begin a
HIS PERSONAL TASTES 137
campaign having for its object the staging of
" comedies de cir Constance,'''' as well as the com-
position of ballads and music-hall songs bearing
on his projected invasion of England.
In the same year was issued another official
note to the artistic brotherhood, in which it was
stated that " all artists who by 15th August shall
not have delivered their commissioned works,
will be held to be unequal to the exigencies
of government work." The Corsican evidently
counted inspiration and temperament for minus
factors in sesthetical productions. And with the
commissions — what an artillery of instructions,
delivered sergeant - major fashion ! Thus, to
Gerard for his picture which presents Napoleon
surrounded by his staff, signing the SavIss Act of
Mediation :
" Above all, put every possible magnificence into
the uniforms of the officers attending on Napoleon,
and a corresponding simplicity of detail for the
Emperor, so that he shall stand out all the more
clearly in the whole scene."
Daru, on another occasion, ordered a series of
miniatures of the Emperor, who was to be " re-
presented with a rather pleasing (gracieuse) face."
One of the best critiques passed upon Napoleon's
aesthetic notions in painting was that which de-
clared him to have appreciated David's reputa-
tion rather than his talent. The Imperial taste
was predisposed rather to the work of Gros, his
favourite, and to Gerard and Vernet ; also to
" anecdotal " painters like Prudh'on and Robert
138 THE IMPERIAL ART-PATRON
Lefevre. In regard to Gros, who painted the
Jaffa picture, Napoleon was ever enthusiastic,
and on inspecting that work of art declared
that it was " a real masterpiece " and that its
" miracle of chiaro-oscuro placed it on a level
with the best work of Tintoretto and Paul
Veronese."
Napoleon had his own private collection at
La Malmaison, and authorities declared that
it provided an excellent index of his general
artistic taste, as . well as of that of Josephine.
/Gerard, Dow, Albrecht Durer, Champaigne,
•^ Murillo, Rubens, Teniers, Van Ostade, Fra
^ Bartolomeo were all represented in this gallery,
: and Rembrandt's Descent from the Cross was
also included. He declared at St Helena that the
Duke of Parma in 1797 had offered him £80,000
to be allowed to retain Correggio's famous Saint
Jerome from among the vast collection which
Bonaparte was then despoiling. Many of his
advisers suggested that the money was more
necessary than the paintings. The young
Corsican disagreed, however, and on the ground
that the money would soon be spent, whilst
Saint Jerome would remain an ornament of the
French capital for ever, and could not fail to
inspire other masterpieces. From the Grand
Duke of Tuscany he stole the Medici Venus for
admittedly the same reason.
Follomng are among the principal paintings
and other works of art which adorned Napoleon's
private galleries at La Malmaison :
7
HIS OWN GALLERY 139
Francois Albane : Nature — a woman suckling
her children.
Francois Albane : Diana bathing with her
Nymphs.
Barbieri : Saint Sebastian.
Le Bachiche : The Fates.
A. Carracci : Venus and Love.
S. Ferrato : Cojjy of BajohaeVs Madonna
delta Sedia.
J. B. Greuze : Young GirVs Head.
J MuRiLLO : The Virgin and St Ann.
Rubens : Descent from the Cross. Taken from
If^-^ a Capuchin monastery at Lierre, near
Antwerp.
Rubens : Women Bathers surprised by Storm.
Raphael : Holy Family.
Raphael : St George ; St Michael.
Del Sarto : Holy Family.
Teniers : A Flemish Kitchen.
Titian : The Toilet of Venus.
Da Vinci : St Margaret.
Da Vinci : Virgin suckling her Son.
P. Veronese : Woman holding a Child.
P. Veronese : A Venetian Family.
C. J. Vernet : Italian Landscape at Sunset.
Gerard : Portrait of Princess Caroline Bona-
parte.
Laurent : Fidl-length Portrait of Josephine.
Unknown : A City in Flames.
Unknown : Equestrian Portrait of Napoleon.
Unknown : Portrait of Frederick the Great.
Van Dyck : Children of Charles L of England.
140 THE IMPERIAL ART-PATRON
Van Dyck : Portrait of Charles I. and his
Consort.
MuRiLLO : The Nativity.
Holbein : Portrait of Laura.
David : Children of Brutus.
P. P. Prudh'on : The Four Seasons.
CHAPTER VIII
DAVID, THE IMPERIAL PAINTER
David in 1797 — His Meeting with Bonaparte — A
Visit to the Atelier — A Soldier's Blunt Criticism —
"These Military Philistines" — David's Promotioii —
Bonaparte crossing the Alps — David and his School
— A Lover of the Limelight — David and the Corona-
tion — A Painter s Whole Ambition — Gerard and the
Coronation Picture — A Happy Suggestion — Pauline
Bonaparte and Gerard — Napoleon's Satisfaction —
David and the Legion — The Douglas Portrait of the
Emperor — David and the Peerage
LONG before Bonaparte had revealed, in
the campaign of Italy, his genius for war,
David was the most celebrated painter
in France. He had played a considerable
part in the tortuous political intrigues which
closed the Revolutionary era, had been a partisan
of the popular side, and even suffered imprison-
ment for having criticised with too much candour
the policies of self-interested leaders.
Born in 1784, he had already won a European
reputation with his Horatii, his Socrates, his
famous Paris and Helen and several portraits.
He was well known, therefore, to Bonaparte when
the latter, after the battle of Rivoli, invited him
to join his victorious army, thus presenting him
with a rare opportunity of committing to canvas
the scenes of several celebrated battles. David
refused, pleading other engagements, but never-
theless retained a kindly recollection of the
young conqueror's interest. The artist was at
that time engaged on the famous Sabine Women,
and he was not to meet Bonaparte until the latter
returned to Paris, when the secretary of the
Directory, M. Lagarde, gave a banquet at which
the Corsican was the guest of honour. He had
stipulated for the presence of David, whose work
had much impressed him, he said. Monsieur
Lagarde agreed, and although he had no particular
acquaintance with David, called immediately on
the latter requesting the honour of his company.
David declined, under some pretext or other, and
it was only when Lagarde explained to him the
142
SOLDIER AND ARTIST 148
quandary in which the refusal placed him, that
the artist amiably consented to accept.
General Bonaparte's sense of social decencies
was evidently not a profound characteristic, for
on the occasion of this banquet, having taken
Madame Lagarde in to dinner, he requested another
guest to occupy his place at the lady's right hand,
and himself sat down by the side of David, who
tells us that it was during this meeting he solicited
the honour of painting the General's portrait.
Some days afterwards Bonaparte proceeded to
the artist's famous studio near the Luxembourg,
accompanied by two aides-de-camp. In accord-
ance with his pretence of sinking the military man
and affecting the savant, on his return from Italy,
the General, David informs us, was dressed in
civiUan garb — a dark blue frock-coat, a large
black cravat, an enormous hat d comes and
his hair heavily powdered. A sitting of three
hours was given the painter, and, as might be
expected, Bonaparte did not fail to show his
impatience. He concluded the interview amiably,
nevertheless, by inviting David to accompany
him on his expedition to Egypt — an adventure
which the artist refused on the ground of his
fifty years.
When they met again, after Bonaparte's return
from the Nile, David had just put the last
touches to his Rape of the Sabine Wo))ien. Paris
— indeed all artistic Europe — was then talking of
this work, although the critics were by no means
unanimous in its praise. There was a lack of
144 DAVID, THE IMPERIAL PAINTER
force in the whole composition, an absence of the
suggestion of full movement, a failure to hint
the required violence in such a tumultuous scene,
the critics said. Bonaparte, preferring to judge
for himself, decided to visit the atelier and was
received by the master.
" I never saw soldiers fight as you make your
r soldiers fight. Monsieur David," he said, after
j inspecting the canvas. " Let me show you how
soldiers fight," and the General throws himself
into the attitude of a soldier doing execution with
his bayonet.
David replies that it was not his intention to
represent modern French soldiers, but warriors
of antiquity.
" But your warriors," Bonaparte goes on
querulously, " lack fire, lack action and lack
enthusiasm, my dear David. Take my advice
and change all that. You will find that the public
will be of my opinion."
" These military PhiHstines know nothing about
Art," cried David, when the First Consul had left.
The artist did not easily forgive the Corsican for
his somewhat brutal criticism — all the more so
because his fellow-artists were of opinion that the
painter's conception and execution were quite
sound. Bonaparte made him some amends soon
after by appointing our artist to be inspector of
the schools of Fine Arts in France. It became
customary thereafter for the Consul to take
David on a tour of Paris, asking the painter for
suggestions as to the embellishment of the city,
IN THE ATELIER 145
and in the course of these excursions, it is worth
noting, David — an old Revolvitionary — detailed
to Bonaparte the grandiose schemes which the
Revolutionary Fathers had entertained for making
Paris the first capital of the world. David it was
who suggested the modernisation of the Invalides
— originally the work of Louis XIV. — as we
know that famous edifice to-day.
On his return from Marengo, the First Consul
expressed a wish to be painted again, and David,
sensible of the honour, suggested a picture of
Bonaparte in battle, sword in hand.
"No, my dear David," objected the General,
" battles are not won with swords. I prefer to be
portrayed in repose," and he goes on to give the
painter some idea of what he thinks portraiture
should be. David insists on longer sittings, only
to CA^oke the First Consul's ire.
" An exact portrait," he cries, " does not, I
imagine, consist just in confining oneself to
accuracy in details — a wart on the nose, for ^»^
instance. What is necessary is not so much the /
physiognomy, as the soul of the subject." .,.'-*
" But one condition does not exclude the other,
General," objects David.
" Did Alexander ever sit to Apelles, think you ? "
Bonaparte continues. " No one nowadays asks
if the portraits of great men were like them. It
is sufficient that their genius should be shown in
the picture."
" Verily you teach me the art of painting," re-
plies the artist. " But I feel that you are right and
146 DAVID, THE IMPERIAL PAINTER
will paint you without troubling you for sittings."
The result was Bonaparte crossing the Alps, one of
the best-known tableaux representing Napoleon.
It is proper to chronicle here the fact that most
of his biographers refuse — and in our view quite
properly — to believe that David allowed a soldier
to dictate to him as to the manner in which a
painting should be executed. An artist so long
celebrated was hardly likely to admit that even
a First Consul could teach him anything about
painting, says David's grandson and voluminous
biographer, J. L. Jules David. In flattering the
omnipotent Bonaparte, the artist may, however,
have had in view his life's great ambition, which
was to occupy in matters of Art the same position
which the First Consul held as regards the national
Executive. A short time before Marengo he
had refused the official position offered to him
by Bonaparte, because the decree described him
merely as " the painter of the government."
Bonapartism had already entered into fashion,
and David, small blame, wanted to be supreme
in his own domain.
The painter's eldest son posed, in the sequel,
for the figure of Bonaparte in the stately canvas.
Gerard was also on one occasion called into his
master's service to the same end, the youthful
pupil posing for that heroic gesture which repre-
sents the Conqueror with the right arm out-
stretched and pointing upward. It is not long,
however, before Gerard begins to tire, and his
master chaffs him on his lack of stamina.
GROS, GERARD, ISABEY 147
" Tenez, Gerard," cries David, at last, " come
off that ladder and take my palette. You can
paint the arm much better than you pose for it."
The work was completed on 21st September
1801, and duly exposed for the public's inspection
— at so many francs a head ! A long polemic
followed in the papers, dealing with the painter's
exploitation of the patriotism of his fellow-
citizens, and it was long before David heard the
end of his little harpagonade.
The story of David's relations with Bonaparte
includes that of the relations of his pupils Gerard,
Gros, Isabey and other painters with the con-
queror of Italy. Isabey's two pictures General
Boncqjarte at La Malmaison and his Review by
the First Consul at the Tuileries are probably the
most popular works of that artist. Gros had
already become celebrated by his noted tableau
representing the plague at Jaffa, and had been
instrumental, moreover, in bringing Bonaparte's
attention to the merits of his master, when, armed
with letters of introduction to Josephine, he joined
the headquarters of the Army of Italy. Nor had
he failed to make the most of his kindly reception
at the hands of the Corsican. His pupils, hardly
less than David, were well known, therefore, to
Bonaparte on the eve of the establishment of the
Empire, a short time before which event the
Emperor-elect summoned his painter-in-chief to
the Tuileries, asking him on what particular work
he was then engaged. The story of Leonidas
and his Spartans at Thermopylae — the subject
148 DAVID, THE IMPERIAL PAINTER
no of the painter's actual work — evidently made
appeal to Napoleon.
" You are wrong, David," he said, " to waste
your time painting beaten warriors."
" But," objected the artist, " these vanquished
heroes were as great as their conquerors."
" Never mind," replied Napoleon testily ; " the
name of Leonidas is the only one which has come
down to us. The rest are all lost to history."
As he left after his audience, Lucien Bonaparte,
who had also been present, accosted the painter.
" You must understand, my dear David,"
explained Lucien, " that my brother Napoleon
takes an interest only in pictures in which he
counts for something. It is his weakness and he
has no objection at all to being in the limelight."
Soon after David was given the Legion of
Honour, and at the establishment of the Empire
was appointed first painter to the Emperor, with
the commission to execute in detail the ceremonies
connected with the coronation of Napoleon. It
is hardly necessary to go into the story of this
spectacular episode in the history of the Corsican.
Nevertheless, the inise en scene of the ceremony
counted for so much in David's composition that
we may recall the short description by Thiers :
" On the altar lay the crown, the sceptre, the
sword, the mantle. The Pope, according to the
ancient custom, touched the Emperor on the fore-
head, the arms and palms with the sacred oil,
blessed the sword which he also buckled on, the
sceptre which he placed in the Imperial hands,
THE COEONATION SCENE 149
and then approached the altar to take the
crown.
" Napoleon, however, closely watching his move-
ments, seized the crown from the Pontiff's out-
stretched hands — not roughly, as it was said,
but with decision — and placed it upon his own
head. This action, the significance of which was
clear to all present, produced an indescribable
effect upon the assembly. Then the Emperor took
up the second crown and, approaching Josephine
as she knelt before him, placed it with evident
tenderness upon the head of his Consort, who
forthwith gave way to tears."
David himself tells us of the many annoyances
which the Imperial commission caused him, more
particularly during the rehearsal for his final
sittings, when pretentious courtiers, for whom
the clock meant nothing, quarrelled with each
other for precedence in the foreground of the great
bleau. Finally, an official decree assigned to
each personage a proper place. David, it may
be said, had been given a suitable loge during the
ceremony at Notre Dame, and there had made
a rough draft of the scene at a highly dramatic
moment — the Emperor in the act of crowning
himself, as he had at first designed the work.
Before starting on this tableau, the painter sent
in a requisition for £1000, and Napoleon, to whom
the request was submitted at ^lilan, scrawled
across his paymaster's note the following words : —
" If M. David has not yet received any money
on account of the work of the Coronation on which
150 DAVID, THE IMPERIAL PAINTER
he is now engaged, I see no objection to his being
paid 25,000 francs " — the required sum.
In pursuance of his ambition to preside over
the destinies of artistic France, David addressed
a memorial in 1805 to the Emperor, soUciting
for himself the position which Lebrun had
occupied during the reign of Louis XIV. The
Revolutionary of the days of Robespierre had long
since learned the arts of the courtier, and the
style adopted by the painter towards his Imperial
patron was worthy of the most flattering effusions
of the days of the Roi-Soleil. His candid biog-
rapher and grandson, Jules, declares, sans fagons,
that his grandsire's real object in soliciting a
superior official post was to effect the removal of
Denon from the headship of the Museum Art
Gallery, a post which gave its holder an authorita-
tive voice in all concerns connected with the Fine
Arts, even to a control of the contracts for civic
edifices. Napoleon, it would seem, never saw
the memorial, since David received no acknow-
ledgment as to his proposals. Denon executed
the Colonne Vendome, it will be remembered, and
never once lost the Emperor's favour.
About this time Napoleon gave David a com-
mission to execute a portrait of himself in regalia,
for the city of Genoa. The work was submitted
for Imperial inspection on 4th July 1806, when
Napoleon refused to accept it, " as being so badly
done that if the portrait were sent into Italy, it
could not fail to give the Italians a poor idea
of our art." In this explanation it is certainly
PUPIL AND MASTER 151
not hard to divine the Corsican in search of an
excuse.
David's enemies soon heard of his bad fortune,
however, and it was rumoured that the painter
had confided the Genoa portrait to one of his least
skilful pupils. Great hopes were accordingly
entertained by the opposition that the fall of the
Maestro was imminent, all the more credibly so
because Regnault — the painter of the Education of
Achilles — had also been commissioned to execute
a portrait of the Emperor. Regnault was, never-
theless, not more successful than David, who, well
knowing that his rival had engaged in many in-
trigues for supplanting him, took his revenge in a
bon mot which swiftly went the tourof artisticParis.
"Well, Regnault," he said, on their meeting
at the Institut, " it appears the Emperor is not
satisfied with our portraits. As likely as not, too,
because I did not paint mine, as it is rumoured,
and because you painted yours."
The Coronation picture took some three years
to execute, and the artist Rouget tells us that
the greater part of the work was entrusted to his
ablest pupils, David himself just giving the finish-
ing touches. Gerard was one of the first to examine
the completed canvas, and the master, knowing
his old pupil to be a man of sound judgment, was
anxious to hear his opinion. On arriving at the
principal figure, that of the Emperor in the act
of crowning himself, Gerard said :
*' If you will permit me, cher maitre, I must
confess that the movement of the Emperor
152 DAVID, THE IMPERIAL PAINTER
crowning himself and holding his left hand on
the hilt of his sword, in an attitude of defiance,
is not very happy. It gives me the impression
of being exaggerated and theatrical, and will not
be especially pleasing to Napoleon. Perhaps the
Emperor in the act of crowning the Empress would
present something more lofty and impressive —
more of that noble simplicity which we expect to
find in your art, dear maitrey
'^ Diable!^'' returns David, all alert. " Do you
really think it would be an improvement, Gerard ? "
" I certainly think so," replies the ex-pupil, with
great frankness.
" Of course," objects the master, " it will mean
a big job to substitute the proposed figures.
Nevertheless, you may be right, my friend, and
we shall see what can be done."
" Oh," exclaims Gerard grandly, " if it is only a
matter of time, let myself and Barbier help you.
Say but the "
" Thanks, thanks," replies David, rather darkly;
" but I could not dream of taking you from your
own labours. Rouget and I can make any
changes required."
Gerard has hardly left the studio when David
turns to Rouget :
" What do you think of Gerard's idea ? " he
asks.
" Ma foi,'' says honest Rouget, " I think it
worth considering."
" Frankly," agrees David, " I think it good
myself. The fellow may, indeed, be right. It
PAULINE BONAPARTE 153
will be more gallant — more like a Frenchman ;
and, again, Napoleon will not appear to be so
wholly engrossed in himself."
So Rouget set about removing the self-crowning
figure of Napoleon, and David replaced it with
the one we all know — the Emperor in the act of
crowning Josephine. Some days after the com-
pletion of the new picture. Princess Pauline
Bonaparte — the youngest sister — accompanied by
Gerard, calls at the studio. The Princess is im-
mediately attracted to the portrait of her august
brother, and, with her usual thoughtlessness, turns
to Gerard, who had evidently been talking, and
says :
" The Emperor looks well. It is, indeed, an
excellent idea" — referring, of course, to the effected
alteration.
We are hardly surprised to hear, then, that
David, when his visitors had left, turned to
Rouget with the words :
" You see, my friend, if I had allowed Gerard
to touch my canvas, people would have said that
he had done the whole thing himself."
Nevertheless, it was said that David had to
solicit permission from the Emperor to effect the
suggested changes — in all probability the fact,
since official sanction had already been given to
the first conception submitted. The Emperor,
with the Genoa portrait in mind, probably, paid
his painter more than one surprise visit, during
which he commented favourably or unfavourably,
just as the fancy caught him. On one occasion
154 DAVID, THE IMPERIAL PAINTER
he remarked on the simple attitude of the Pope
— originally depicted with his hands extended
idly on his knees.
" Pardi, David," exclaims the blunt soldier.
*' I did not bring the Pope all the way from Italy
to do just nothing at all."
The artist wisely changed the figure to the
extent of showing the Pope in the act of giving
his pontifical blessing. David relates himself how
both Emperor and Empress, on another occasion,
paid him a State visit, accompanied by chamber-
lains, pages, equerries and maids-of-honour.
Napoleon is evidently in the best of humours.
" What ! " he cries, " but this is life, not art
— action, action everywhere ! How well my
mother looks, and how well the Pope ! You have
done famously, Monsieur David, and I am quite
satisfied."
And with this the Emperor uncovers his head
to the great artist. The Empress, attendrie to
the verge of tears, then pays her compliment to
David, and the courtiers, after their simian fashion,
proceed to exhaust the lexicon of eulogy.
David was appointed Officier de la Legion
d'Honneur shortly after this, when the Emperor,
anxious to have the artist's canvas Socrates,
asked where it was. On being told, he com-
missioned David to repurchase it, giving him
carte blanche in the matter of price. The owner,
a M. de Courbeton, declared that he considered
it priceless, but since the Emperor wanted the
work, they might send to fetch it. David reported
A LAST MEETING 155
to Napoleon, who, unexpectedly enough, showed
the better side of his character.
"It is evident that he wishes to keep your j
picture. Let him," he decided.
In 1810 a reigning Marquis of Douglas ordered
from David a full-length portrait of Napoleon.
The artist accordingly represented the Emperor
in the uniform of the Chasseurs de la Garde, in
the act of leaving his study where he has passed
the night at work, as is indicated by the candles,
which have guttered out, as well as by a pendule,
which points to four o'clock ; on a sofa to the right
lies the Imperial sword. This tableau now belongs
to Prince Roland Bonaparte. When the work was
submitted to Napoleon before being dispatched
to Scotland, he warmly expressed his pleasure.
" You have, indeed, caught me this time,
David," he said. " At night I work for the
welfare of my subjects ; in the day-time for ^
their glory."
The last meeting of the painter with Napoleon
took place during the Hundred Days, when, after
a short visit to the famous atelier, the Emperor
conferred on David the insignia of a Commander
of the Legion of Honour. It was also said that
Napoleon had created his painter a Baron of
the Empire, a tradition, says his grandson, which
is not supported by any documentary evidence.
David was among those who voted for the death
of Louis XVI., and it is certain that the letters-
patent, if ever issued, w^ere destroyed at the
Restoration of the Bourbons.
156 DAVID, THE IMPERIAL PAINTER
As we have noted elsewhere, the story of the
Imperial Painter includes that of Gros, of Gerard
and of Isabey. The last-named of these was the
only one who displayed any independence of
character in his dealings with Napoleon, and
once refused to supervise an historical painting
which dealt with the Imperial legend until his
collaborating fellow-artists were adequately re-
munerated. Napoleon consented to the increase
of stipend.
CHAPTER IX
CANOYA AND NAPOLEON
Canova a Great PhUanlhropic Spirit — Bonaparte and
the Sculptor — Canova' s Independence — The Condition
of Rome — Modelling the First Consul — Napoleoti as a
Sculptor s Subject — An Heroic Statue of the Corsican —
Mars and Venus — The Ingenue Pauline — A Chats-
worth Treasure — Canova and the French Capital —
A Bust of Marie Louise — The Farnese Hercules —
The Pope's Art Patronage — The Borghesc Marbles
— The Sculptor's Style — Napoleon and Rome — The
Corsican's Cautiousness — Art and Religion — Pro-
testants and Catholics — Arrogance of the Priests —
Napoleon on Ciesar — " The Great Man of the Great
People" — The Corsican and the Pope — Canova' s
Advice to the Emperor — Oligarchic J'enice — A Candid
Admission — The Day of IVagram — Canova and
Marriage — Monsieur de Bouclon's Canonisation
WITH characteristic enthusiasm, patriotic
Itahan writers of the time of Napoleon's
Italian campaign, 1796-1797, were wont
to declare that their celebrated artist
Canova was comparable with the young Corsican
conqueror. Valeva per certo il Buonaparte, as they
used to put it. Memoirs and journals of those
moving days indicate very clearly the exalted
regard in which the great sculptor was held by
every class of his countrymen, and it would
also seem established that by his noble personal
character, by his activities in public well-doing
and by the lofty appeal of his artistic productions,
Canova has won, we think, a permanent claim
to rank among the distinguished philanthropic
spirits of all time. It was not long, accordingly,
before Napoleon determined to attach this world-
celebrity to his already princely suite, and as
Alexander had willed to be painted by Apelles,
so the conqueror of Italy decided that Canova
should commit him in marble to posterity.
The sculptor was then in his fortieth year, ex-
hausted somewhat by labours which had included,
among many more, his famous Daedalus and
Icarus, executed in his twenty-first year, his
Theseus, his Cupid and Psyche, his Venus and
Adonis and his Hercules. Papal munificence and
patronage had made him in his day the wealthiest
artist in Italy, and already he entertained thoughts
of retiring to his country estate ; all the more
insistently, too, because those fervent hopes
which Italian patriots had placed in the triumph-
158
A PROUD ARTIST 159
ant progress of Bonaparte against the Austrians
had proved tragically fruitless. Fallen Venice,
erstwhile an appanage of the House of Habsburg,
was now in the grasp of a new dictator, who, says
de Bouclon, gave his arrogant commands in a
language which Venetians had not even the
advantage of understanding.
It was not, however, until 1802 that the Italian
was personally to meet Bonaparte who had com-
missioned his minister at Rome, Bourrienne, to
inform Canova of the First Consul's desire that
the sculptor should execute his bust. The terms
mentioned were 120,000 francs (£4800) and all
expenses. The artist objected in the first place
to the tone of Bourrienne' s instructions to him-
self as savouring too obviously of a master's
order to a servant, as he declared. In the second,
he had never forgiven Bonaparte — an Italian, in
reality — for having, by the Treaty of Campo-
Formio, reduced Northern Italy to a condition
which was hardly less than bondage. Above all,
the depredations of Bonaparte and his Generals
in the treasure-houses of Piedmont, Lombardy
and Venice had caused him a sorrow the poignancy
of which was many times emphasised in the case
of an artist who was at the same time an ardent
Italian patriot.
"I do not refuse to acknowledge the well-
deserved glory of the First Consul," Canova ex-
plained to Cacault, the French Ambassador at
Rome, who added his entreaties to those of the
Minister; "he has rendered great services to our
160 CANOVA AND NAPOLEON
religion and to our civilisation, both of which
he has rescued from savagery. In my opinion,
he is greater than Alexander or Hannibal, or even
Caesar. Nevertheless, I cannot help seeing in him
an oppressor of Italy — a man equally guilty with
those sovereigns who once partitioned Poland.
I decline to execute the bust of such a prince."
The Frenchman's reply, although a model of
diplomatic persuasiveness, failed to move the
sculptor.
" Nature," said the adroit ambassador, " has
at times produced great men of different kinds,
and such great spirits, w^hen contemporary, surely
owe each other support, affection, loyalty.
Alexander and Apelles could never have been
enemies. To-day the great spirit of France calls
to the great spirit of Italy."
It was only when the Pope, Pius VII., and
Cardinal Consahd, an especial favourite of Bona-
parte, urged the sculptor, on grounds of practical
patriotism, to fulfil the First Consul's virtual
command, that Canova consented to " obey, as a
slave obeys his master." Freedom, Canova added,
in a sonorous phrase, can alone mother the designs
of great artists. In October, 1802, he left Rome
for Paris— in a carriage which the First Consul had
especially provided for the journey.
" In his relations with the man who saw Europe
trembling at his feet, Canova," says M. de Bouclon,
" shewed a virility of character equal to his
talents ; the artist indeed proved himself as great
a man as the commander." An expression of
A VISIT TO PARIS 161
opinion with which few will be found to disagree,
for on being presented to the First Consul, who re-
ceived him with the most gracious condescension,
the Italian, in reply to inquiries about Rome,
replied :
'^ I ask permission, General, to speak with the
truthfulness and candour that are common with
me. You ask news of Rome : Rome, I may say,
has fallen to a depth proportionate to the height
which you yourself have reached. The victories
which have placed you in the same rank with
Caesar have been as disastrous for the queen-city
of the world, as they have proved glorious for
your own name. Rome languishes in poverty,
her palaces are despoiled, her time-honoured
treasures are in the hands of strangers ; war-
imposts have deprived her of her financial re-
sources, while the closing of her ports, by your
own orders, do not allow her to repair her losses."
" I intend," replied Bonaparte, with unruffled
equanimity, " to restore Rome. As the well-
wisher of mankind, I intend also to be its bene-
factor. In the meantime, however, what do you
require for the work you have undertaken?"
" Nothing," said Canova. " I am ready to
execute your orders."
" Good : then you shall do my statue," replied
Bonaparte, and dismissed the Italian.
During the next weeks the soldier sat for one
hour daily to the artist, Josephine being present
at times. True to his sense of time-economy,
Bonaparte received officials and signed documents
162 CANOVA AND NAPOLEON
during each seance, and even fingered through
hterary works which had just been pubHshed,
while Canova modelled the features of his illustri-
ous sitter. Politics naturally counted for some-
thing in the conversations which took place
between the artist and his model, and on one
occasion Bonaparte declared it to have been his
intention to remove to Paris the famous bronzes
of Saint Mark at Venice. Whereupon Canova
bluntly replied :
" The fall of that Republic will darken the rest
of my life " — an indication of his patriotic senti-
ments which did not displease Bonaparte.
His usual frankness to Napoleon considered, we
may properly conclude that it was by no means
in the way of flattery that the Italian on one
occasion addressed the First Consul in the
following complimentary terms, as he studied the
bust he had just modelled : —
" Your countenance," he told Bonaparte, very
correctly, "is so favourable to the work of the
sculptor that if we were to discover it among
ancient remains, it would appear evident at once
that it was the bust of one of the great men of
Antiquity. If I have modelled well, the work
will be a success. It is, however, not the sort of
face which pleases the fair sex. Bonaparte has
too much of Hannibal in him to possess very
much of Alcibiades."
Having accomplished the preliminaries necessary
to his great work, Canova decided to return to
Italy and complete the statue in Carrara. M. de
l'ltoti\'rarlt : urog^i
THH CHATSWOHTH NAPOLEON
Hy Canovii
A COLOSSAL STATUE 163
Bouclon gives an instance of tlie linesse — some
would call it by an uglier term — of the First
Consul in connection with the departure from Paris
of the great artist. On his arrival in order to
take leave of Bonaparte, the latter received him
at the same time as an envoy from Tunis, to
whom, through the medium of an interpreter, he
addressed a solemn harangue, urging the duty
incumbent on the authorities of that barbaric
State to safeguard the interests of its Christian
subjects.
" Go back to the Pope," said the First Consul,
turning to Canova, " and tell him that you
have heard me preaching the perfect liberty of
Christians."
Bonaparte understood clearly, comments
Bouclon, that in order to leave a favourable
impression of his character and personality on
the mind of the sculptor, it was necessary to show
that he was a good Catholic. Without religion,
he could be no hero for Canova. Nor, we may
conclude, was it altogether of his own direct
initiative that the French Ambassador at Rome
gave a magnificent reception in honour of the
home-coming artist. The statue of Bonaparte
was to be executed after the style of the Farnesc
Hercules, and to be ten feet in height.
It is interesting to recall here a hon mot of
Canova in regard to his gigantic figure of Napoleon.
The sculptor had requisitioned from Carrara an
enormous block of marble, and therefrom had
carved his heroic effigy of the Conqueror, with
164 CANOVA AND NAPOLEON
the right arm outstretched. Monsieur Artaud,
then secretary of tlie French Embassy, drew
Canova's attention to the amount of valuable
material which must go to waste in the loss of
the marble which lay below the extended arm.
" No," the sculptor answered ; " under the arm
of Mars I found my Venus."
For this Venus — which is now in Florence
and a replica of which, also by Canova, is at Lans-
downe House — it will be remembered, Pauline
Bonaparte posed, and the reflection that brother
and sister were sculpt — if such a word there be
— from the same block of stone, is not without
a certain subtle pathos of its own, since each
enmarbled figure must remain, throughout the
ages, equally an emblem of the general mother-
hood of Earth and of the fleeting tragedy of
kingly grandeur. Pauline Bonaparte was not,
it would seem, more scrupulous in the domain of
moral proprieties than her august brother was
careful of the political proprieties. Did not the
fair Princess once, in this regard, give her friends
the measure of her sense of what was quite proper ?
She posed, it will be recollected, for Canova's
Venus, in the all-but-altogether, a fact which soon
became known to fair prudes of the social world.
One such candid friend affected to be very much
shocked that Pauline should so far have forgotten
the common decencies of modest womanhood ;
" And did you not feel somewhat — er — 'm —
inconvenienced ? " she asked rather haltingly.
" Oh, of course, there was a fire in the room," the
PARIS IN 1810 165
Princess explained simply and without the least
notion that she had done violence to propriet}^
In 1805 Canova paid a second visit to Paris,
when he presented the bust of 1802 to the
Emperor, the larger statue being delivered only
in 1808, at which time Napoleon may be supposed
to have, to a great extent, outgrown his first
perfervid cult of Antiquity and to have turned
towards a distinctive Napoleonic style in all art
and artistic matters. The fact remains that the
heroic statue did not meet with its great prototype's
approval. And Louis XVIII., in 1815, evinced
no particular disposition to retain this somewhat
startling memento of the triumphant supplanter
of the Bourbons. The French Government
accordingly presented it to Wellington, who, it
was well known, developed after Waterloo a
distinct monomania in the matter of Napoleonic
effigies and relics. It is now at Chatsworth.
Canova's last meetings with Napoleon took
place in 1810, when he was summoned — not
invited — to Paris. On 12th October of that year.
Marshal Duroc conducted him into the presence
of the Emperor who, as in the case of Goethe's
presentation at Erfurt, was at breakfast. The
Empress Marie Louise was also present.
" You have grown thin, ^lonsieur Canova,"
said the Emperor, with what may be imagined to
be a kind of affected solicitude for the sculptor's
health. Napoleon had sought through his Italian
agents to induce the Italian to take up his residence
in Paris, and the object of the artist's present
166 CANOVA AND NAPOLEON
visit was the execution of a statue of the Empress.
Canova had declared that, while anxious to please
the Emperor in all possible respects, a permanent
change in the scene and method of his life was
absolutely contrary to the interests of his art.
These objections the sculptor renewed in person
to Napoleon on the occasion of his third and last
visit to the Emperor.
In vain did the great soldier seek to dazzle the
unaffected Italian with prospects of a splendid
social and official role in the capital of the world,
as he put it : Canova was to be appointed to the
academic and exclusive Senate ; to be given the
high super\dsion of all the schools of Art ; he was
to reside at the Louvre, where visiting kings were
customarily lodged. Canova remained unmoved,
however, and declared with his usual candour,
that, apart from the commission of committing
to marble the lineaments of Marie Louise, his
principal object was to plead the cause of rapidly
impoverishing Italy to its King.
" Sire," declared the artist, " you may dispose
as you will of my life, for my services are always
yours to command. I beseech you, nevertheless,
to allow me to return to Rome, once the work for
which I have come shall be completed."
The artist was dealing, however, with a supreme
type of the man tenacious of his intention, and
Napoleon, who allowed himself in no circum-
stances to be easily vanquished, did not hesitate
to descend to something like threats to achieve
his purpose :
THE RIGHTS OF ROME 167
" Here," he said, " you will be in your proper
place, since Paris now houses all the great
treasures of the classical ages. We only lack the
Farnese Hercules, and even that we shall soon
have."
" Your Majesty," cried the honest Italian, with
all the warmth of a sincere indignation, " at least
leave something to our old Italy ! Those ancient
monuments form an historic chain in the country's
life which should not be broken by removals of
our treasure from either Rome or Naples."
*' But," Napoleon objected, " Italy can seek
compensation by excavation work. I shall order
some to be undertaken in Rome. Has the Pope
spent much on enterprise of this kind, tell me ? "
The Pope, as the Emperor well knew, was in
those days a poor man and could ill spare the
funds needful for underground exploration in
search of art treasures. Canova recalled the fact
to his Imperial patron, going on to indicate his
general views as to treasure-trove — somewhat
naif, perhaps, considering the character of the
Corsican.
" The Roman people," he said, " possesses an
inviolable right to all monuments found upon its
own territory, since these are in a certain sense
an inherent product of the soil, and neither the
Romans nor the Pope may dispose of what are
really national and natural heirlooms."
Napoleon here interrupted the artist to inform
him that he had paid fourteen million francs
(£560,000) for the Borghese Marbles which, it
168 CANOVA AND NAPOLEON
may be mentioned in passing, Prince Camillo
had been forced to surrender, without the option
of ransoming them. As against this vast sum
Napoleon referred somewhat contemptuously to
the few hundred thousand lire which the Pope
expended annually on art purchases, whereupon
Canova correctly reminded the Emperor that the
Pope's poverty had been largely forced upon him
by the French armies of invasion.
The conversation then turned upon the ten-foot
statue which Canova had delivered in 1808, the
Emperor declaring that he would have preferred
it draped.
" God Himself," Canova replied candidly,
" could not have executed a beautiful work of
art if he had tried to represent your Majesty as
you are dressed now — in top-boots and uniform.
In Sculpture, as in all the other Arts, we have our
sublime style, and the sublime style of the sculptor
is the undraped figure, or else a style of drapery
which is proper to our art — such as the toga.
With regard to the equestrian statue which I am
now executing of your Majesty, I could not repre-
sent your figure undraped, since my intention is
to re23resent you in the act of commanding an
army. This was customary with the ancient
sculptors, as it is also customary with modern
artists."
At this point Napoleon interrupted the Italian
to ask him if the statue of 1808 was being cast in
bronze, and on being answered in the affirmative,
replied that it was his intention to visit Rome —
" MEGALOPREPCETA " 160
an intention which was never carried into effect ;
for notwithstanding his worship of Antiquity and
all that Rome represented for the ancient and
modern worlds, it was somewhat extraordinary
in Napoleon's fate that he should never have seen
the Eternal City. Canova encouraged his Imperial
patron in this idea of looking " with his own eyes "
upon the home of the Caesars, and readily con-
jured up visions of Trajan's Forum, the Capitol,
the triumphal arches, the Via Sacra, the Appian
Way and the many columns of victory.
" It was not only our political greatness, but
also our love of the grandiose which produced
so many works of magnificence," the sculptor
declared ; and the words take the general reader
down to Zola's wondrous psychological study, in
Rome, of the virtues and vices political and social
which attend on the cult of the grandiose, and how
this spirit has haunted the Eternal City under all
its mighty masters.
Canova started to work on his task of modelling
a bust of the Empress Marie Louise on 15th October
1810, and in accordance with his settled plan of
never allowing his second Consort to remain alone
with a strange man, Napoleon himself attended
each seance given by the Empress to the Italian.
It is solely in pursuance of our endeavour to
present Napoleon in as many temperamental
aspects as possible that we emphasise the curious
trait in the Corsican's character which forbade
him entertaining the notion that woman was at
all trustworthy in her relations with the opposite
170 CANOVA AND NAPOLEON
sex. Monsieur Frederic Masson, the voluminous
historian of the Napoleoniad, declares, however,
that it was not so much jealousy that suggested
to him the necessity of " placing the youthful
Empress in the impossibility of compromising
herself." He did not understand woman, says
Masson, although he was willing to legislate for
her. He acted out of sheer dynastic prudence,
for, as he told his Cabinet on one occasion, adultery
is merely a matter of a sofa. And he remained to
the end ever of the opinion that even an ordinary
tete-d-tete between a man and a woman more often
than not tended to take a " natural " turn.
Somewhere we remember to have read, in
authentic memoirs, that the Empress Marie
Louise once commanded a Court tradesman to
submit certain designs in tapestry which had
appealed to her taste. Accordingly the upholsterer
presented himself in person at her Majesty's
apartments, w^here we may suppose him to have
spent some time paying out rolls of carpetry for
inspection by his Imperial patroness. On leaving
the rooms of the Empress, the upholsterer was
pounced upon by the waiting Emperor, who,
having ascertained the nature of the man's
business, dismissed him with a brutal gesture and
proceeded to his Consort's apartments, where,
with eyes ablaze, we can imagine him to have
demanded of her the meaning of her conduct.
The poor young Empress declared with tears that
the visitor was only an upholsterer !
" Never mind, it is enough that he was a mdle^
THE ROMAN CAUSE 171
and had no business here," roughly repUed
Napoleon, whose jealous mind probably foresaw
the possibility of his successor on the throne being
a cross between an upholsterer and a Habsburg.
At the seance of 15th October the Emperor
was anxious to hear from Canova something about
the climate of Rome.
"Is it as vmhealthy now as it was in the time
of the Ancients ? " he inquired.
" It would seem so," replied the sculptor, who
also remembered to have read in Tacitus that on
the occasion of the return of the army of Vitellius
from Germany, the soldiers fell ill after bivouack-
ing on the Vatican Hill. Napoleon immediately
rang for his librarian, who brought the Annals.
" The sickness of the soldiers proves little,"
the Emperor explained simply, sure of his expertise
in such a matter ; " troops that are rapidly
transported from one climate to another soon
fall ill, but just as quickly recover."
And Canova here takes advantage of the
Emperor's curiosity about Rome to continue his
advocacy of the Roman cause, urging the great
one to put into immediate practice those designs
for the restoration of the city which he was
known to entertain. Napoleon assures him that
it is his intention to make Rome the capital of
Italy, incorporating Naples in his scheme of
unification, an idea which gives the sculptor the
opportunity of representing his views as to what
is really necessary for the well-being of his com-
patriots. It is highly interesting to note that
172 CANOVA AND NAPOLEON
Canova attributed much to the influence of
ReUgion in Art :
" Religion, which is favourable to the Arts,"
he declared, " groAVS weaker and weaker in my
country. Among the Egyptians, among the
Greeks and the Romans, it was Religion alone
that encouraged Art. The immense sums which
were expended on the erection of the Pantheon,
on the statue of Jupiter at Olympia, on that of
Minerva at Athens — all this was due to Religion.
With the Romans it was the same : their works
bear the seals and emblems of Religion, and
even Alaric, the Visigoth, respected the edifices
of Religion as the real centres of culture and
enlightenment."
After which and much more to the same purpose,
Canova goes on, like the honest partisan he is, to
declare that above all the Roman Catholic Church
has been the true mother of Art :
" Sire," he said, " the Protestants are satisfied
with a plain church and a Crucifix, and so have
no need of beautiful objects of art, while the
churches which they possess have been erected
and adorned by Catholic artists."
" He is quite right," agreed the Emperor, turn-
ing to his Consort, " the Protestants have nothing
beautiful."
All of which, on the part of both Canova and
Napoleon, was somewhat in the nature of argu-
mentation along very narrow and materialist
grounds, it must be allowed. The soldier was
on safer territory when he replied to Canova's
PRIESTS AND POLITICS 173
appeal lor reconciliation with the Pope by
assuring the artist of his willingness to do so,
but for the arrogance of the clergy.
'' The Priests," said the Emperor, with much
cogency, " want to govern everywhere, want to
interfere in all things, political as well as spiritual,
and, like Gregory VII., are content with nothing
less than absolute mastery. The Popes have
always sought to keep the Italians in subjection,
and that, too, even when they were not the
absolute masters of Rome. What were the
factions of the Orsini and the Colonna tribes,
if not organised and subsidised intrigues to this
especial end ? "
And to an admission by Canova that the Popes
had on several occasions — as in the reign of
Alexander VI., of Julius II. and of Leo X. —
begun the military conquest of Italy, Napoleon,
in a very human touch, puts his hand to the hilt
of his sword, answering with the easy nonchalance
of the master who is certain of his subject :
" Only the sword can achieve conquest — c'est
Vepee quHl fauty
" And not altogether the sword, Sire," retorts
honest Canova ; " the shepherd's crook — the
crozier — is also an essential. Machiavelli himself
could not decide which had contributed most to
the greatness of Rome — the arms of Romulus or
the religion of Numa. It is true, indeed, that
these two forces must march together, and if
the Popes have not distinguished themselves as
warriors, they have in other ways written their
174 CANOVA AND NAPOLEON
exploits upon the pages of history, and often
with such splendour as to win universal
admiration."
" Caesar," cries Napoleon, interrupting him,
" was the great man of the great people ; and
not only Caesar, but other Emperors such as
Titus, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius. The Romans
were always great till the time of Constantine.
The Popes made it their policy to maintain discord
throughout Italy, and were always the first to
call in the French and the Germans to fight
their battles against the people."
This expression of opinion opens the way for
the patriotic sculptor to make another appeal
for his beloved Rome. Napoleon retorts by
declarmg that the Vatican had made it a settled
policy to resist him wherever it could and how
it could, and this notwithstanding the fact that
the Emperor allowed the French Bishops to
govern according to their own notions in all that
concerned purely religious matters.
" Is there no religion here in France ? " ex-
claims the Emperor. " Who restored the altars ?
Who protects the clergy ? I require my share of
obedience ; but I find the Pope is altogether pro-
German and pays most attention to what Vienna
says." In saying which he looked pointedly at
Marie Louise.
" Oh," retorted the young Empress bravely,
" I can assure you that when I lived in Germany,
they used to say that the Pope was altogether
pro-French." Napoleon passes over this un-
OLIGARCHIC VENICE 175
expected sally and goes on to explain that he
quarrelled with the Pope for refusing to expel
the Russians and the British from his States.
" He even excommunicated me," fumes the
Emperor, " and does not seem to realise that in
the end, France may break off from Rome, even
as the English and Russians broke away in their
day."
Canova replies that such a schism would be
a calamity for himself and his Empire — all the
more so, says the plain-spoken sculptor, as he is
about to become a father — an honour which could
not at that date, 15th October, have been very
distant, since the Emperor was married on
2nd April 1810 and the King of Rome was born
on 20th March 1811. What Marie Louise thought
of this bluff suggestion, which concerned herself
so intimately, we do not learn. There is some-
thing that is far from displeasing, however, in
this domestic and rather bourgeois scene, set as
it were in a very desolation of greatness and
splendour, and Napoleon, with unusual good
humour and tact, closes the seance by reminding
Canova that he, not less anxiously than the
sculptor, desires to be on good terms with the
Vicar of Christ.
In the succeeding seance the conversation turned
on the glories of oligarchic Venice, when the
Italian — who was of Venetian origin — expressed
the view that the Republic would never have
fallen had the State placed greater trust in the
patriotism of its generals. The Venetian
176 CANOVA AND NAPOLEON
oligarchs feared, said the sculptor, that a Caesar
might make his appearance and inevitably to
their undoing. Whereupon the Emperor replies
with the candid enough admission :
" You are right. I once told the Directory
myself that if they continued to make war, a
soldier would certainly arise in France who must
end by dictating to themselves."
In advising Napoleon to safeguard the interests
of the people of Florence in respect of their art
treasures, the sculptor added that encouragement
of Italian painters must redound all the more to
the Imperial credit, since the House of Bonaparte
had originally sprung from Italy.
"What!" cries the Empress, turning to her
Consort, " are you not a Corsican ? " and is
surprised to hear that the Emperor is really of
Italian origin, as Canova says, and as Napoleon
admits with a suggestion of some pride. The
Emperor does not, however, hold Italian painters
in very high respect, and awards the superiority
to French artists, who, he says, are not such
good colourists, but are better in the matter of
line -work.
Downright Canova sees nothing out of place
in recommending both the Emperor and the
Empress to look after their health. Napoleon,
he thinks, overdoes it somewhat :
" Que voulez-vous, done ? " replies the Emperor
good-humouredly. " I have sixty millions of
subjects, from eight to nine hundred thousand
soldiers, one hundred thousand cavalry. The
A QUEEN OF CONCORD 177
Romans themselves never had so large a number.
I have fought forty pitched battles, and at
Wagram our artillery fired a hundred thousand
shot. At that time," he adds gaily, looking at
his youthful Consort, " this young lady was an
Archduchess of Austria, and on the day of Wagram
assuredly wished me dead."
" You are right," admits the Empress, with
a bright laugh ; "I certainly did."
The great sculptor had represented Marie
Louise as Concord — her marriage with the Emperor
in 1810 had brought about a short season of peace
—and the result was pleasing to the illustrious
couple. Canova in his Memoirs tells us that at
their last meeting Napoleon asked if he was
married.
" No, Sire," replied the sculptor simply, " I
have been on the point of marrying several times,
but many incidents preserved me my freedom.
Besides, the fear of not being able to find a woman
who should love me as I must certainly have
loved her — this consideration enabled me to
devote myself to Art alone."
Bouclon pays the tribute of a tear to this
last interview between the Sculptor and the
Conqueror. They only met again in heaven, he
says.
Which is certainly a first-class compliment to
Napoleon !
M
CHAPTER X
THE IMPERIAL MUSICIAN
Napoleon on Music — Italian Musicians versus German
—National lvalue of Opera — Napoleon no Musician
— His Plans for the Musical Art — The Eroica Sym-
phony of Beethoven — Salaries of Official Singers — .1
Surprise for Vatican Celibates — La Belle Grassini —
The Southern Temperament — Grassini s Disobedience
— Proud Monsieur Paer — Grassini, Wellington and
Napoleon — An Intellectual Singer
NAPOIiEON, according to the Corre-
spondance, once wrote as follows to the
directors of the Conservatoire at Paris
in regard to Music : —
"Of all the Fine Arts, Music is that which has
most effect upon the passions. Consequently it
is the one which the statesman should most
encourage. A musical composition which calls
forth the loftiest inspirations has far more prac-
tical influence than a reasoned discourse or a
didactical essay, and touches the heart more
deeply. ... A cantata well executed awakens
sympathy, and good-will arises from sympathy."
It was the opinion of the Emperor that the
Italian School of Music was pre-eminently that
which by appealing to the sympathies moved
men to good dispositions and to resignation.
The compositions of Germany, he said, except
several of Mozart and a few others, appealed to
the quality of action in man and had in them
some suggestion of a rebellious note. Never-
theless, when Mehul composed his oratorio,
Joseph, Napoleon assured him that the best way
to merit his favour was to produce pieces which
inspired heroic sentiments in the nation and the
army. It is a tribute to the Corsican's fair-
mindedness that when a composer of note pro-
duced an opera v/hich displeased him, owing to a
" political " tendency which he affected to find
in it, the Emperor allowed it to be played " until
the public could no longer digest it," as he held;
the piece was soon forgotten, and neither the
i8o
AN UNMI^SICAL EAR 181
author nor the pubUc was deprived of due
rights.
" The Opera," he once told his Council, " costs
£32,000 yearly. Yet it is necessary to support
an institution which flatters the national vanity,
and we must subsidise it at the expense of other
theatres. . . . Let us, therefore, have no vaude-
ville at the Opera, but only what is consistent
with the dignity of a great national institution.
. . . We might be induced to subsidise the Opera
Comique to the extent of £4000 a year ; but only
on the express condition that first-class singers
and actors shall consent to appear."
Like most men whose masculinity is the pre-
dominating trait of the whole character and
temperament, Napoleon was not a lover of music
and had no very willing ear for song. His
secretaries, Fain, Chaptal, Bourrienne, Meneval,
as well as his man Constant, all tell us that during
his rare fits of idleness he was wont on occasion
to burst into songful numbers of the homely or
provincial kind, and on the eve of a campaign a
frequent musical ditty on his lips was that which
sings of Marlbrough on his way to the wars.
" It was a strong voice," says the body -servant
simply, " but not pleasant to the ear, and it was
his habit to sing thus when moving rapidly from
one room to another in his petits a p parte merits. '''
Napoleon's national programme was, however,
too comprehensively laid out to allow of him
overlooking the very just claims of the musical
world^ — in oiu' own opinion an art far above that
182 THE IMPERIAL MUSICIAN
of the Drama — and provision was duly made, as
we have seen, for opera and its exponents.
Once, while attending a pupil's concert at the
Conservatoire, he rewarded the singer of a simple
air by Paisiello with a substantial money prize,
Paisiello — the author of the famous Chinese
Idol and the original Barber of Seville, on which
theme Rossini improved — having been his
favourite composer. This artist he summoned
from Naples in 1802 and assigned to him the
task of organising an Imperial orchestra for the
Tuileries, at an honorarium of £850 yearly and
a Court carriage. After he had made the acquaint-
ance of Beethoven's music and heard what the
connoisseurs had to say about that master's
wondrous art, he set about making him the
fashion, as he himself said, although his own
tastes leaned towards the florid schools of Italy.
Beethoven, who was a convinced Republican in
politics, admired Napoleon as the ideal soldier
until he assumed the purple and, indeed, called
his famous Eroica symphony by the title
Napoleon Bonaparte. After 1804, however, he
declined politically to countenance the Corsican,
and at the latter's death in 1821, on being asked
to compose something in memory of the great
departed, declared that he had already written
his funeral march, referring to the marche funebre
in the said composition.
His singers were well paid as a rule. Crescent! ni
and Brizzi receiving each £1200 yearly, besides
perquisites ; while Mesdames Grassini and Paer
MONSIEUR MEHUL 183
were paid £1500 and £1200 respectively. The
Imperial ballet had no complaint to make of its
treatment, and here we recall that when Pope
Pius VII. went to Paris in 1804 to crown the
Emperor, an especial surprise was prepared for
the Vicar of Christ and his Cardinals, when,
during a grand musical representation, a large
ballet of beautiful coryb antic nymphs burst upon
the stage and executed a sensational amount of
" leg-business " directly over the heads of the
astonished Vatican celibates.
To the composer Mehul, who was not a
favourite of his, Bonaparte once declared that
the music of the Germans and the French was
" scientific," but without the sparkle and tuneful-
ness of the Italian schools. Mehul, who evidently
had a mind of his own, tried to defend the French
exponents on the ground that their dramatic ex-
pression and psychology were superior. Napoleon
objected to contradiction and replied querulously :
" That is just you, Mehul. You may have
a great reputation, but your music bores me
nevertheless."
" And what does that prove ? " retorted the
angry composer, immediately turning on his heel.
Napoleon was, however, not always so brutal
with his musicians. Once Paisiello spatchcocked
a beautiful air entitled Sei Morali, by Cimarosa,
into his own opera. / Ziiigari, and during the
rendering Napoleon could hardly contain his
enthusiasm. Its rendition over, he turned to
Paisiello, congratulating him :
184 THE IMPERIAL MUSICIAN
" Ma foi,^'' cried the Emperor, " the man who
wrote that air can call himself the first composer
in Europe."
"It is by Cimarosa," explained the discon-
certed Maestro.
" I am sorry," returned Napoleon sympathetic-
ally, " but I cannot withdraw what I have said."
On the morrow his musician-in-chief received a
handsome present.
To Lesueur, the composer of Les Bardes,
Napoleon, on hearing the opera for the first
time, gave the Legion of Honour and, a few
days afterwards, a gold snuff-box stuffed with
banknotes worth several hundred pounds.
Zingarelli, the composer of Romeo e Giulietta,
once had a brush with the Corsican : at the birth
of the King of Rome, the musician, then choir-
master at St Peter's, was given orders to have a
Te Deum simg, but the Maestro refused on the
ground that he knew no King of Rome but
Pius VII. He was summoned at once to Paris,
where he was commanded to compose a mass,
paid in all some £600 for his work and sent home
again. Another singer, Marchesi by name, during
the campaign of Italy, was asked once by the
youthful General to sing an air for his table
company. The tenor replied by telling Bonaparte
that if he wanted a good air he had only to take
a turn in the garden and get some. They threw
Marchesi out for his bad manners on that occasion ;
but on another he consented to sing, and Bona-
parte and he made it up, Crescentini, the famous
SIGNORA GRASSINI 185
castrato, was paid, as we have said, about £1200
yearly as first singer, besides large presents.
Napoleon would not allow him to sing in public,
and gave him the Order of the Iron Crown — an
honour to which the existing Knights and Com-
panions took exception, on the ground that
Crescentini, a castrato, was not physically compos.
La belle Grassini, however, took up the cudgels
on the singer's behalf :
" What has his wound to do with the Iron
Crown ? " she asked plaintively. And Paris
laughed.
This Signora Grassini, one of the most beautiful
women of the age, and inconte stably the first
contralto of her time, entered for a generous
consideration into the life of Napoleon. He first
met her in Italy during the Italian Campaign
when, according to his own account, the delicacy
of his position — a youth commanding veteran
generals — required from him the exercise of all
his tact and circumspection. He was, however,
very much amourdche of the fair songstress,
and, according to Bourrienne, lived with her
quite openly in Milan — a charge which Napoleon
refuted at St Helena when he recalled that their
intimacy only began in 1805. La Grassini, he
told, marvelled that he could look upon her, in
that year, when in 1797 he had refused the
favours which she had been only too willing to
grant him. It is certain, however, that she was
officially attached to the Consular establishment
in 1801, and Napoleon, Fouche tells, paid her
186 THE IMPERIAL MUSICIAN
from his private purse £600 a month, insisting,
however, that she should keep out of Josephine's
way. Ine\4tably, Bonaparte could devote but
a short time to love affairs, and Madame
Grassini was clearly one of those southern natures
which require unusually frequent blooding. We
are hardly surprised to hear, then, that the lovely
cantatrice soon proved faithless. There was a
certain Rode, a violinist and composer in her
orchestra, who attracted her attention and suc-
ceeded so far in capturing her heart that she
consented to elope wdth him. Napoleon over-
looked this escapade when, as Emperor, he placed
her at the top of the list of official singers. She
was charged by Napoleon in 1810 with refusing
to attend the rehearsals for an opera, and Napoleon
had her summoned to his presence. He was at
breakfast when she arrived and the following
dialogue took place :
" Grassini," frowned Napoleon, " you are
preventing us from seeing the opera, by not
attending rehearsals. You keep our musician
waiting."
" Excuse me. Sire," replies Grassini, " but
your musician keeps me waiting. It is etiquette
in Italy for the first rehearsals of an opera to
take place at the j^iano of the Pr-rima Donna
Assolutissima. Paisiello, Cimarosa, Zingarelli —
all these, w^ho are quite as good as Monsieur Paer,
I imagine, waited on ??ie."
" So-ho ! " cries Napoleon, swallowing an oyster.
" What have you to say, Monsieur Paer ? "
NAPOLEON DECIDES 187
The latter had laid the charge of insubordmation.
" I cannot, Sire," explains the grandiloquent
Maestro, " consent to wait on any prima donna,
however eminent, however absolute. I may once
have done so, and indeed, often carried my humble
operas round to the residences of famous cantatrices
— like any common bagman. But," and Paer
draws himself up to the last line of his five foot
two inches, and throws out a thirty-three chest,
" that was, your Majesty, before I had the honour
of being appointed director of music to the
Emperor of the French. I thought. Sire, that
it was due to my dignity to remain in my rank
— more befitting the glory of Fra "
" Ta, ta, ta," Napoleon interrupts testily
" Monsieur Paer, you shall visit Madame Grassini
once. Madame Grassini, you shall call on
Monsieur Paer twice. Bonjour.'"
Grassini in 1815 became the mistress of the
victorious Duke of Wellington. From what the
chroniclers tell us, she was not much impressed
by this Anglo-Irish soldier, and much preferred
her part-countryman, Bonaparte, for all his
brusqueness and unsentimentality. Here, how-
ever, we may presume that the Duke's hope-
less and unrequited infatuation for Madame
Recamier entered into the jjique of the singer —
an infatuation, by the way, which had once
obsessed Napoleon and which remained, as in
Wellington's case, also unrequited. Grassini was
a woman of considerable intellect, a quality which
rarely distinguishes singers, whether male or
188 THE IMPERIAL MUSICIAN
female, and her hons mots had considerable vogue
in Paris and Milan. It is to this lady is attributed
the retort made to Bonaparte, who was accusing
the Italians of being natural thieves :
" Non tutti, ma huona parte,'' replied the singer,
who remembered the depredations of the young
Conqueror in the art -galleries of Italy.
CHAPTER XI
RELIGION OF NAPOLEON
JSIodern Views of Religiosity — Newman and Manning
— Men and the Alheislic View — Xnpoleun after the
Egyptian Campaigji—Real Value of Rcligiun — The
Corsican's Essential Unbelief — "An histinct of Spirit-
ualism" — A Sound German View — 21ie Chevalier
de Beauterne — A Napoleonic Press-Agent — The
Napoleonic Expression — Mans Simian Disposition
— "Christ is no Man" — Beauterne' s Puerilities —
Cardinal Fesch on his Nephew — Religion postulates
a Calvary — Monsieur de Nor-vi?is — Napoleon's Mind
too positive for Belief- — His Taste for Religious
Discussion — The Murder of Enghien — Napoleon's
Cynical Explanation — His Choiceof National Religions
— His Political Horror of Atheists
ANY work which attempted to show the
temperamental side of Napoleon would
be incomplete if it did not include some
account of his attitude towards spiritual
matters. All the more so, perhaps, at the present
time, when the psychologists of history, in their
studies of great men are becoming accustomed to
attribute given religious tendencies in their heroes
to specific qualities of temperament and soul, rather
than to a belief in God. Cardinal Newman, we
are nowadays assured, was attracted towards the
Church of Rome more by the artistic cravings of
his nature, than by the fact that his studies in
ecclesiastical doctrine had moved him to the
conviction that the Anglican Church possessed no
claim to represent the Christianity of the Apostolic
age, as Catholics would assert. Manning, a
strong presumption has it, saw the certainty of
a grand political role in the Roman Church with
the possibility of promotion to the Papacy — he
obtained, indeed, one vote towards that honour
in 1878 — if only backed by the support of Great
Britain, at a time when our country was strengthen-
ing her interests in Southern Europe. And if
personal ambitions and considerations can be
assumed to be the motives which turned men like
Manning and Newman into virtual apostasy,
we may not implausibly suppose that minor
spirits are moved to commit their heresies
because, let us say, the vestments of the Roman
Church suit their particular style of beauty, or
because the so-called Oxford manner is likely to
190
SAVAGE MAN— A DOG 191
impress the female portion of Roman Catholic
congregations — as we sometimes think.
The definite adoption of the atheistic view by
any individual — for it is to the credit of thoughtful
men that they fight hard against this final sur-
render of their first ideal — is easily fixed in the
history of great characters, and it is clear enough
that when Bonaparte returned from Egypt, he
had finally given up all hope of a God.
" I have seen man in the savage state," he de-
clared, " only to realise that he is no better than
a dog." And though in the Concordat he adopted
an official religion, it was not — who needs to be
told ? — for any higher motive than that which
inspires the apostles of neo-Christianity themselves
— namely, that reHgion is a handy instrument of
pohtical influence, the main tendency of which
is to keep the people in subjection. Partisans
have, of course, adopted the \dew that Napoleon
re-established the Catholic religion in France
because of his inherent belief in that system —
entirely forgetful of the fact that so positive a
mind as that of the Corsican could entertain no
illusions at all that men who are educated to
accept the teachings of an arbitrary authority
must fall far below the standard of intellectuality
— and, therefore, manhood — of those whose spirit
of independence is nurtured in all such ideas
as are associated with the right to exercise
private judgment. Even IMonsieur Masson, whose
capacity for original research no one is likely to
deny, affects to think that Napoleon sincerely
192 RELIGION OF NAPOLEON
believed in the religion which he replaced on the
altars of France — a view which is wholly incon-
sistent with a proper understanding of the
Corsican.
Even if it be conceded that at least the great
soldier was a Deist, we are unlikely to find
much satisfaction in this fact, considering the
definitions which the Deists give of their God —
an impersonal influence, a conscious force, notions
not so low as Pantheism and yet not so high
as Theism. Chateaubriand tells us that even in
his attacks upon the Church, Napoleon showed
that he possessed "an instinct of spiritualism"
and that his " irritations against the Church are
not of a philosophic nature, but bear the impress
of a religious character." Such opinions we may
take to mean that Napoleon did not overlook the
educative and ethical value of a religion which
Macaulay could speak of as the greatest monu-
ment of human policy that the world has known.
And if in his last will and testament the Corsican
declared himself to die in the Catholic faith, we
may be certain that dynastic reasons counted for
much in that somewhat belated auto-da-fe.
A German writer. Doctor Max Messer, declares
that Napoleon was the first great apostle of a
typically modern philosophy — namely, that of
religious individualism, in which the idea of God
assumes the proportions not so much of an idea
as of a sentiment. Like a true temperamentalist,
says the German, in effect. Napoleon had his
own God, just as Schiller had his ; the poet
M. DE BEAUTERNE 193
maintaining that Christ was an liistorical necessity
and that civiHsation would not have been possible
had not some philanthropic instinct in the great
spirits of later antiquity enabled them to see the
possibilities for human culture inherent in the life
of Christ and his teachings.
" A State religion became, therefore," says
Messer, " equally an historical necessity for
Napoleon ; and as Schiller regretted the dis-
appearance of the ancient gods, so Napoleon felt
himself forced to express, as in 1798 on the Nile,
his admiration for certain qualities of the Moslem
religion, and in 1811 for those of the Protestant."
In the year 1840, when Louis Napoleon was
seeking to advance his pretensions to the throne
of his illustrious uncle, there appeared a work
which purported to show that the founder of
the dynasty had based his ultimate political
conceptions — the unification of all the States of
Europe under one head — to a large extent on the
idea that without the aid of Papalistic Christianity
no system of universal government, such as
Napoleon aspired to, would have been possible.
The author of this brochure was a certain Chevalier
de Beauterne, and if he had been an ascetic
Christian Brother, he could hardly have shown
a more child-like loyalty to his own Church, or a
greater naivete in setting forth the belief in its
doctrines, which he ascribed to a man whose mind
was of so positive a kind and method that we
may be certain it accepted nothing in the way
of hypothesis that did not immediately concern
194 RELIGION OF NAPOLEON
itself with the practical business of his own vast
career.
The object which the publication of this book
had in view did not, we feel sure, deceive people
in those days, and it was soon recognised to
be a frank appeal, with ulterior motives, to the
essential religiosity which supposedly underlies
the Latin character. Belonging though it did
to the class of political tricks which the French
very aptly describe as procedes connus, or known
processes, it nevertheless had a great vogue in its
time, and we think small blame to those who made
use of so plausible if impossible an hypothesis
as the religious sentiments of Napoleon in order
to further their own aims — all the more so that
we fail ourselves to see how a working or enduring
morality can be developed in young minds by
any code which rejects the idea of a Supreme
Being. The purely ethical religions have certainly
not succeeded in achieving a high standard of
virtue or civilisation, so far as we have studied.
All this does not, however, establish the case
for the religiosity of the Corsican, and it is our
conviction that his whole life provided a negation
of his having regarded religion as anything but
what it is — namely, an instrument of virtual ob-
scurantism when its application is made to over-
docile minds. Excessive emphasis has been laid,
we think, by commentators on the fact that, as
it is said, his recorded views on religion, given by
Gourgaud, Montholon, Bertrand and others, all
bear the impress of Napoleon's own particular
IMITATIVE MAN 195
style of phrasing. The arts of simianism and
psittacism are not, however, confined to the spoken
language, and modern periodical literature shows us
often enough that the gift of happy expression can
be independent of even rudimentary scholarship.
A visit to one of our law-courts, or to our churches
or to the House of Commons itself, will indicate
very quickly how much of the essential parrot
there is left in the race, just as a superficial
observation of the social climbing classes shows
how near to the monkey is imitative man.
In the expressions of opinion, when in exile,
which we have of Napoleon, there is a pronounced
similarity of style which disconcerts as often as
it convinces, and if the Corsican was the complex
and many-sided character that we are taught to
believe him, then those who chronicled his sayings
must have been strangely fortunate in finding him
so often in the same mood. If, in any case, the
staccato and laconic style was Napoleon's style,
we may be very certain that among so imitative
a race as the French, it soon became a fashion,
and accordingly we find but little grounds for
attributing any particular phrase to Napoleon
simply because it appears to be expressed in a
style which was said to have been peculiar to him.
Monsieur de Beauterne may be right in his opinion
that the fond des pensees and the nerf dii raisonne-
ment are typically Napoleonic ; nevertheless into
more than one opinion to which the Chevalier
attaches much accoimt, we cannot but see that
Beauterne has read a meaning which Napoleon
196 RELIGION OF NAPOLEON
could not at all have entertained. He is alleged,
for example, to have said once :
" I know men, and I declare to you that Jesus
Christ is no man " — a statement which, if it was
ever made by the master positivist, must be taken
to mean that Christ was so pronounced a type
of the mystic as to have ceased to retain the
ordinary qualities and characteristics of a man.
Napoleon, who, Madame de Stael assures us,
was accustomed to look upon ordinary beings as
" simple facts," would assuredly not have ad-
mitted that he was himself a man in the ordinary
sense, and we know that even as late as 3rd
December 1804, he could tell Decres that he
envied Alexander the Great the popular ignorance
of an age in which the Macedonian could success-
fully claim to be the son of Jupiter. Nor, in this
connection, must we overlook a common retort of
his to Josephine when the latter accused him of
infidelity : "I am not a man as other men, and
ordinary laws do not apply to such a being as
myself."
At all events we declare our total inability to
accept a phrase which he is said to have addressed
to Bertrand when the latter assured him that he
could not see the divinity of Christ :
" Well," Napoleon is alleged to have said,
" if you cannot see that Christ is the Son of God,
then I was wrong to make you a general."
At Rivoli we cannot imagine Bonaparte pausing
to think if Massena possessed, or not, a religion ;
or Soult, at Austerlitz ; or Ney, at the head of his
CARDINAL FESCH 197
five thousand cavaliers on the slope of La Belle
Alliance. Beauterne is full of puerilities of this
kind, and in a later brochure based upon his book,
and bearing the imprimatur of the See of Tournai,
we are supplied with just such illustrations as are
supposed to move the first communicant's mind
to fervour. Thus : Bonaparte embracing the
Vicar of Christ in a kind of filial rapture ; or
Napoleon standing on the altar of the Tuileries
chapel, his sword buckled, his legs wide apart,
arms folded, and not looking particularly impres-
sive as he says to some cleric-looking person in
a soutane : " Desormais nous aurons la messe
ici tous les jours."
Beauterne — who was this gentleman by the
way ? We can find no trace of him in the bio-
graphies. May he not have been a kind of literary
John Doe ? — Beauterne, we repeat, was, or pre-
tended to be, so lacking in an appreciation of the
Napoleonic reclame as to present as conclusive
the opinions of that old sinner Cardinal Fesch
concerning the Christian sentiments of his illustri-
ous nephew. Cardinal Fesch, we may believe,
was hardly less a part of Napoleon's system than
were his marshals, or his minister of police, or
than Schulmeister. Indeed had Pius VII. been
translated between 1809 and 1814, we reasonably
presume that Fesch would have been imposed on
the College of Cardinals as the successor of Pius.
While talking about Napoleon's Christianity, the
Cardinal, says Beauterne, could not control his
feelings, and two great tears rolled down his
198 RELIGION OF NAPOLEON
cheeks ; after which Fesch goes on to tell how
the young Napoleon was of so religious a turn of
mind that, like Rawdon Crawley of the Heavies,
he once had thoughts of taking up the Church as
a profession ! And, adds the prelatical ex-army
contractor. Napoleon chose the day of the Assump-
tion for his jour de fete — as if the great Corsican
had made special arrangements for being born
on the fifteenth day of August. And then the
Cardinal deplores that he has lost a letter of
two pages in which the youthful Bonaparte
tells him of his unalterable devotion to the faith
of his fathers, and how the young Corsican once
expressed his ambition to go to Pondichery to
convert the natives ! Quoting the naif Beauteme
we get :
" Before the battle of Marengo," said Fesch,
"I met my nephew, by arrangement, who told
me that if he won, he should return to France
and re-establish Religion in the country. He then
asked me what Cardinals he was likely to meet in
Italy, and on my mentioning one or two, he told
me to go on at once and tell them that he intended
to re-establish Catholicism in France — but only
within certain limits. As for the philosophers — his
sword, he said, would deal with those gentry. He
could have had permanent peace ^vith the English
had he consented to establish Protestantism in
France as the national religion, but Napoleon
would listen to none of England's overtures and
replied that he intended to re-establish the
Catholic Church in France solely because it was
TALLEYRAND'S RETORT 199
the true religion. It was suggested to him that he
should create a religion of his own, and Napoleon
replied that in order to establish a new religion,
it was absolutely necessary for the founder to
ascend Mount Calvary."
This last statement is too obviously suggested
by Talleyrand's answer, in 1801, to a Theo-^
philanthropist cleric who complained that his
new religion did not seem to make much headway.
" Monsieur," replied the ex-Bishop, " Chris-
tianity was successful in finding One who was
willing to die for His faith. Perhaps if you were
to die for yours. Sir, success might attend on
your movement."
The Theophilanthropist's fervour did not, how-
ever, carry him to extremes of this painful nature.
Partisans have exhausted themselves, again, in
seeking to point to Napoleon's pious dispositions
in the face of death, forgetful that Napoleon's
ambition was restricted at St Helena to the
continuance of his name and the survival of his
dynasty. To have died the atheist— the potential
sun-worshipper he had so often declared himself
to be to his intimates — would have been the
destruction of all hope of his family reconquering
his throne in Catholic France, and no one knew
this better than himself. Nor does ^lonsieur
de Norvins — also a pro-Bonapartist writer —
impress us very much when he tells us, in that
grandiloquent style which marked the Romantic
age in France, that Napoleon was too penetrated
with the sentiment of his own greatness not to
200 RELIGION OF NAPOLEON
I believe in the immortalitj'' of the Soul. It must
^ have been writers of this type who invented such
scenes as that in which Napoleon is represented
as addressing himself to a group of philosophic
doubters among his generals, on the way to
Egypt, pointing a fo^ hand upward, contemplating
the starry firmafnent afid saying in his high-
-pitched voice :
" Who made all that, gentlemen — who ? "
4 M. Thiers, too, when he treats us to a long
(N^;;^ discourse on the certainty that Napoleon's dis-
position turned him to religious ideas, appears
to overlook the fact that religion of this kind,
being natural religion, is no religion at all in the
opinion of orthodox Christian teachers, who insist
on practical virtues and take but little account
of virtues which are simply the expression of
a personal or natural disposition. Thiers even
cites as a token of Bonaparte's religiosity the fact
that he discussed willingly all subjects connected
•with philosophy and creeds — a token, we think
ourselves, which, being positive evidence of a
man's striving after a finality that is impossible,
also settles the case for his essential unbelief.
He is a sorry being, in any case, who is not moved
by the story of philosophic or theological thought,
and it would be surprising, moreover, if so political
a mind as that of Bonaparte had not early seized
upon the ethnical element in the importance of
religion.
With all the best intentions towards religious
belief, we cannot admit that its advocates prove
AN ESSENTIAL ATHEIST 201
Napoleon to have looked upon it as anything
higher than a forceful aid to government, or, as
he termed it himself, a good instrument of order
and tranquillity in the community. And with
regard to the alleged discourses on the subject
with which he is said to have killed time at St
Helena and elsewhere, we are finally and firmly
convinced that they are nearly all suspect and that
the sentiments attributed to him there were subse-
quently invented by men whose interest it was to
serve the cause of Louis Napoleon.
. The man who sanctioned the murder of Enghien
was one who had long ceased to entertain the notion
that there existed a Supreme Judge of human
acts ; while the words with which he excused that
atrocious act showed that whether he had ever
believed in one or not, he already placed himself on
the level of divinity. The Almighty Himself could
not have explained the killing of Enghien with a
fuller sense of being the supreme dispenser of life
and death : t
" I have shed blood," said Napoleon ; " but
entirely without anger, and simply because I hold
that bloodshed enters of necessity into political
combinations." ^
Milton's Satan never placed his self-sufficiency :
on a higher altar than this. No ; the picture of -i-
Napoleon in Paradise can never satisfy us, nor ^
any suggestion that he believed in one, even ^
though Monsieur de Beauterne assures us that "i-
his hero's spirit is already there. — V ^
" ^Vhen I took over the direction of affairs in ,
202 RELIGION OF NAPOLEON
France," said Napoleon once at St Helena, " I
had already formed my opinion as regards the
importance of religion in a State, and had firmly
decided to re-estabhsh it. Nevertheless, I found
myself forced to do battle with many prejudices
before I could take the final decision to make
Catholicism the State religion, and there were
many in my Council who urged me to make France
Protestant.
" ' Faisons-nous protestants,' they said, ' and
we shall thus get rid of the difficulty of the
Concordat.'
" Yet by making Protestantism the national
faith, I should only have split France into two
camps and created endless trouble for myself
and the country. Catholicism, on the contrary,
assured me the support of the Pope, and in view of
our fortunate military situation in Italy, I had no
doubt that I could easily bend the Vatican to my
will — ^that is to say, I should entirely control
the vast influence exercised by the Chief of the
Christian world ! Although modern philosophers
have sought to show that Catholicism is anti-
democratic, and so have encouraged anti-
clericalism, and even religious persecution, I am
convinced that there is no religion which adapts
itself so well as Catholicism to the different forms
of government, or which is so favourable to a
democratic or a republican State.
" It is not the religious fanatics whom we have
to fear, but the atheists perverted by false
teachings. There is as much difference between
EQUALITY FOR ALL 203
the religion of Jesus Christ and the infamous re-
ligion of Gregory VII. as there is between Heaven
and Hell. The teaching of Bossuet is the one we
must follow, and with such a spiritual director
we are not liable to go wrong. The moral of the
Gospel is equality, and so is most favourable to
Republican government."
CHAPTER XII
THE IMPERIAL EDUCATIONIST
Action, the Royal QuaUiij in Man — The Necessity oj
Religious Training — Dislike of Precocity in Children
— Geography and History essential in Early ^ ears
— Li7ignisfic Talent no Test of Mentality — Are the
Classics valuable? — "Bending the Mind to Labour"
— Faille of Geometrical Studies — The Age of Puberty
and its Mystic Revolutions — The Imperial Catechism
— Monsieur de Portalis, imperiomaniac — Napoleon
a?id God — So7ne Questions and Anstvers — Contempt
for Ordinary Intelligence — Cardinal Capraras Rule —
Napoleon and his Opportunity — The Super-Caligula
ACTION — action ! He who acts is master.
Activity is the royal quality in man.
Train the child to it and let its first
sports be a prelude to its exercises.
Graduate both so as to give the child agility and
strength."
Here we may presume the real Napoleon to
have spoken, when he drew up his system of
education for the little King of Rome, then in his
third year. His insistence on the cultivation of
energy and activity runs through the whole
curriculum which he thought to be most suitable
for the proper rearing of every youth, and in so
far provides us with a considerable insight into the
soul and character of this arch-toiler among men.
Like the practical being the Corsican was, he in-
sisted, too, on the necessity of religious education
as a good preparation for ethical instruction,
though in this respect we may presume that he
regarded such training from the point of view of
the political ruler who wants to find his subjects
docile and amenable to laws of order.
" Man requires a future," he said in a phrase
addressed obviously to the clerics, " and whatever
some may say, it is necessary to him. So then,
every religion professing to teach the existence of
God ought to be protected, and all the more so
since the God of a nation arrived at maturity is
no longer the God of its youth. When men were
savage their God was a savage and wrathful God ;
when they grew humane their God became gentle.
Time reveals the true God— the God who forgives."
206
THE GIFT OF TONGUES 20T
The Emperor was no lover of precocity in
children, a fact which we can easily co-ordinate
with his dislike of the super-woman, or precieuse.
Precocious wit and imagination in forward
children — a quality which often pleases very
foolish mothers, by the way — are not to be
tolerated, in Napoleon's opinion, for " the mind
that outruns the body has no solid basis : the
child grows dull or remains feeble." In all educa-
tion of children the first process must be to
exercise the memory and the body ; and as an
aid to the cultivation of memory he suggested
Geography and History, in which studies both the
eye and the ear receive their meed of exercise.
Of foreign languages — in which he was not himself
especially apt — he very properly thought little as
contributing to the formation of a strong or pro-
found intellect ; a view which modern education-
ists are showing some disposition to adopt, since
the acquisition of a language must be based for
the greater part on a gift of what the French well
term psittacisme (Greek psittakos, a parrot), or
parrotry, and we cannot disagree with Napoleon,
who maintained that the gift of many tongues
rarely distinguishes a man of profound learning
or even real ability.
"It is the business of nurses to begin them,'*
said Napoleon, " and of valets de chambre to
go on with them. It may even be questioned
whether the language of Virgil and Horace should
enter into the plan of an education " — a view
which we are sorry to hear expressed, although
208 THE IMPERIAL EDUCATIONIST
we find ourselves leaning towards his blunt
opinion that " the facility for acquiring languages,
which so many fools admire, is at bottom little
better than a brevet of incapacity and ignorance."
The great object of the teacher in the early
stages of instruction^-about the age of ten —
should be, in Napoleon's opinion, to " bend the
mind towards labour, and if the master succeeds
in giving his pupil an appetite for work the future
is safe." As might be expected, he placed much
faith in the intellectual training to be gained by
the study of Geometry, which (he held) exercises
at once the judgment, the memory and the
imagination by its processes and figures. Its
graduated progress from what is simple to what
is complicated, makes it mental food for every
age and puts it within the reach of every intellect,
he said. Children of all capacities, from ten to
thirteen, may begin its elements, and by means
of these we may sound their capacities. Like
the penetrating observer of human nature that he
was, the great soldier added the following profound
truth which our pedagogues, present as well as
past, seem foolishly inclined to overlook : —
" From thirteen to sixteen the blood is en-
riched and heated ; desires arise ; images wander
through the brain and the thoughts begin to clothe
themselves. This is the dawn of the imagination,
and the moment for bridling and guiding it
properly is also the moment for giving the studies
of the pupil a new direction and different matter
to feed upon."
THE AGE OF PUBERTY 209
Wisdom which cannot, in truth, be too strongly
emphasised.
According to Napoleon, the age of puberty is
that in which the poets, versifiers and artists are
to be distinguished and separated from the
mathematicians and the yOuths of practical mind
— a theory which cannot fail to give unfortunate
students of the classic Gepp much matter for
retrospective thought.
If anything, in our view, is calculated to demon-
strate the essential atheism of Napoleon, we think
it is to be found in the extraordinary publication,
meant for general use in French schools, issued
under the Emperor's auspices, and entitled The
Imperial Catechism. By the Organic Articles of
the Concordat, it was enacted that there should
be only one liturgy and one catechism for the
churches of France, and in order to settle once and
for all the Erastian condition of the ecclesiastical
power. Napoleon set his bureau de reclame to the
task of putting God and the Clergy in their proper
place. In pursuance of this idea, he had The
Imperial Catechism published — with the im-
primatur of the helpless Papal Legate — and issued
in 1806. It is hardly necessary to say that the
object of this Catechism was to rear the rising
generation in Imperial ideas and to assure the
future of Napoleon's dynasty. With his custom-
ary forethought in all political adventures, the
Emperor, before issuing his new book of religious
instruction, had the opinion voiced, through
his agent Portalis, that the large diversity in
210 THE IMPERIAL EDUCATIONIST
existing catechisms was wholly detrimental to
the proper spiritual formation of French children.
By basing his new catechism on that of Bossuet,
as to its essential religious ideas, he was able to
say that it was but a second edition of the old
work of the Bishop of Meaux. The book was
indeed published under the saintly protection of
that long-departed prelate.
Monsieur de Portalis, who was the chief Imperial
agent in this matter, was not, it would seem, less
unscrupulous than his master in mishandling
religious teachings, or in reading them to his own
purposes, and accordingly decided to execute his
work in such a fashion that the new generation
should have no doubts whatever as to the relative
importance of Napoleon and the Almighty. A
letter which he addressed to the Emperor in this
connection is worth quoting ; it is dated 13th
February 1806 :
" . . . At this moment the institutions of
France may be said to have returned to their
normal condition, and since Frenchmen have the
happiness of living under the greatest of princes,
I think that the time has come to bring to your
Majesty's notice that part of the Catechism which
deals with the relations of the subject to his
sovereign. Before the new order of things much
had been said on this matter, and teachers spoke
in very vague terms of the submission which men
owed to the chiefs of the State according to the
words of the Gospel. It seems to me. Sire, that
the time has gone for indulging in generalities of
MONSIEUR DE PORTALIS 211
such a nature, and it is now necessary to attach
the conscience of the people to the august person
of Your Majesty, whose rule and whose victories
are guarantees of the safety and the prosperity of
France. To recommend in a general way subjects
to obey their sovereigns would not, in the present
instance, be directing their obedience towards its
proper end. Ordinary precepts may suffice in
ordinary times, more especially when men are
living in an order of things which has existed for
a long time. But in these days the word sovereign
is but a vague expression which each person de-
fines according to his own lights and prejudices.
I have therefore thought it necessary to inculcate
new precepts with especial reference to Your
Majesty's person. To do so will remove all am-
biguity by fixing all hearts and minds on him who
alone ought to be the object of their veneration."
Portalis did not confine his loyal solicitude to
the person of the Emperor, but drew up his Cate-
chism in such a way that its doctrines must also
form an enduring appeal on behalf of Napoleon's
successors on the throne. The Emperor, we are
sorry — if perhaps not surprised — to hear, read
this letter with great pleasure ; with such obvious
pleasure, indeed, that we are inclined to suspect
that Portalis had been commanded to address it
according to the terms stated. In the original
catechism of Bossuet that prelate had written but
a small paragraph which emphasised the subject's
obligation of obedience to the sovereign, and the
sovereign in those days had been Louis XIV.
212 THE IMPERIAL EDUCATIONIST
Napoleon was not so easily satisfied, however.
Obedience to the authorities had by 1806 become
the corner-stone of the new Imperial fabric, and
here is wdiat we find in the new book of religious
instruction :
Question : Is submission to the Government of
France a dogma of the Church ?
Answer : Yes. The Gospel teaches that he
who disobeys the State disobeys God. The
Church imposes upon us very especial obligations
towards the Government of France, which protects
religion and the Church. It commands us to
love it, to cherish it and to be ready to make all
possible sacrifices for its service.
This particular passage the official theologians
objected to, on the ground that it could not be
reconciled with the claim of the Catholic or
Universal Church to be the impartial mother of
all nations. The Emperor agreed, but was, never-
theless, insistent that his name should count for
something in the Catechism, and accordingly a
new dogma was interpolated after the following
extraordinary fashion : —
Question: What are the duties of Christians
towards the princes who rule them, and, in par-
ticular, what are our obhgations to Napoleon I.,
our Emperor ?
Answer- : Christians OAve to the princes under
whom they live, and we owe in particular to our
Emperor, Napoleon I., love, respect, obedience,
loyalty, Military Service, the taxes necessary
for the defence of the Empire and his throne,
" MYSELF AND GOD " 213
and fervent and frequent prayers for his prosperity
and happiness and that of the State.
Question : Why are we bound to fulfil all these
obligations towards our Emperor ?
Answer : In the first place, because God, who
creates empires and distributes them according
to His will, by endowing our Emperor with
genius, whether for Peace or War, has given him
to us for our Sovereign Lord, and has appointed
him the instrument of His power upon Earth.
Therefore when we honour and serve our Emperor,
we are also honouring and serving God Himself.
In the second place, because our Lord Jesus Christ,
by His precept and example, has taught us what
we owe to our sovereign. He was born in the
time of Augustus and obeyed the laws of Augustus ;
He paid the required tax ; He ordered us to
give to God what belongs to God and to give to
Caesar what belongs to Caesar.
Question : Are there not some very special
reasons which must strongly attach us to Napoleon
I., our Emperor ?
Answer : Yes, because he is the man whom God
has raised up in difficult circumstances in order
to re-establish the national Faith of our fathers,
and to be its protector. He has brought back
public order by his profound wisdom and energy ;
he defends the State with his mighty arm ; he
has become the anointed of the Lord through
the consecration which he has received from the
Sovereign Pontiff, the chief of the Universal
Church.
214 THE IMPERIAL EDUCATIONIST
Question : What are we to think of those who
fail in their duties towards our Emperor ?
Answer : According to St Paul, the Apostle,
such people would be capable of resisting God
Himself and His established order, and are
deserving of eternal damnation.
Question : The obligations which we owe to
our Emperor, do they not likewise bind us
towards his legitimate successors according to
the established Constitution of the Empire ?
Answer : Most certainly they do ; for we read
in the Scripture that God, Lord of Heaven and
Earth, by an act of His supreme will, and by virtue
of His fore-knowledge, grants kingdoms not only
to one person in particular, but also to that
person's family.
Question : What is our duty towards our
magistrates ?
Answer : We must honour, respect and obey
them, and this because they are the depositaries
of the authority of our Emperor.
Question : What other obligation are we bound
to observe towards our rulers ?
Answer : We are forbidden to disobey them,
to do them harm, or to speak badly about
them.
The indefatigable Portalis did not allow his
imperiomania to stop here. In a further letter
addressed to Napoleon, he suggests that many
reforms could be effected in the ritual, in the
police regulations and bye-laws governing burials,
CARDINAL CAPRARA 215
marriages, the celebration of feasts, the perform-
ance of sacramental rites — all of which, he says,
are somewhat behind the times and fail of accord-
ance with our new ways.
It would serve little purpose to discuss the
question whether the Cardinal-Legate, Caprara,
then the agent of the Vatican in Paris, was, as
has been asserted, a venal spirit wholly under the
influence of the Corsican, and equally as atheistic
as Napoleon himself, as was said. The Catechism,
it is certain, honoured neither those who drew
it up, nor the sovereign who allowed it to be
published, and remains a lasting monument to
Napoleon's contempt for the intelligence of com-
moner mankind.
In a few weeks after the publication of this
Catechism, with the Legate's imprimatur, the
Emperor purchased a palace at Bologna from
Caprara and paid the prelate's very heavy debts.
This in addition to having appointed him Arch-
bishop of Milan, thus drawing the Cardinal within
the sphere of the intimate influence of the King of
Italy, as the Corsican had also become. Napoleon
was the last man in the world to neglect an advan-
tage, and in making the extravagant claims which
were advanced in the Imperial Catechism, fully
realised, we may suppose, that his pretensions,
being not less arrogant than those which the
Church frequently claimed for the Vicars of Christ,
could hardly be rejected by a Pope who virtually
bespoke the politico-spiritual supremacy of the
world. And accordingly we are not surprised
216 THE IMPERIAL EDUCATIONIST
to learn that the majority of the French Bishops
• — practically a band of Galileans 7nalgre eux —
appended the sigillum of their approval to an
apotheosis which must have moved even Caligula
himself to mirth and mockery.
CHAPTER XIII
NAPOLEON AND JOURNALISM
The Press after Brumaire — Difference bettvecn French
and English Journalism — Wholesale Suppression of
Sheets — Liberty of the Press ceases — Newspaper
Morality — Napoleon s Journalistic Precis — Monsieur
Fievee, Chief Censor — Le Moniteur becomes Official
Organ — Napoleon's Private Paper — Value of Official
Organs — Government's Duty to the Nation — Lucus a
non Lucendo — A Newspaper without News — Monsieur
Suard, Editor — Le Journal des Debats — Napoleon
and Fractious Editors — Le Mercurc de France —
Monsieur de Chateaubriand — Napoleon's own Press
Agency — Bengnot and the Emperor — Les Ideologues
— La Route d'Antibes — The Adaptable Sub-Editor —
The Hundred Days — Napoleon s Opinion of the Press
— Caustic Remarks on Journalists and Writers — His
Earliest Venture as a Newspaper-Onmer — TheCourrier
de T Amnee — Napoleon's Personal Corps of Special
Correspondents
THE great day of Brumaire, by making
Bonaparte master of the destinies of
France, put a term to whatever Uberty
the Press had up till then enjoyed.
Many conditions combined to play into the hands
of the new Dictator in respect of all matters
connected with popular liberties, and not the
least of these was the national weariness which
looked, with perhaps an excusable enough resent-
ment, on all movements which were likely to
protract the general unrest attending upon the
aftermath of the Revolution. The difference
between French journalism and English journalism,
then as now, has always lain in the fact that the
former possesses a greater literary quality, and
that therefore the personal equation counts for a
larger force in French newspapers. Accordingly
the fine work of the ideologue superabounded
in the critical Press of Paris, and this was
altogether opposed to Bonaparte's manner of
considering the functions of a public institution.
Shortly after the establishment of the Consul-
ate, accordingly, Bonaparte, of his own initiative,
issued the famous edict of 17th January 1800,
suppressing all sheets in Paris which possessed
a political bearing, with the exception of thirteen.
The principal among the survivors were the
Moniteur, the Journal des Debats, the Journal de
Paris, the Gazette de France. This drastic enact-
ment also went into operation in the Departments.
Until that date there had been seventy-two
political papers in Paris and about three times
218
THE PRESS OF PARIS 219
that number in the provinces. The Constitution
of February, 1800, made next to no mention of the
liberty of the Press, and, as we have said, patriots
and philosophers were too wearied by the factious
conditions of the Revolutionary decades to care
much about the fate of an institution which, for all
its potential might, neither politics nor society
had ever taken au grand serieux. The lot of the
dispossessed journalists excited, therefore, not the
least concern, and it is recorded by Felix Rocquain
that the general public saw with not a little
Schadenfreude the removal to obscurity of a class
of individuals who were notorious lovers of the
limelight.
In April of this first Consular year, Bonaparte
instructed Fouch^ to supply him with a report
concerning the character and disposition of the /
various editors left in charge of the surviving
thirteen sheets. It was urged that their morality /
should be beyond any suspicion of being cor-
ruptible — their political morality, obviously. A
special department was established in the Ad-
ministration, the object of which was to keep
watch upon the newspaper offices, and it is
interesting to note that this censorship was
entrusted to prominent military men. The First
Consul was daily supplied — Baron Fain has told
us much anent this^with a precis of all that the
newspapers were talking about, in much the same
way as an important Minister is supplied by
his personal secretary with a tabular digest of
the morning's mail. The zeal of Fouche was
220 NAPOLEON AND JOURNALISM
consequently not less under observation than the
editors upon whom he was charged to report, an
important consideration for Bonaparte, since his
minister of police— an ex-Christian Brother —
was supposed to represent the old Jacobin or
extreme Revolutionary faction. And so, in order
effectively to watch the watchman, the Consul
appointed Fievee, formerly editor of the Gazette
de France, his private adviser on all journalistic
matters. Fievee, it may be observed, remains
best kno^vn to us by an aphorism which he is said
to have fathered : " Politics, even in representa-
tive governments, is what we do not talk about." ^
Ordinary newspaper readers received only a part
of the truth from their sheets ; but Bonaparte
received the whole truth from Fievee, and accord-
ingly knew what, and what not, to suppress.
Madame de Genlis and that Barere, on whom
Macaulay lavished much of his high-class jour-
nalese, were also paid spies who reported on the
editors.
The Moniteur became the official organ of
the Consular political establishment, although
a Bulletin de Paris was also established as an
official sheet of the First Consul, the articles of
which were written in his own cabinet, under his
eyes, and often at his dictation. Despite this
high patronage, however, the Bulletin had no
circulation, and Fievee, an expert journalist,
explained the reason of this to Bonaparte.
^ We quote this aphorism simply, and without professing to see
either its wit or its wisdom.
BRITISH JOURNALISM 221
" Official organs," he said, " are not worth the
paper they are written on, and they are not a
month old before everyone knows who edits them,
as well as for whom and for what cause they are
published. Intelligent Frenchmen will con-
sequently not read them, more especially those
who are looking for political guidance. They are
read mainly by such as are anxious to know just
what the Government t] jinks, and once readers
find that official editors are seeking to form their
political views, they revolt and go into direct
opposition."
Fievee goes on to point out that so long as
governments fail to disclose their programmes
frankly to the nation, a wholesome and educative
type of journalism is not possible, and then
addresses himself to the moral taught by British
journalism.
" Nothing," he says, " is easier than for the
English writer to choose his side, for nothing
fundamental is ever in discussion in that country,
and all men know there what are the issues in
dispute. But what is not in dispute in poor
France ? We are supposed to be a Republic,
which is not true ; we speak of liberty, yet have
no liberty ; it is said that the Revolution has
ended, when another is really about to start. No
man tells the First Consul what he really thinks.
Does the First Consul tell anyone what he thinks ?
All this militates against a proper presentment
of public and governmental opinion."
In pursuance of his policy of reducing the Press
222 NAPOLEON AND JOURNALISM
to the least possible significance as an institutional
factor in the life of France, Bonaparte adopted a
system of withholding from all but the official
organs the various bulletins and police notices
and reports which constituted, as " nouvelles et
fails divers " — town talk and life's little incidents
— almost the only resource of the dailies of that
time. And the iron finality of his determination
to discourage anything like individual enterprise
on the part of a newspaper may be divined from
the following extraordinary commandment, writ
rubric in the office tablets : —
" Whenever any news unfavourable to the
Government becomes the subject of rumour, it
must not be published until it is found by verifica-
tion that it is already known to everybody."
There was short shrift, as may be imagined,
for all who failed in their observance of the new
Press regulations. The Democratic Republican of
Audi complains of the high prices of cereals at a
time when Lucien Bonaparte and his brother
Joseph were attempting to effect a corner in the
grain market. Lucien was then Minister of the
Interior and gives his instructions as follows : —
"It is of the first consequence to destroy
immediately so dangerous an instrument in the
hands of agitators. I order you, therefore, to
suppress this paper without any consideration
whatsoever of loss or hurt to either editor or
shareholders, and to arrest anyone wiio dares to
show any sign of opposition to the authorities."
Even ordinary literary criticism became a
M. SUARD, REDACTEUR 223
perilous pitfall for outspoken writers who thought
that their functions did not stop at aesthetic
discussions about style and art. The Ami des
Lois was suppressed because a facetious reporter
indulged his humour by making sarcastic remarks
about the appearance and attitudes of a certain
" meeting of men who honour the Republic " ;
and even the Academy was to be treated as if its
deliberations were as necessary to the lives of man-
kind as the Immortals invariably thought them.
One of the papers which had been authorised
on the establishment of the Consulate was the
Publiciste, whose editor Suard was a friend of
Madame de Stael. This publication refused to
print the official apology for the murder of the
Due d'Enghien, and in the letter in which Suard
took up his stand of honourable opposition to
Bonaparte, he wrote, in effect :
" I am now sixty years of age and, my character
not ha\ing weakened with the years, I mean to
finish my career as I have run it. The coup
d'etat to which you ask me to subscribe I regard
as an act of violence to all my notions of equity
and political justice. ]My second objection is to
the interference with properly constituted legal
authorities in the trial of the Due d'Enghien, a
summary act which puts the personal safety of
all citizens at the mercy of arbitrary officials. I
decline, therefore, to write against my convictions."
The paper was given a new editor who received
one-sixth of the revenue of the sheet as salary,
the Government taking another one-sixth, the
224 NAPOLEON AND JOURNALISM
remaining two-thirds going to Suard and the
syndicate. The Journal des Debats managed,
by a pohcy of tactful " trimming," as the
Americans put it, to build up a prosperous cir-
culation, during the Empire, its net revenue
amounting to £8000 a year. This publication
nevertheless voiced its abhorrence of the crime of
Vincennes.
When the Empire was established in 1804,
Napoleon in his supplementary Constitution,
known as the Senatus-Consultum, devoted a few
clauses to a mention of the " liberty of the Press,"
seven Senators being appointed to safeguard the
integrity of the new privileges granted to the
Fourth Estate. For all this, the French Press
of the new regime possessed no broader liberties
than that of the Consulate, and Napoleon could
still continue as of old to talk of " my Press."
From the farther ends of Europe his letters to
Fouche regarding the newspapers followed swiftly
upon each other, and the minister of police was
often urged to make his editors talk as they
were told to talk, or else try some other line of
commerce.
" Je les reduirai a sept," Napoleon threatened,
" et je conserverai, non ceux qui me loueront —
je n'ai pas besoin de leurs eloges — mais ceux qui
auront la touche male et le cceur frangais et qui
montreront un veritable attachement pour moi
et mon peuple."
A distinguished contemporary tells us in one
of his works that he knows of a famous American
THE BfPERIAL IDEA 225
newspaper proprietor who is accustomed to speak
of his writers as prostitutes. Evidently Napoleon's
opinion of a race of but poorly appreciated and
inadequately rewarded workers was on much the
same plane, for in his letters to Otranto we find
such expressions as :
" Let X, the editor, know that I intend to
settle his account."
Or : " birds of evil augury, how comes it that
they only prophesy calamities so far ahead ? "
Or : " it is a bit too much of a farce to have
a Press which has the disadvantage of freedom
without any of its advantages."
Or : " all articles, little as well as big, must be
good articles " — meaning Imperial — " and I am
not the man to allow journalists to draw high
profits from papers that do me nothing but
harm."
In October, 1805, the Emperor forced the Journal
des Debats to change its title to Journcd de VEmjnre,
and annexed £3300 of its net revenue of £8000,
with the unexpected result, for Napoleon, that
the circulation of the paper increased by half.
The famous Mercure de France and the
Puhliciste also become the objects of Napoleon's
anger :
" Monsieur le due d'Otrante," he writes, " I
have read an article in the Puhliciste which
appears to be a frank write-up for the Spanish
monks. Give the editor to understand that he
nms the risk of having his paper suppressed. Let
him insert articles which depict the ferocity of
226 NAPOLEON AND JOURNALISM
these monks, their ignorance and their ineffable
hetise.''^
It was in the Mercure that appeared some of
the first fragments of Chateaubriand's Genie
du Christianisme. The author, who had thrown
up a diplomatic secretaryship, it will be remem-
bered, as a protest against the murder of Enghien,
made no attempt to disguise his opinion that a
reincarnation of Nero had taken place, but that
Tacitus having also come back to earth, the reign
of the tyrant could not be for long. Napoleon's
answer was the appointment of Legouve as censor
of the Mercure, and Guizot remarks hereanent :
" Even Napoleon could not allow it to be said
that his future historian would appear during his
reign, and so had to take the reputation of Nero
under his protection."
The new Tacitus was, of course, Chateaubriand.
In 1809 the Emperor gave orders that from
that time onward, only one newspaper in each
department should be allowed to deal with
political matters. The prefect would, of course,
decide as to the choice of the organ. By 1811
there were only four authorised papers in Paris
- — the Moniteur, the Journal de VEmpire, the
Gazette de France and the Journal de Paris. The
Mercure and the Puhliciste had been summarily
suppressed. By a decree dated from Compiegne,
17th September 1811, all existing newspapers
were confiscated as being really the property of
the Government, the entire plant of the Debats
{Journal de VEmpire) being taken over, and the
" CES IDEOLOGUES ! " 227
syndicate reorganised to the drastic extent that
even the proprietors were not included among the
new shareholders. Neither were they indemnified.
From that time till 1814, the Press was simply
the voice of the Master.
Need the modern world then be surprised to
hear, in our own age of personal reclmne, that
Napoleon, over a century ago, had founded his
own personal press agency known as the bureau
de Vesprit public, or agency for promoting public
opinion. Was not Caesar's Acta Diurna — a kind
of daily record— supposed to be a bit of frank
press-agency work compiled on behalf of the
authorities ? Napoleon's bureau sought to prop-
agate among the authorised newspapers all and
everything in the way of ideas that the Emperor
thought necessary for the support of his throne,
and was an obvious attempt at just such organised
obscurantism as Berlin has made us so familiar
with during the Great War of 1914.
In another place we have shown how Madame
de Stael came under the ban of Imperial policies
because that illustrious woman had dared to raise
her voice in the cause of human liberty. "It is
to ideology," cried the Emperor, " and to all
such tenebreuse metaphysique that France has
owed all her misfortunes." Beugnot suggests that
there are certain periods when it is necessary
that ideas should be expressed.
" I understand you," roars the irate Emperor;
" yes, that is just one of the mottoes of your
school."
228 NAPOLEON AND JOURNALISM
" I have no other school," repHes the courtly
Beugnot, " but the school of the Emperor."
" That is only a phrase — nothing more ! You
are of the same school of ideologues as Roederer,
Regnault and my brother Louis and Fontanes.
No, I forgot — Fontanes belongs to another school
of idiots. But," and Napoleon touches the hilt
of his sword, " so long as this hangs at my side,
you shall know none of those liberties after
which your soul aspires — not even, IMonsieur
Beugnot, the liberty of giving those pretty little
addresses of yours in Parliament."
Chateaubriand's famous pamphlet, Bonaparte
et les Bourbons, appeared when the Royalists w^ere
moving all they could to effect a compromise
between the Imperial and their own factions, and
was, on account of its violence and hatred of
Napoleon, a source of much annoyance to those
who w^ere seeking to bring all parties to an
understanding. In a certain degree it may be
said to have laid the lines of the long intrigue
which was to bring back Bonaparte from Elba,
since its tone provided the inspiration for the
scores of revived sheets which leaped into light
and forced the authorities to be hardly less in-
tolerant of the newspapers than Bonaparte had
been in his time. " In the interests of public
tranquillity," declared Fouche, "we must muzzle
these hydrophobes of the Fourth Estate." And
the soundest minds in France favoured the
exercise of the censorship at that critical hour.
The manner in which the newspapers of the day
ELBA— ANTIBES— PARIS 229
reported the triumphant advance of Napoleon,
after his landing at Antibes, on the return from
Elba, has often been cited as providing a very-
succinct commentary on the weakness of ordinary-
human nature in the presence of the wonderful.
The successive newspaper bulletins read :
First day : The Corsican tyrant has landed at
the Gulf of Juan.
Second day : Grenoble has opened its gates to
the bloody usurper.
Third day : Bonaparte has made his entry into
Lyons.
Fourth day : General Bonaparte has won over
a division of the Royal Army.
Fifth day : Napoleon is now only ninety miles
from Paris.
Sixth day : The Emperor Napoleon arrived last
night at Fontainebleau.
Seventh day : His Majesty the Emperor entered
the Tuileries at half-past eight last evening.
For all the doubts that have been cast on
Napoleon's sincerity in respect of his concessions
to journalism, on his return from Elba, some
writers of the day appear to think that his
meditations on his own downfall, while in exile,
had led him to the conclusion that, with the Press
on his side, he might have secured his throne
during the first reign. It is certain that on his
return from Elba the newspapers enjoyed a
freedom of expression which they had never before
known. To Benjamin Constant Napoleon said :
" The liberty of the Press is above all an
230 NAPOLEON AND JOURNALISM
essential in wise government. To seek to suppress
it is absurd — of that I am convinced."
In opening the Chambers he declared again that
the liberty of the Press was a capital consideration
in the new programme for France, with which he
had returned from Elba, and even when certain
journals began to advocate the assassination of
their well-wisher, Napoleon took no action to
limit their candour. The Journal Universel at
Ghent drew a pretty parallel between Cain and
the Corsican — much to the latter' s disadvantage ;
yet no move was made to oppose its appearance
twice a week.
Napoleon himself declared at St Helena that
the newspapers counted for nothing in his fall.
The Press, he said, was one of those institutions
which need not be discussed as to the good or evil
which they do in a nation. The main concern
of governments is this : can public opinion be
opposed in curtailing the liberties of the Press ?
His own experience, he admitted, had taught him
that to curtail those liberties had been a blunder,
and accordingly, when he returned from Elba,
it was with the firm intention of allowing news-
papers to say what they liked.
It seems fairly clear, then, that Napoleon was
no friend of the Press in the earlier days of his
triumphant progress, and it must be admitted that
his treatment of that institution lessens to a great
extent the opinion we have been taught to enter-
tain about his marvellous prevision in political
and diplomatic matters. Even Joseph and Louis
BONAPARTE : EDITOR 231
Bonaparte, who were perhaps the least endowed
as poHticians of this wonderful family, had
solemnly warned him betimes that the already-
powerful newspaper world was one which would
brook neither mishandling nor indifference on his
part, only to receive the famous reply :
" You fools attach far too much importance to
the society and opinion of journalists and literary
men. That class of individuals is made up of just
so many coquv-ttes whom it may be wise to play
with, but whom we should never dream of making
either our wives or our ministers."
The soldier, as a rule — and the truth has been
very fully impressed upon us in these later times
— is ever jealous of the writer, and from his veiy
first debuts as a general, Bonaparte had been made
to feel that there was one force which all the
militarism in the world was powerless to muzzle
or coerce. Even while in Italy, during his first
important campaign, he had founded a journal
which lasted for two years and was known as the
Courrier de VArinee (Tltalie. In this publication
was at various times forecast the vast programme
which Napoleon subsequently carried out for his
own aggrandisement and that of France, and a
perusal of its first numbers leaves one with the
impression that Bonaparte had brought it into
existence more with a view to showing the
Directory that, with his advent, their supreme
power had finally departed, than with any hope
of affecting public opinion to a very important ex-
tent. "To defend liberty and its friends against
7
232 NAPOLEON AND JOURNALISM
the partisans of tyranny and terror " was the
chief aim of its founders, as it stated in the first
issue. The Courrier made its appearance twice
a week when first started, but its main object
once achieved — namely, the warnings addressed
to the Directory — the pubhcation became some-
what irregular.
Napoleon, as M. de Narbonne informs us, had
special correspondents in nearly every country
in Europe, and certainly in all the important
centres of France and Italy, who transmitted
to himself all sorts of information regarding
the state of public opinion, the tendencies,
intrigues and intentions of publicists, salons,
clerics and speculators. M. de Villemain also
tells us how on one occasion the Emperor,
towards the close of his reign, addressed himself
to an audience at the Tuileries with especial
reference to the " vulgar outspokenness " of
certain sections of the Press which were already
growing bold enough to preach ideas about " the
beginning of the end," and in such a way. Napoleon
said, as to make him blush for the nation. This
was in 1813, when the end was unmistakably in
sight.
CHAPTER XIV
BONAPARTE versus DE STAEL
Bonaparte attracts de Stael — Bonaparte's Natural
Antipathy for Corinne — Attgereau and Madame —
Chez M. de Talleyrand — Constant and Corinne —
Benjamin s Little Inadvertence — De Stael and her
Spokesman — Intrigues against Bonaparte — High
Political Ambitions — Une Femme incomprise — Her
Work on Literature — Constant is dismissed — De
StaePs Comme7it — Bernadofte ajid Corinne — Delphine
appears — Bonaparte's Comments — A Pen-Portrait oj
Corinne — Madame at Weimar, in Vienna and Stockholm
— Coriime's Regard for England — Her Son Augustus
— Some Fatherly Advice — Projected Fisit to America
— De I'Allemagne — A Machine a Mouvement—
Napoleon disgusted with her Fietvs — Goethe and de
Stael's Work on Germany — The lisit to Russia —
" The Conscience of Europe" — Stein and de Stael —
Her Essay on Siucide — Goes to Lo?idon — Byron's
Opinion of Corinne — Death in 1817 — Gourgaud and
Madame — Napoleon s Impartial Opinion of her
Qualities
A
LTHOUGH Madame de Stael had not
met Bonaparte until his arrival in
Paris, 5th December 1797, at the close
of the Italian campaign, she had begun
to correspond with him shortly after the young
soldier had proved his supreme military quality
by winning the battle of Lodi. Even her
early letters to Bonaparte overflowed with an
enthusiasm which reflects little credit on the
womanly taste of the chatelaine of Coppet, and
if it be true that great artists are too self-centred
to care very much about the proprieties, then
Madame de Stael was certainly a first-class type
of the artistic race. In the earliest of these
effusions addressed to the soldier at Milan, the
lady attributes to him all the \drtues of " Scipio
and Tancred combined, possessing the simplicity
of the latter and the brilliancy of the former."
In a third epistle to the celebrity whom she had
not yet met, she shows how far her enthusiasm
is capable of carrying her. Bonaparte was in
those days, it was well known, still very much
in love with Josephine, and we may imagine his
surprise on hearing from de Stael that his union
with " an insignificant little Creole, unworthy and
incapable of appreciating him, is nothing short
of monstrous."
" That creature is mad, Bourrienne," cries Bona-
parte to the secretary, who records the fact in his
Memoires, vol. vi., " and I shall certainly not reply
to such letters. Fancy a blue-stocking, a maker
of romances, comparing herself with Josephine ! "
234
A DANGEROUS WOMAN 285
Even the uncouth soldier Augereau is said to
have taken the measure of the lady, who pestered
him ^vith questions as to Bonaparte's love of
Liberty, his ideals and his personality. Discussing
his ambition, she asks if it is true that he has an eye
on the crown of Lombardy, and Augereau' s reply
evokes a titter at the garrulous woman's expense :
" No, indeed," he says, " he is much too well
bred a young man to entertain such notions."
When at last she meets Bonaparte, who was
calling on Talleyrand, then Minister for Foreign
Affairs, the young General, after a kindly word
about her father, turns away quickly, as if he
feared an impromptu harangue. She on her
part begins to epier the Conqueror, but remains
silent and apparently troubled. In the immedi-
ate sequel, all de Stael's attempts to attach
the young General — she was some three years
his senior — to her own coterie were to meet with
failure, and he refuses politely but firmly to attend
even her receptions — a refusal which is explained
by biographers of both celebrities on the ground,
first, that he disUked — as most really masculine
men dislike — anything like the affectation of
esprit fort on the part of a woman, a type with
which recent hermaphroditic decades have made
ourselves so familiar. In the second place, Bona-
parte was well aware that a partisan of de Stael's
political activity was quite capable of com-
promising him with the Directory, whose suspicion
as regards himself, and his intentions, he was far
from wishing, at that time, to arouse.
y
236 BONAPARTE versus DE STAEL
It was at a fete given by Talleyrand — according
to Lucien Bonaparte, on the great revolutionary
day of Brumaire — that Bonaparte, the centre of a
circle of admirers, was asked by de Stael to name
the greatest woman known to history.
" The woman who has had the most children,"
replies the General with admirable wisdom and
in a taste which accorded sufficiently well, we
may suppose, with the ambiguous society of the
new regime. A few days afterwards, again, when
the persistent iirecieuse chooses a dramatic moment
to ask him if he likes women, Bonaparte replies
that he loves his wife— a retort the real value
of which altogether loses its effect in the English
rendering. Madame de Stael did not miss the
point, however, and, in order probably to cover
her chagrin, affected to see its sublimity :
" Epaminondas would have given me the same
answer," she tells Lucien, who was a very close
ally, and who records Madame' s opinion here-
anent in the second volume of his Memoires. By
the beginning of 1799 de Stael had to admit that
she had never met a man of Bonaparte's kind or
character, and in January of that year she decides
to return to Switzerland, there to set about some
work or other which is, she thinks, to prove
unfailingly to Bonaparte her possession of a
genius for politics with which France shall have
to reckon. She returned to Paris and was present,
as we have seen, on the day of the overthrow of
the Directory. Her devotion to the cause of
Bonaparte, enthusiastically expressed in all her
BENJAMIN CONSTANT 237
letters, arose, says Gautier, from her inability to
see that the successful General of the Revolution
was now playing for his own hand— a mistake
which Sieyes, Benjamin Constant, Roederer and
many other ardent Republicans also made.
Benjamin Constant entered so intimately into
the life of de Stael that it is impossible to separate
the couple. We cannot, accordingly, overlook a
story of Constant, told by Aime-Martin and
Chabaud, when de Stael sought to use her influence
for the promotion of her fellow-countryman and
lover. As the Tribunal was about to be organised.
Constant presented himself chez Bonaparte and
requested a seat in the new Assembly.
" You must know," said Benjamin, " that I
am entirely devoted to your service, and am not
one of those ideologues who want to run the world
on theories — like Sieyes, for instance. Mine is a
positive, an objective mind, and if you appoint
me, you can rely altogether on my loyalty."
The new Constitution had not yet been drawn
up, and it occurred to Constant, on leaving
Bonaparte, that as Sieyes lived nearly opposite
the General, it might be just as well to pay a
friendly visit to the ex-Abbe, who received him
cordially.
" I should be glad," said Constant to his host,
" to be appointed to the Tribunat, and hope not
to seem unworthy of that honour in your eyes.
You know I hate force and am no friend of the
sword. What I want is principles, ideals, justice,
and if you will help me, you can rely altogether
238 BONAPARTE versus DE STAEL
on my loyalty, for, let me assure you, I frankly
detest Bonaparte."
Constant had strangely overlooked the im-
portant fact that Chabaud, who had been present
when he met Bonaparte across the road, had also
in the meantime come over to pay a diplomatic
visit to Sieyes, and remained unobserved while
Benjamin made his new act of political faith to
the Abbe.
Constant was, however, ultimately appointed
to the Tribunat, and Madame de Stael and her
lover at once came to the conclusion that Bona-
parte had nominated him through fear of the
influence exerted by her writings and salon.
Accordingly de Stael thought the moment oppor-
tune to start her intrigues for ridding the Govern-
ment of Bonaparte and inaugurating a regime
of republican liberty — a condition of affairs which
was not likely for long to escape the observation
of the new chief of the State. Bonaparte sends
his brother Joseph to reason with the intriguante,
offering even to repay her father's loans to
Louis XVI. — a sum amounting, with the interest
for over fourteen years, to about £150,000. But
Corinne is not thinking of money. What she
wants is an acknowledgment by Bonaparte that
her political role is not a negligible one, and her
answer is given in a speech delivered by Constant
and inspired by herself, which amounts to an
attack on the Consular regime and its monarchical
tendencies. Bonaparte replies by letting loose
the furies of his own Press and inspiring to the
JEERING JACOBINS 289
limit of invective the Press of the Royahsts and also
that of the Jacobins. These all abhorred Madame
de Stael with an intensity the causes of which may
be sought in the outrageous persistency with which
she clamorously sought the attention of an age
which was but slightly acquainted with the political
female. Even this Press campaign she turns to her
policy of personal reclame and assumes the role
of persecuted woman, assuring Roederer, among
a score of correspondents, that no woman has
ever suffered as she has suffered — a common
delusion of unwomanly and dishonest women. A
short time afterwards she receives unequivocal
orders to go into residence at Saint-Ouen, where
she has a chateau, a foretaste of complete exile
which to some extent saves her rather homely
face, for, acting under orders, the Talleyrands, the
Bonapartes, the Beauharnais and other families
had long since ceased to visit her salon in Paris.
When at the instance of friends, the interdict
is raised and she returns to Paris, it is not, as
might be hoped, to efface herself and devote the
tedious hours to literary work. She moves every
influence she knows with the object of being ad-
mitted to the presence of Bonaparte. He curtly
suggesoS that Madame de Stael, who lives in great
luxury, should make a small allowance to her
husband, at that time starving in Switzerland.
Nor does the First Consul improve matters by
making cynical remarks on the private life of
Corinne, who, it will be remembered, was at all
times all things to all men— or nearly so. In
240 BONAPARTE versus DE STAEL
1800 she published her work, De la Littendure, in
which, while the name of the First Consul is not
once mentioned, the fierce attacks upon his
policies are clear as sunlight. Naturally, he was
irritated, but prudence forbade him showing his
anger, for even at that date, as Chateaubriand
tells us, his newly acquired power was far from
possessing the stability one would imagine from
a study of historical records. The battle of
Marengo had not yet consolidated him in his
omnipotency, and although his subsidised Press
said all he thought — and, indeed, more — of
Corimie's new work, Bonaparte himself took
no action against the enemy. He waited till
1802, when he eliminated a score or so of red
Republicans from the Tribunal, among them
being de Stael's o^mi mouthpiece, Benjamin
Constant, through whom, in her serious opinion,
she was destined to place herself on level political
terms with Bonaparte. So much for political
womankind !
" Le Premier ConsuW^ she declared, on hearing
of this despotic act, " n^a pas epure, mais ecreme
le Tribunat,^^ and went on to talk of Bonaparte as
an " ideophobe.^^
" That sentiment is Madame de Stael's, cer-
tainly," says the elegant Corsican, when told
of her mot. " I could smell her a mile away.
Ideophobe, does she say ? Why not hydrophobe ?
Ah ra — but who could govern with people like
that about ! "
And Talleyrand — son ancien, her cast-off — is
ENTER DELPHINE ! 241
given instructions to tell Madame to place a
sentinel over her big mouth. There is no
possible question of a reconciliation between
this strange couple after the enactments of the
Concordat and the Life-Consulship, both of which
clearly show to what lengths Bonaparte is pre-
pared to go, and de Stael, Constant and the old
Republican patriots finally realise how cleverly
they had been tricked by the simple student-
conqueror who returned from Italy in 1797 with
the Treaty of Campo Formio in his satchel. It
is now beyond doubt established that de Stael
counted for an important equation in the con-
spiracy in which Bernadotte engaged before the
passing of the Concordat. Corinne charged the
future King of Sweden with hesitancy if not
cowardice :
" Hurry up," she wrote, " you have only a
short time in which to act. To-morrow the
tyrant will have forty thousand priests in his
service."
The appearance of Delphine about this time
was another blow at the system of Bonaparte,
whose ambition had early divined its great w-,
opportunity in the wholesale restoration of order
which it was in his power to effect within the
community. And on no established social
institution had he calculated to this end more
than upon the marriage contract, which he
rightly looked upon as the keystone of national
life — the surest guarantee of order within the
State. Delphine had a vast success on its
Q
242 BONAPARTE versus DE STAEL
appearance ; it is frankly the story of a femme
incomprise, a type of woman who, it seems to us,
is never sure of what she wants — when it is not
a man — and whose hfe seems to be one long
pilgrimage spent in a vain quest of the male ideal
— ndeed, a kind of devanciere of those polyand-
rous females with whom Georges Sand has made
us so familiar.
" Very false, immoral and altogether anti-
social," cries Bonaparte, who in commenting on
its special pleadings for easy divorce, delivers
himself of some elegant remarks about the private
life of Madame. Nor did he fail to inspire the
scribes of his subsidised Press. The critic of the
Mercure de France speaks of women of the type
of Deliohinei who, it need hardly be said, represents
Madame de Stael herself, in the following strain : —
" Such creatures are simply animals in their
lustfulness and their passions, and it is much
harder to be their friends than their lovers. . . .
Look at them, and you will find that they are
invariably great, fat, gross, full-blooded women
who, externally at least, give no indication of the
soul-tortures which they affect to undergo " — all
of which bears the impress of the Corsican's style
and method of invective.
"\Mien exiled in 1803, Madame betakes herself
to Germany and at Weimar meets Goethe and
Wieland, the former of whom introduces his
friend Schlegel, and this worthy man undertakes
to form the lady's ideas as regards his country,
its institutions and inhabitants. Schlegel even
ENTER CORINNE! 248
accompanies his pupil to Vienna, to Stockholm,
to Petersburg, and acts in the capacity of secretary
and press-agent, with the especial duty of giving
to all the capitals which they visit a true picture
of the tyrant of the Tuileries. While she is in
Germany, the establishment of the Empire takes
place, and de Stael sets about a new campaign,
the object of which is to detach the old French
nobility from the service of Napoleon, an attempt
in which she is only partially successful, since
great families like that of La Rochefoucauld, of
Remusat, of Montmorency, of Turenne and Segur
have shown no objection whatever to join the
Corsican's establishment, and all the more so
because the astute upstart places a premium on
their ability to show his own ennobled pai'venus
how to play the complete courtier.
Napoleon, whose Cabinet Noir is ever on the
alert, intercepts every letter written by his enemy
and there is consequently no detail of her intrigues
with which he is not acquainted. Madame does
not even suspect the Emperor's espionage and
is stirred " almost to con\ailsions " when on
requesting permission to reside near Paris, she is
ordered to remove nearer to the frontier. Nor
does the appearance of Corinne improA'e the
relations of the twain : Napoleon accuses her of
being frankly anti-French and correspondingly
Anglophile, for Corinne is one long paean of the
English character and all its peculiar virtues,
which spring, she maintains, from such free
political institutions as enable them to flourish.
244 BONAPARTE versus DE STAEL
And to the accusation that she has deUberately
depreciated the French character, de Stael rephes
that she only represents the " abaissement des
caracteres dans Vetat sociaV^ — which the Corsican's
despotism has deUberately brought about.
In 1808 Napoleon indicated in very clear terms
his reasons for treating Madame de Stael as a
public enemy and for keeping her in exile. All
her Paris friends having failed of inducing the
Emperor to allow the lady to reside in the Capital,
her son, Augustus, a schoolboy of seventeen,
decided himself to seek an interview with Napoleon
and endeavour to move his pity. The Emperor
was on his way back from Italy and young de
Stael, knowing that he would pass through
Chambery, awaited his coming in that city. On
being told the object of the boy's visit. Napoleon,
one is pleased and, indeed, not surprised to hear,
consents to see him while he is breakfasting
at a hotel, and grants the youth an audience of
nearly an hour. The Emperor does not, he himself
says, consider Madame de Stael a bad woman, but
only a woman who will not submit to authority,
and he must insist on being obeyed. She could
not curb her tongue, and though she may not
attach much importance to what she says.
Napoleon does, since he knows for how much
she counts in public opinion.
" I have to take things very seriously," he
tells the boy, " and if I were to allow your mother
to return to Paris, Avithin six months I should have
to imprison her. I should be sorry to have to do
THE AMERICAN TOUCH 245
so, since I must suffer for it in the opinion of
the pubHc. ... As for you, jeune homme, stick
to the right path in pohtics, for I shall not easily
forgive a Necker. Paris, you must see, is my
home, and there I can tolerate only those who
respect me. If I allowed your mother to come
to Paris, she would very soon lose me all my
friends. Rome, Naples, Vienna, Berlin, Milan,
even London — all these cities are open to her.
She has only to choose."
After that, and as she found herself more closely
watched at Coppet, there was nothing for it but
America, and at one time she seriously thought
of going there. An American newspaper, hear-
ing of the likelihood of the great Corinne visiting
" these shores," comments thereon in character-
istic superlatives :
" She is a tremendously wealthy woman and
lives in extremely splendid and decorous style at
her very elegant mansion. The famous woman
has also written several books which, having a
large circulation in Europe, undoubtedly bring
her in good money. ^'
" The savages ! " cries Madame de Stael when
she reads this exquisite Press notice.
All literary Europe knew by this time that her
work on Germany, to which she had given six
years' close labour, was already in the hands of
the printers; and the critics, not less than the
connoisseurs and politicians, were all on the alert
for its appearance. Ten thousand copies had
already been struck off by the publisher when
246 BONAPARTE versus DE STAEL
Napoleon gave orders to Savary — then Minister
of Police — to suppress the whole issue. Her
son preserved the manuscript, however, and the
work was eventually published in London by
John Murray, in 1813.
" I am sending you," Napoleon wrote to
Savary, " the work of Madame de Stael. Has she
the right to describe herself as a Baroness ? Did
she adopt this title in previous works ? Suppress
the passage relating to the Duke of Brunsmck,
and three-fourths of what she has to say in praise
of England. She has done us enough harm in
this respect."
Even now de Stael, with that never-failing self-
delusion which marks her relations with Napoleon,
solicits permission in an eloquent letter to the
Emperor to be allowed to reside in Paris :
*' Why should I blush," she cries, " to ask for
friendship, poetry, music, painting and all that
ideal existence which I can enjoy without refusing
obedience to the sovereign of France ? "
Napoleon is said to have been touched by
this appeal, but was true to his conviction that
Madame de Stael was too much a machine a
mouvement to be trusted in such susceptible
political salons as those of Paris.
Constant, in his Memoirs, tells us how Napoleon,
after reading a certain passage in De VAllemagne,
threw the work on the fire and gave orders that
Madame was to be more strictly watched than
ever. There is little doubt that the Emperor
suppressed the book on general principles, as
A FEMALE TACITUS 247
they say, and without having made any especial
study of the ideas it set forth. Nor can it be
doubted that he not only directed but even
stimulated the zeal of those to whom he had
assigned the task of spying on de Stael and her
movements. This work, it may be observed, was
an unequivocal appea' to the Germanic nations
to thrown off the yoke which had oppressed them
since 1806, to organise their resources, to learn
the lessons that England and the Peninsula were
then teaching to the enslaved Continent, and to
be prepared against the hour w^hich was at hand
when the awakening peoples would turn and rend
their oppressor. Even Goethe, in February, 1814
— when his friend Napoleon w^as obviously on the
eve of his first collapse — could write to his corre-
spondent, Madame von Grotthus : " The French
police, intelligent enough to realise that a work like
De V Allemagne must have the effect of building
up the confidence of the Germans in themselves,
prudently suppressed it. Even at this very hour
it is producing an astonishing effect." It is not
difficult, therefore, to understand why Napoleon
refused to allow this modern female Tacitus to
place her new De Moribus before a Germany
which w^as only awaiting an auspicious moment
to raise the banners of reasoned — and honourable
— revolt.
In 1812 Madame de Stael made her memorable
visit to Russia, and was already in Moscow^ w-hen
the Napoleonic armies were advancing on
Smolensk. The great society of the old capital
248 BONAPARTE versus DE STAEL
failed to understand Madame, although they were
willing to do her reverence, first, as the enemy of
Napoleon, and, secondly, as the great representa-
tive of the " conscience of Europe." Even semi-
barbaric Muscovy found Corinne heavy of form
and unpleasing of face — " too big for a woman and
built like a man," as Arndt put it. Nor did they
think her style of dress becoming in a woman
already approaching her fiftieth year; "her dis-
courses are too long and her sleeves too short,"
said a sententious member of the Rostopchin
family, who also describes the amusing way in
which our elephantine Egeria and Baron Stein
used to caramboler together on the sofa when
discussing the iniquities of the latter-day Nero.
From Moscow de Stael proceeds to Stockholm,
where she finds her old friend Bernadotte already
Crown Prince of Sweden and quite as cordially
disposed towards her as in the early days of the
First Consulate.
Here she resumes her literary activities and an
avalanche of pamphlets is the result, in which
Bernadotte is extolled as Europe's only hope
against Napoleon. Schlegel's essay on Napoleon's
Continental system appears about the same time,
and Napoleon, not less than the connoisseurs, is
perfectly well aware that Madame de Stael is the
inspiration behind this attack on himself and his
system. Even in her short Essay on Suicide she
finds it impossible to avoid giving expression to
her political views, and accordingly assails the sort
of egoism that allows no^enthusiasm to live which
r/uHo,i:raflt : II'. A. Manse!: &■ Co.
MADAME DE STAEL
1804
After the (yaintiiiii by Gotle/ruy
BYRON AND MADAME 249
finds its source in ideas of liberty and independ-
ence. She attacks the type of Christianity which,
bending before the tyrant, remains satisfied with
its own slavery, and finally deplores the " fashion
of suicide," almost vulgarised since Werther,
throughout Germany, and points out that death
in battle against despotism is a far worthier way
of quitting life. And not satisfied with working
herself against the enemy, she induces her bride-
groom husband, Rocca, to write his experiences
of the French campaign in Spain — a frank ex-
position of Napoleon's inhuman methods when
carrying war into hostile countries. Monsieur de
Rochechouart tells us, too, that until Madame de
Stael had suggested its possibility to him, Berna-
dotte had never conceived the idea of succeeding
Napoleon as Emperor of the French.
In London, where she resided on leaving Sweden,
all society rushed to her salon^ and among the
many historic names on her visiting list, we note
that of Byron, then in his twenty-fifth year, who
quickly wearied of the voluble lady and declared
that if her books were in octavo style, her eloquence
was certainly in folio. Murray published her book,
De VAllemagne, in 1813, and the result of the battle
of Leipzig proved to Englishmen that they were
entertaining a prophetess, for she had foretold
Napoleon's collapse when Germany's national
conscience should awaken. On 8th May 1814,
while Napoleon is making his way to Elba, de
Stael returned to Paris, in broken health, and not
unmoved at the fate [of the~Corsican, whom, for
250 BONAPARTE versus DE STAEL
all her opposition, she never ceased to look upon
as the only hero of the modem world. Napoleon,
indeed, on his return from Elba recognised that
she had been kinder to him in his misfortune than
she had ever proved during his prosperity, and
in the hope of attaching her to his new constitu-
tional ideas, expressed his desire for an under-
standing, admitting that she had made him more
enemies during her exile than she could have done
had he allowed her to remain in France. It is
also said that Napoleon gave her to understand
that her old claim on the French Treasury should
be settled, and in the Memorial, chapter iii.,
Madame de Stael is represented as addressing a
letter to the Emperor, conceived in the most
fulsome terms, in which in consideration of
receiving her millions, she offers to devote her
pen and her principles for ever to Napoleon — a
charge which may, we think, be dismissed, as
well as Gourgaud's statement to the same effect.
Says this very naif aide-de-camp, who might
well, indeed, have posed for the picture of the
imperishable Brigadier Gerard, in volume ii. of
his Memoirs :
" She gave me to understand that if I could
induce the Treasury to pay over her millions,
she would write anything / wanted." And then
airily : " Je V envoy ai loromener—I sent her about
her business."
On the second return of Louis XVIII. Madame
de Stael played a more important role in Court
and general society than she had done even
HER EPITAPH 251
during the first restoration — a fact which seems
to give the He to the charge that she had been
mlUng to sell herself to Napoleon. At St Helena,
in 1817, the death of this great woman moved the
tactless Gourgaud to remind the fallen Emperor
that her world role had been epitomised in the
description of Europe's great Entente between
1805 and 1815 as " Britain, Russia and Madame
de Stael."
" She was a woman," said Napoleon, with real
justice, " of very great powers of mind."
CHAPTER XV
BIOGI— CHATEAUBRIAND
STENDHAL
Afi Lnstoried Celebrity — Biogi and Bonaparte —
Philosopher and Artist — Biogi and the Military Art
— The Corsicans Affection for him — Poisons and
Antidotes — The Battle-field of Rivoli — Berthier and
Bonaparte — Biogi dislikes Army Men— Bonaparte as
Connoisseur — Gros and the Areola Picture — Biogi' s
Description of the Corsican — M. de Chateaubriand
— The ricomte and the First Consul — A Mutual
Antipathy — Le Genie du Christianisme — Essentially
anti-Catholic — Chateaubriand's Egotism — The Little
Man and the Big Quarry — The Vicomle is dismissed
— His Colossal Vanity — His Obsession as to Xapoleon
— Some Expressions of Opinion — " Napoleon and My-
self" — Beyle, alias Stendhal — His Literary Pedigree
— The Individualistic Touch — His Connection with
Xapoleon — Stendhal's Idolatry — His Impartiality —
France and the Empire — Napoleon's Dead-heads —
Stendhal and the e.r-Empress Eugenie — Aii Author's
Discretion — Stendhal, Megalomanaic — Napoleon's
Trust in him — An Imperial Present — The "Soul" of
the Imperial Army — Stupid Officialdom — Napoleon,
France's Greatest Man — His Best Achievement — '^Tlie
Great Emperor" — A Change of Temper — A Literary
Mak's Philosophy — Napoleon diminishes — A Final
Recantation — " Napoleon was our only Religion "
WHAT the painter Biogi achieved as
an artist we are unfortunately unable
to say, since our researches, in many
biographical dictionaries of his own and
later times, tell us nothing either of his professional
status or even of his ever having passed across
the crowded stage of the Napoleonic drama. To
Stendhal we owe it that this young landscape
painter, a Frenchman by birth and an Italian by
origin, has been rescued from complete oblivion
and given an honourable place in the annals of
the Corsican. The picture drawn by Stendhal
of Biogi's association with the soldier is, in our
opinion, one of the most pleasing we have met with
in our quest for details concerning the art-circle of
Napoleon, and the youthful artist's independence
of mind and character in his attitude towards the
Conqueror, as well as towards the temptations
which the latter so persistently held out to him
for his personal advancement, must be admitted
to be singular, as shown by a member of a brother-
hood which is not remarkable for its indifference
either to the spectacular life, or to its possibilities.
It was during the operations on the Mincio,
in the early Italian campaign, that Bonaparte
and Biogi met for the first time. The successful
soldier, already surrounded by a crowd of syco-
phants and intriguing self-seekers, was at once
attracted towards his youthful countryman by
the strange trait of philosophic indifference with
which the latter watched, unmoved and detached,
the imposing drama even at that period beginning
254
THE MILITARY CAREER 255
to unfold itself round the figure of the Corsican.
Biogi's work had, moreover, the advantage of
making an especial appeal to the as yet uncor-
rupted taste of the triumphant warrior — namely,
in that it was untouched by what Napoleon himself
termed the gasconisme common to artists of the
time, whose tendency was to exaggerate the actual
beauty and effect of all the scenes and portraits
which they committed to canvas. Failing to
induce the artist to throw in his lot with him as a
military man, and although he had added a promise
to look carefully after his promotion, Bonaparte
sought to attach Biogi permanently to his suite
in the capacity of official painter. To both
offers the young Frenchman answered very
candidly :
" General, I am far from blaming men who
adopt the military profession which, in its own
way, may doubtless be both noble and useful.
To me, however, it makes no sympathetic appeal,
and I am of those who look upon it as a coarse
and inhuman trade which never fails to show men
in their worst aspects. Not all the glory of all the
conquerors that ever lived could induce me to
devote myself to a military career."
To the offer that Biogi should become the official
pictorial chronicler of the brilliant Italian cam-
paign, which Bonaparte made to him on the
morrow of Rivoli, the painter replied :
" Sir, on entering on my profession I took
the resolve never to allow myself to work except
under such inspirations as came directly from my
256 BIOGI-CHATEAUBRIAND-STENDHAL
own heart and mind, and I feel that the battle-
field is the least likely of all scenes to move my
brush to endeavour into which I can throw either
my heart or my mind."
Biogi, it appears, was hardly less attracted
towards Napoleon than the latter to himself.
He it was who once counselled the young General
to undergo a kind of regular regime with a view
to preparing his constitution against the possibility
of being poisoned, by taking antidotes and so
preserving his life for the benefit of the Republic.
Berthier, says Stendhal, on this occasion made
a sign to the young artist suggesting that Bona-
parte did not care for that kind of conversation.
To the surprise of the Chief of Staff, however,
Napoleon took up the subject and treated his
table company to the philosophy he held in regard
to this matter.
" There are poisons, doubtless," said the young
Corsican, according to Stendhal, " but is there
a remedy against them ? If Medicine were a
real and an exact science, would it not, in the case
of sickness, recommend repose as the best thing
for one ? But can there be any repose for a man
of my character and disposition ? Suppose, for
example, I was to forget my duty so far as to
hand over the command of the army to one of my
generals, and go to Milan or Nice, I should be
entirely unable, at that distance from my troops,
to judge of the real effects of one or more battles.
My blood would in that case be in far worse con-
dition than if I remained here where I could deal
BONAPARTE'S RESERVE 257
directly with the actual situation. No ; a general
in supreme command must take all the risks
attached to his position, which in their way are not
dissimilar from the risks that are imposed on the
commonest grenadier. Besides, if I lost my self-
respect, I should have lost everything, and death
itself would be far preferable to reaching that
stage."
It was after this somewhat vague discourse
that Bonaparte sought again to move the young
artist to paint the battle-field of Rivoli. Biogi
again objected and insisted that his forte lay in
landscape work. The Corsican would not be
denied, however, and finally Biogi — who in order
to facilitate his work was provided with an escort
by Berthier — consented to paint the scene of one
of Bonaparte's earliest masterpieces of the art
of war. In regard to Berthier, Biogi tells that
he appeared to act as nothing more than Bona-
parte's chief clerk, that he was never consulted
but always given orders, and that this, in the
majority of cases, was the Corsican 's attitude
towards his subordinates even at that early stage
in his career. For his own part, the young artist
declared that, Bonaparte and the common soldiery
excepted, he had no liking at all for the officers,
high or low, of the Army of Italy.
" I was surprised," Biogi is reported by Stendhal
as saying, " at the distant attitude of tlie General
commanding towards even his most distinguished
lieutenants. To have exchanged a word with him
was sufficient to make the conversation of a mess-
258 BIOGI-aiATEAUBRIAND-STENDHAL
table for a whole evening. So you may imagine
with what envy I was regarded by other men.
But I suppose," he adds wisely, " the General
would have entirely changed his disposition to-
wards me once I had put on the uniform he wished
me to wear."
Biogi was not singular among the connoisseurs
in thinking rather meanly of Napoleon's know-
ledge of art matters.
" The General-in-Chief had good enough in-
stincts," he admits, " but had no training what-
soever in regard to technique or the various
schools. He used, for instance, to confuse the
works of Hannibal Carracci with those of
Michel -Angelo."
At that date, we learn with interest, Gros was
executing his noted picture of Bonaparte rushing
across the bridge of Areola with a regimental flag
in hand. Of this painter Biogi said :
" Gros is the only artist who has courage
enough to reproduce the j^^uvretes — an artist's
expression— which in those days characterised
the young Conqueror who had the appearance of
a man already far gone in consumption. Only
Bonaparte's superhuman physical activity showed
at that period the iron constitution of the soldier.
His glance had in it something astonishing : it
was at once fixed and penetrating, but possessed
nothing whatever of poetic or lofty inspiration.
His look changed to one of great tenderness when-
ever he spoke to a woman, or whenever they
recounted to him some heroic action on the part
M. LE VICOMTE 259
of a soldier of his Army. On the whole, he was
a being apart from all other men. None of his
generals in any way bore the least resemblance
to him. Lemarrois had a charming face, was
kindly, and excellent company ; distinguished
though he was, however, he always looked like
an inferior being beside his general-in-chief.
Murat looked splendid on horseback, but there
was an inherent coarseness in his beauty. Duphot
looked the man of intellect. Lannes, alone, at
times reminded one of the mighty Corsican.
" Bonaparte was ever the object of a profound
and almost devotional respect ; he was a man
without peer, and everyone who entered his pres-
ence felt this at once. The women of Verona
almost fought to get a sight of him at the palace
of the Venetian Ambassador — a very impressive
individual, this functionary, who, for all his
pompous figure, looked like a schoolboy in the
presence of young Bonaparte."
Chateaubriand, it will be remembered, was
acting as secretary at the Legation in Rome in
1803, a position which the First Consul had given
him shortly after the appearance of Atala, a work
which had — very deservedly, we think — won for
its author an immediate renown. Bonaparte's
object in conferring office upon this representative
of the vieille roche was a twofold one, inasmuch
as the soldier assured himself at once possession
260 BIOGI- CHATEAUBRIAND- STENDHAL
of the talents of a first-class writer, as well as of
the services of a member of the order which alone
was able to perform the duties about a Court,
as he himself declared. Accordingly Chateau-
briand, when his new-found fame had made him
an object of flattering attention in Paris, received
his invitation to the Tuileries and was presented
to the master. Evidently the distinguished pair
were very much disappointed in each other, as
Talleyrand might have put it, for a kind of
metallic antipathy — if one may use such an
expression — rendered their first rencontre any-
thing but a cordial one, and apparently the
twain declared war at sight. Thereafter the
author went to Consular Court but rarely, and
on only one of these occasions was distinguished
by a word from the forbidding Corsican, who,
with the object possibly of removing an un-
pleasing person from Paris, sent Chateaubriand
to Rome. The writer, then in poor circum-
stances, readily acquiesced in a promotion which
guaranteed him sufficient means of indulging the
only sporting taste he possessed — namely, the
pursuit of Love.
The Vicomte, it would seem, was one of the
many very vain spirits of that age who affected
to see in the overwhelming glory of Napoleon a
force which rivalled and precluded any possible
fame for themselves ! From the first day of their
meeting, says Maurice Dreyfous, the author of the
Genie du Christianisme pretended that Bonaparte
was jealous of his success ; and to the very end,
A REAL MASTERPIECE 261
adds the same authority, Chateaubriand was
obsessed with the idea that posterity would con-
sider himself and the Corsican as co-rivals in
renown ! The religious element in France of that
time— Catholic, where not Rationalist, of course
— had set great store by the work we have just
mentioned, though for what reason we ourselves
fail to see, since the central idea of the Genie
tended to show that Catholicity made its appeal
almost wholly to the sensual instinct in its ad-
herents — that is to say, that the Roman Church
depended for its religious and proselytising
triumphs in the main on the essentially artistic
methods with which it clothed its ritual, and
on the sentimentalism with which it inspired its
teacliings — a point of view which no person of
intelligence can fail to observe on perusing that
very much overrated production. Atala, no
competent judge will be found to deny, was a
genuine masterpiece, and, had he written nothing
else, Chateaubriand might have rightly based his
claim to the recognition of posterity on the merits
of that work alone. But to say that he imagined,
as Dreyfous asserts he did, that " his fame
entitled him to consider Napoleon an obstruction
in the way of his claims," is to overlook altogether
the fact that Chateaubriand belonged to a clique
of ideologues who perfectly appreciated all the
kudos that was to be derived from attacking
so high-placed and successful a personage as
Napoleon— a jwocede connu, as we remember to
have said in another case, which has never in
262 BTOGI-CHATEAUBRIAND-STENDHAL
any age escaped the watchfulness of the little
man in search of the big opportunity.
While acting as Secretary at the Legation in
Rome, his social importance gained him the
acquaintance of several persons who belonged to
the circle of correspondents of Madame de Stael —
at that time engaged, as we have seen, in intrigues
the object of which was the defeat of the First
Consul's plans for establishing the Empire. As
easily susceptible to feminine influence, as
Bonaparte was indifferent to and unassailable by
it, Chateaubriand entered eagerly into the con-
spiracy which sought to thwart Bonapartian
interests throughout Italy. Napoleon's emis-
saries were not long in discovering the political
dispositions of the author-secretary at the
Legation, and accordingly the Vicomte soon
became a marked man. Realising that he was
watched by Fouche's spies, he took advantage
of Napoleon's fateful blunder in executing the
Due d'Enghien, 20th March 1804, and sent in
his resignation, which, it would seem, had only
anticipated his own dismissal by some hours.
After a few years' travel he returned to Paris,
where he founded the still-surviving Mercure in
1806— a publication which proved itself a source
far more of irritation than of fear to the Emperor,
who, we feel very certain, had no illusions what-
ever as to the quality of the patriotism which
moved this hyper-emotional artist to oppose his
methods of governing France.
In the famous posthumous Memoirs there is
AN ARTIST'S OBSESSION 263
to be found a very comprehensive series of the
Vicomte's expressions of opinion about the great
Napoleon, and the close student will not fail to
note Chateaubriand's total inability to consider
the Corsican as apart from himself and his affected
anti-Napoleonism, or rather his anti-Napoleon
propaganda ; for Chateaubriand opposed Napoleon
far more than he opposed his policy, as indeed
also did Madame de Stael, Constant and a host of
others of the great self-advertising circle of opposi-
tion, as ♦Napoleon must have fully realised. In
truth, had the Emperor condescended to receive
into his intimate entourage those opponents of
himself who achieved both fame and capital from
their affected hostility to him, there would not
have been found, we feel convinced, a single in-
dividual in the long list of his enemies who would
not have sold himself body and soul to the master
of Continental Europe. Here are a few of the
published statements which indicate very clearly
Chateaubriand's obsession regarding what he
considered to be his rivalry with Napoleon :
" He made the world tremble — but never me."
" He saw kings in awe of him — but not we."
" My Genie du Christianisme had acted on
Napoleon. ..."
" The murder of the Due d'Enghien changed
my life. It also changed Napoleon's."
" Napoleon may have done away with Kings.
He has not done away with ?ne."
On one occasion he hears that the Emperor —
too great not to be a fair-minded man when valid
264 BIOGI-CHATEAUBRIAND-STENDHAL
argument was advanced against him — has uttered
a favourable view of certain opinions expressed
I in De Bonaparte et les Bourbons ; whereupon
Chateaubriand writes :
" Napoleon would make no peace with Kings ;
he sought, however, to make peace with me.''' ^
And again : " We were both sons of the sea —
Napoleon and myself, and I have entered into his
spirit far more intimately than those who have
lived at his side " — a claim which certainly did
not die with the Napoleonic era. •
If anyone were to impose on us the task of
tracing the literary descent of Henri Beyle, alias
Stendhal, we should have no difficulty whatever
in ascribing his intellectual origin to the declara-
tion of Luther. And we should argue that the
revolt which rent the system of reasoned — and
in some degree philanthropic — obscurantism
followed by the Church of Rome, and introduced
the notion of self-sufficing Protestantism, in-
evitably brought in its train a school of philo-
sophic partisans who made their direct appeal
to the spiritual or intellectual pride of men. The
scientific rationalism of the Encyclopaedists was
one of the first effects of the great Lutheran cause
in France ; the revival of Letters in Germany,
which eventually reached its height with Goethe
— and finally degenerated into Nietzschism — was
'^^ ^ Miiiioires d' Oiitre-Tonibe.
MONSIEUR DE STENDHAL 265
another of the great movements towards enlighten-
ment which were, in the main, a revolt against
clericalism and clerical influences ; Rousseau,
Voltaire, Goethe, Byron — these were the greater
spirits that inspired writers like Stendhal, and
later the apostle of the Superman, and having in
mind the lengths to which, in its modern develop-
ment, especially in Germany, ultra-individualistic
theories have carried the world, we cannot but
uncover before the prophetic spirit of Napoleon,
who said of Rousseau that history would show
whether it had not been better for mankind if
such a man had never existed.
Stendhal owed his association with the Corsican
to the fact that he was connected with the family
of Daru, an able servant of Napoleon, who pro-
cured him an official position in the financial
department of the government under the Empire.
He had been present as a member of the com-
missarial suite at the battle of Marengo at the
age of seventeen, and enlisted subsequently in a
dragoon regiment, rather, as he admits himself,
because of his ambition to be able afterwards to
say that he had served in the legions of the
Emperor, than from any love of a military career.
Beyle, who subsequently adopted the nom de
guerre of Stendhal, assuming ultimately, as Cam
Hobhouse tells us with some suggestion of
ridicule, the title of Comte de Stendhal, was in
his earliest manhood a fervent admirer of Napoleon
and all that the Corsican stood for. So fervent
an admirer, indeed, of the mighty conqueror's
266 BIOGI-CHATEAUBRIAND-STENDHAL
method of imposing himself and his ideas upon the
world, that the heroes of the two works which
keep Stendhal's memory alive are made, on
setting out upon their worldly careers, to adopt
a philosophy of life which is based wholly on an
absence either of moral scruple or of altruistic
sentiment. Even in 1837, at the age of fifty-
four, when a man's emotions, we presume, are
governed by his self-criticism, Stendhal could
write of the idol of his earlier days that only one
man had up till then won his entire respect, and
that man — Napoleon.
What Stendhal has to say concerning the dis-
position of ^the people towards Napoleon and his
new-founded Empire in 1804 is of considerable
interest, in view of the claims of the Bonapartist
faction that the new Emperor was acclaimed
throughout France with an absolute unanimity.
According to his version. Napoleon's popularity
with the masses remained very much in question
until after the battle of Austerlitz. Up till the
banishment of Moreau in 1804, the \dctor of
Hohenlinden, he says, easily disputed the affec-
tions of the people of France with the Corsican,
and it was the consciousness of this fact which had
moved Bonaparte to exile his great soldier rival.
Even after the official announcement — 18th May
1804 — that the First Consul was to assume the
Imperial title, a large section of the people of
Paris was unfavourable to Bonaparte's ambition.
On 12th July of the same year, Stendhal tells,
the Emperor-elect attended one of the first
THE EMPRESS EUGENIE 267
representations of Les Bardes, of which work we
have spoken elsewhere. A full house at the Opera
meant, he goes on, receipts amounting as a rule
to 12,000 francs. That evening, although the
theatre was comjDletely filled, the management
took only 6000 francs at the box offices, which
went to prove (says Stendhal) that Bonaparte
himself had " bought " the house. He was
received with great acclamation on this occasion,
be it noted. On the day following, the Emperor
visited the Comedie Fran9aise, where Iphigenia
was being staged, and his presence passed entirely
unnoticed. Stendhal is also authority for the
statement that even on his coronation day few
were found to acclaim the Emperor and Empress
with any cordiality as they passed through the
streets of their capital. All of which goes, we think,
to show that Stendhal's impartiality was quite
independent of his admiration for the Corsican.
His direct relations with Napoleon began in
1807, some months after the entry of the Emperor
into Berlin as a result of Jena, and Stendhal wrote
a description of that event thirty years later to a
young Spanish lady, then but a chikl, a Senorita
Eugenie Guzman y Palafox, whom the present
world knows as the ex-Empress of the French.
We are given very little information, however,
as to the nature of his labours with Napoleon — so
little, indeed, that his enemies often declared
the co-operation of the soldier and the author to
have been a fantasy of the latter's bright imagina-
tion. Stendhal himself declared that his silence
f 268 BIOGI- CHATEAUBRIAND- STENDHAL
5 on the point arose from his resolve not to com-
^ promise himself by telling all he might have told.
T There is no doubt, however, that Napoleon en-
3 trusted him once with the duty of levying a five-
T million war indemnity on Brunswick, and the
'^ author-financier proved his good will towards
\^ the Imperial patron by raising seven millions. He
^ claimed also — perhaps with the facile mendacious-
ness of the megalomaniac who has once entered
the presence — to have participated in the negotia-
tions which led to the alliance between Napoleon
and the Archduchess Marie Louise. Extant
documents make, however, no mention of his name
in this important connection. Nevertheless his
name is on the list of accepted courtiers, and
^ I ^ like the first-class temperamentalist he is, Stendhal
f omits no opportunity of informing us of the fact :
- he is presented to Marie Louise by the Duchesse
de Montebello and is a constant attendant at
the Imperial receptions. Napoleon charged him,
^^ during the tragic retreat from Moscow, with the
I ^ provisioning of several army corps, and entrusted
S P him, about the same time, with a sum of three
^ l^^lnillion roubles (£300,000) for " a particular
J service." The nature of this service Stendhal does
not state, though we think ourselves that the
money was probably to be conveyed to Madame
Walewska — in those days Napokon's most trusted
friend and the mother of two* sons by him — as
a provision against the difficult times which, we
, correctly suppose, the mathematical mind of the
^ Corsican then very clearly foresaw.
" SOUL OF AN ARMY " 269
Stendhal gives us, from his own intimate
experience, an accomit of the " soul " of the
Napoleonic military system which w^e do not
remember to have read elsewhere, and which
can hardly fail to prove interesting in these days
of martial gest. As one who had served in the
Grand Army, who had powerful comiections, and
who might well have aspired to liigh promotion,
Stendhal, nevertheless, confessed himself entirely
disgusted with the " intimate souls " (interieurs
d'dmes) of the military men he had met with
and whom he describes as " dull-witted sword-
trailers." No man saw more of Imperial
officialdom than himself, and no man was more •
sensible of the " insolence and essential depend-
ency and stupidity of Napoleon's servants " —
the real agents of the fall of the Empire, as he /
declared. Nevertheless, he holds, Napoleon is
the greatest man whom France has produced,
and a tithe of the glory the Corsican achieved will
suffice, he is certain, to discount whatever of
iniquity his system disclosed. The imperishable
glory of the Napoleonic legend is, he writes, the
enduring heritage of the people of France who,
as a result of the Imperial wars, have learned
that a personal cachet has impressed itself for
all time on the very name of Frenchman. And if
a patriotic unity in the face of hostile nations
has discovered itself in France, it is Napoleon's
achievement wliich has called it forth. He up-
braids the Emperor for liis weakness on the
days succeeding Waterloo, when he should (says
270 BIOGI-CHATEAUBRIAND-STENDHAL
Stendhal) have declared himself Dictator. For
all his senseless ambition, however, posterity will
tell for all time the tale of the great Emperor,
and his enemies will succeed in interweaving their
names in his august legend solely because they
had been his enemies.
But, alas for Stendhal's emotionalism. With
the vaingloriousness so common to the artistic
literary man, Stendhal declares in 1816 : " / fell
with Napoleon," and goes on to show that the
condition of his private fortune justifies him
in revising his somewhat ecstatic devotion for
the fallen Corsican. Primo j^cmem, deinde philo-
sophari is a sound literary man's motto, and
towards the end of the year 1817 Stendhal,
forced to a realisation of its truth, begins to
contemplate Napoleon from the point of view
of a Bourbonist in search of office. Under tliis
venal analysis Napoleon shrivels to the propor-
tions of a rather ordinary greatness : It was
the littleness of his contemporaries which really
contributed to the glory of Napoleon. Had other
countries had their Hannibals and their Scipios
and their Caesars, tilings would have gone far
differently. He was a badly educated man, was
Napoleon — Stendhal now thinks; he really was
ever an aristocrat at heart and his founding of
the Legion of Honour should have proved to
France the real character of the hero of 1800.
Above all. Napoleon feared the priests — a
characteristic born of liis elementally Latin
nature. Even as a politician he showed little
" NAPOLEON OUR RELIGION " 271
talent when the support of the sword was want-
ing, and honest investigation showed that the
Corsican had destroyed the sentiment of liberty
in France. The explanation of all of wliich
becomes clearer when we discover that a few
months after penning the above opinions,
Stendhal seeks to show that his loyalty to
the Bourbons had never faltered during the
" absence " of Louis XVIII. between March and
June, 1815.
The final recantation was to come, as we might
indeed expect from so emotional a character ;
and Stendhal touched a deeper truth than he
himself probably suspected when he contributed
his final explanation of the Corsican and his
hypnotic influence on that heroic age, in the
sentence :
Napoleon was our only religion." s.
CHAPTER XVI
IMPERIAL OFFICIAL THEATRE
One of Napoleon s Chief Ambitions — Instructions to
Champagny — Authors and their Rights — Assurance
of Remuneration — Where Napoleon failed — Imperial
Art mediocre — Limitations of Patronage— Genius
discovers itself— Always its own Patron — Imperial
Epoch unfavourable to Art — Some Liberal Awards —
Tragedy, not Comedy — The T hedtre-F ran(^ais — Decree
of Moscow — Napoleon a Real Benefactor — Schools of
Dramatic Art — His Liberality to the Histrions —
TJie Dresden Bill— His Practical Patronage — His
Friends among the I lluminati—Did lie like Artists ? —
Remarks by Rhnusat — After Marengo — A Line from
Cinna—The Mmder of Enghien
I
HENRY LECOMTE, in his Napoleon et
le Monde Dramatique, relates how the
Emperor once declared to Champagny
that one of his chief ambitions as a
sovereign was to be able to reward the composer
of a really great tragedy.
" You, Champagny," said the Corsican, " are
head of the literary establishment of the Empire.
Literature needs encouragement, and I charge
you with the duty of finding out and suggesting
to me all possible ways and means of discovering
a literary genius who shall do honour to my
reign."
With this object in mind, he made it one of the
first cares of his regime to take under his especial
protection the rights of authors and composers in
regard to their literary and musical works.
" If such a thing as property really exists," said
the Emperor, " it must surely lie in the ideas and
inventions issuing from the brain of artists and
literary men. For what property can be more
personal or more intimate ? "
Accordingly, it was decreed that every dramatic
or operatic work should be subsidised from official
appropriations — apart from royalties arising from
representation — for every separate occasion on
which it was staged, the minimum official award
being £12 a night for every staging for the first
twenty nights, and £8 up to the fortieth, when
an especial bonus of, at the lowest, £20, was paid
to the author. If any particular piece did not,
of its enacting, occupy a normal evening on the
274
GENIUS ITS OWN PATRON 275
stage, and if supplementa in the way of ballet or
concert were found to be necessary, a reduction
of about one-third was effected on the author's
official reward, the bonus after the fortieth night
remaining, however, in all cases. The authors
were thus positively assured of receiving a sub-
stantial enough remuneration for their intellectual
labours, and were furthermore protected against
unscrupulous theatrical managers. All these
promulgations dated from 1802.
For all his willing encouragement, however,
Napoleon cannot be said to have nearly approached
the success attending on the official patronage of
Louis XIV. or Louis XV., and Laugier, a French
writer, voices the opinion of the majority of the
connaisseurs, we think, when he declares that the
French drama during the Empire, like all the
other Arts of the same period, was entirely lacking
in anything like a superior cachet. Great men,
he says, with truth, may found great institutions,
but they cannot endow others with the genius
that Nature has withheld ; objective or interested
inspiration invariably ceases at the threshold of
the atelier or the study, and all the prodigality^ of
Napoleon towards those artistic spirits whom he
thought likely, through their productions, to add
resplendency to the glory of his reign resulted only
in a very obvious mediocrity. Supreme artistic
ability discovers itself, as a rule, long before the
patronage which venally seeks to exploit it, and
Napoleon's good will and inspiration were no more
equal to the forcing of a mind like that of Corneille
276 IlVrPERlAL OFFICIAL THEATRE
than they were capable of creating a Kembrandt
or a Murillo. And so the most glorious reign in
the long history of France was unable to show
one single masterpiece for its existence.
^ The French writer goes on to account for this
1 failure on other grounds : a vast society had, he
\ says, to be reconstructed from the ruins of the
j Revolution, and the generation which had en-
/ gaged in one long Homeric conflict with Europe
in arms was unlikely to father an era of supreme
/ artists, a race of beings who are born of peace
V rather than of war. Again, ambitious men of
the age sought the fruition of their aspirations in
the Imperial armies, in the Imperial judiciary, in
the State's councils, and the fine arts attracted
only minds of second-class rating — an inevitable
result of all militaristic autocracies, as Confeder-
ated Germany has, we think, more than proved
in our own time.
In 1804 Napoleon officially announced prizes
of 10,000 and 5000 francs respectively for a
tragedy and a comedy, the excellence of which
should satisfy an official Imperial jury appointed
to make the awards. Raynouard was successful
in obtaining the prize of 10,000 francs for his
traged}-, Les Teinpliers, while the award for
comedy was not made, the reason given for with-
holding tliis burse being that although the
comedies showed sufficient talent, the Emperor
wished above all things to encourage Tragedy —
in the vain hope, we easily divine, of unearthing
some Corneille who should add lustre to the name
LE THEATRE-FRANgAlS 277
of Napoleon and his Age. Despite the fact that
the official jury advised the encouragement of
Comedy, on the ground that the comic play-
wrights were much farther behind Moliere than
the tragedians were behind Kacine and Voltaire,
the supreme authority at the Tuileries declined
to alter his decision, and so Comedy went un-
rewarded and unencouraged.
The famous Imperial Decree that gave to the
Theatre-Franyais the perfect organisation which
governs that institution to. this day, was dictated
from Moscow, 16th October 1812. This act of
Napoleon, says Laugier, in effect, is one of the
imperishable and constructive benefits vnth which
the great Emperor endowed modern France, to
the rebuilding and permanent moulding of which
he so largely contributed. By an earlier decree of
January, 1803, he had given the French Theatre
its commercial or practical organisation. The
Decree of Moscow definitely, and probably for all
time, fixed its administrative constitution, iind,
adds Laugier, if the Imperial epoch was poor in
dramatic literature produced during the reign, it
is equally certain that it has never been excelled
in respect of the technical art of the official ex-
ponents of the French Theatre. What execution !
What perfection in the interpretation of our im-
mortal masterpieces ! Moreover, it is to the last-
ing merit of Napoleon that while he assembled the
greatest galaxy of dramatic actors and actresses
that France has yet known, he also provided for
future generations by founding schools of dramatic
278 IMPERIAL OFFICIAL THEATRE
art which now form part and parcel of Europe's
most artistic nation.
On the occasion of the journey to Erfurt,
Napoleon distributed some £1500 among the half-
dozen actors who went thither with him. When
a similar excursion was made to Dresden by the
Comedie Frangaise, in 1813, a much larger sum
was expended in rewarding the artists for their
services. Monsieur Laugier gives the items in
connection with that visit, as follows : —
Desprez
Saint-Prix
Talma
Mile George
Fleury
Saint-Fal .
Michot
Baptiste .
Arm and
Thenard .
Vigny
Michelot .
6,000 frs.
6,000
8,000
8,000
10,000
6,000
4,000
6,000
6,000
4,000
6,000
4,000
Barbier
IVnie Thenard .
Mile Cental
Mile M^zeray .
Mile Mars
Mile Bourgoin .
M. Maignien
Brothers Frechot
Colson
Combre
Bouillon .
Mongellas
3,000 frs.
4,000 ,,
6,000 ,,
4,000 „
10,000 „
6,000 ,,
2,000 ,,
1,500 "
500 „
500 ,,
500 „
500 „
The Emperor insisted on his family and the high
functionaries of the State maintaining their loges
at the first theatre in his capital. For his own
box he paid 21,000 francs, or £840 ; Queen
Hortense, his step-daughter, paid £145 for hers ;
Berthier, £340 ; Talleyrand, £360 ; King Joseph,
£420 ; Prince Lucien, £310 ; Madame Recamier,
£280 ; Bernadotte, £150.
According to Monsieur Lecomte, the Emperor
was accustomed to receive his favourite artists at
FJU'Cvt^rtipJt : Anaerson
l)Ai:i)AI.rS AND ICARLS
Bv Canow,
SOME AKTIST-VISITORS 279
the Tuileries during first-breakfast, or about nine
o'clock, this hour corresponding — in his case, as a
working sovereign — to the levee of the old French
monarchs. Rarely did this meal exceed fifteen
minutes in duration, though when exceptionally
interesting visitors presented themselves. Napoleon
would graciously surrender his precious time to
illuminati Hke Monge, Bertholet, Costaz, Denon,
Corvisart, David, Gerard, Isabey, Talma, Fon-
taine and others, saying, as was his custom :
" Gentlemen, my cabinet is closed for the time
being. Let us talk."
And the Emperor invariably talked more than
anyone else.
Lecomte affects to believe that the Corsican
entertained sentiments of good will for the artistic
brotherhood, a point of view which we have dealt
with elsewhere, and disproved, we think. Once,
according to this authority, he accused [Monsieur
de Lugay, an eminent official of his palace, with
having slighted some of the actors who had
business with him.
"Do you know," he is alleged to have told the
forbidding Luyay, " a talent, no matter what its
nature, is a veritable power in the world, and I
make a point, myself, of never omitting to salute
Talma when I meet him."
Monsieur de Remusat, who is responsible for
this detail, takes care to add that Napoleon, in
making the remark, meant not the least word of
it. The Emperor was, says the Comte, kind and
cordial towards artists of all kinds who showed an
280 IMPERIAL OFFICIAL THEATRE
unquestioning devotion to himself and his ways of
thinking — who, en somme, allowed themselves to
be taught, and who never contradicted him. It
was only, concludes Monsieur de Remusat, when
he became a great personage, that Napoleon
forced himself to take an interest in matters which
up till that time had given him no concern what-
ever. Even as regards Talma, it always seemed
to close observers that he felt the actor's renown
rather than his artistic greatness.
"At all periods of his life," insists Lecomte,
notwithstanding the scepticism of M. de Remusat,
" Napoleon displayed a profound interest in
everything connected with actors and acting."
On the day after the battle of Marengo, he recalls,
the First Consul spent an hour walking up and
down a small vineyard surrounding his military
headquarters. An aide-de-camp approached with
a dispatch, and Bonaparte, awakened as from a
deep reverie, astounded the officer with a long
quotation from La Mort de Pompee :
J'ai servi, commande, vaincu quarante annees,
Du monde entre mes mains j'ai vu les destinees ;
Et j'ai toujours connu qu'en tout evenement
Le destin des Etats dependait d'un moment,"
On the fateful night of 20th March 1804, when
he decides to sign the order for the murder of the
Due d'Enghien, he is heard to whisper the words
spoken by Augustus, in Cinna :
" Soyons amis, Cinna, c'est moi que t'en convie ..."
L'AIGLON 281
And on the same tragical eve, the lines from
Alzire :
" Des dieux que nous sen^ons, connais la difference :
Les tiens t'ont commande le meurtre et la vengeance ;
Et le mien quand ton bras vient de m'assassiner,
M'ordonne de te plaindre et de te pardonner."
After the battle of La Rothiere, during the cam-
paign of France, in 1814, he writes to his brother
Joseph :
" I should prefer to see my son strangled than
to think of him being brought up in Vienna in
the midst of my enemies. ... I have never yet
witnessed Andromache without pitying the fate
of Astyanax, whom I always thought happy in
not surviving his father."
CHAPTER XVII
CONCLUSION
Kircheisens Bibliography of Napoleon — One Book
wanting — The Temperamental Aspect of Bonaparte
— The '' Napoleon " Test of Nationality — A Modern
Imitator — The Imperishable Corsican
A SENSE of decency compels us to admit
that any man who produces a Napoleon
book, in these days, owes it to the public
to explain the fact, and we willingly give
our own reasons for the present performance — all
the more so, indeed, because we have fully read
and fairly digested our Kircheisen, and know what
that voluminous bibliographer of the Napoleoniad
has to say about the Grand Library of books
and publications which deal with the Emperor and
his coruscating legend. Here, in effect, is what
Kircheisen will tell the inquirer in those two
plump tomes which any wight may wade through
with much instruction to himself :
(1) The number of individual books which record
the story of Napoleon and his Age must now be
counted by the tens of hundreds.
(2) Separate magazine and newspaper articles,
born of the same heroic inspiration, have been
written and published in their tens of thousands.
(3) If all the publishers' archives and the
editorial and contributors' files of all the peri-
odicals of all the nations could be assembled and
given shelf -room, it would be found that Napoleon
already plays a capital role in at least two hundred
thousand books, ecrits divers, reviews, turnovers,
special articles and sundry other papers which
have been committed to breathing type, at one time
or another, by professional or amateur scribes.
It is clear from all this, therefore, that the writer
is under some obHgation to explain the reason of
the present book :
284
THE ETERNAL CORSICAN 285
A few years back an old fellow-student, writing
from India, asked us to verify some expressions
of opinion by Napoleon on literary and art matters,
in respect of which our exile in Hindustan had no
reference books at hand. In order to obtain the
required opinions it was found necessary to con-
sult some score of books in the Reading-Room of
the British Museum. The idea then " developed,"
as they say in America, that a separate book
might excusably be put together treating of the
temperamental side of Napoleon, as indicated
by the great soldier's heredity, his education, liis
reading, his literary, dramatic and art leanings,
and his religion. Such a book in anything like
complete form had not in EngUsh — nor indeed
in French, German or Italian — as yet come into
being. The facts might certainly be found in a
large library of volumes, by well-known writers,
dealing with the Eternal Corsican ; but not with
any completeness in any single volume which the
writer has yet succeeded in discovering.
Master-students of Napoleon, like Mr Holland
Rose, the Earl of Rosebery and Monsieur A.
Guillois have — all serious readers are aware —
thrown much light on the mind and character of
the immense Man of Destiny, by touching on such
intimate personal details, in works which have
now become classics. These works were not,
however, devoted specifically to a presentment
of Napoleon considered almost wholly from his
temperamental aspect. Our own endeavour has
been to trace the mighty Corsican from this point
286 CONCLUSION
of consideration, and in one brief volume, by-
dealing with his superabounding chronicle in a
series of chapters which have treated
(1) of his genealogy ;
(2) of his early schooling ;
(3) of his particular reading as a student and
his general reading as a man ;
(4) of his tastes in drama and music ;
(5) of his associations with men and women
connected with the theatre ;
(6) of his predilections in painting and sculpture ;
(7) of his literary bent and his connections and
dealings with literary personages ;
(8) of his understanding, or rather misunder-
standing, of the functions of that important
half -art which we call journalism ;
(9) and, finally, of his religious beliefs — which
last, we are permanently satisfied, were based
solely on political expediency and were really
atheistic.
A study of all these conditions, it may reason-
ably be supposed, must add something to the
explanation of a personality which has proved
itself at once one of the simplest and one of the
most complex in the list of the world's great men.
We are a long way from classing ourselves
among the detractors of the mighty Corsican, as is
the fashion nowadays among many who derive
their conceptions of Napoleon, his personality and
his oeuvre, from handbooks, or from romances
which present Bonaparte as a central figure. We
hold that if a conscious Providence exists, Napoleon
THE NAPOLEON BIAS 287
was assuredly an instrument of its will. At the
same time we are equally far from thinking that
he can be classed among the great spirits of the
world, and we have arrived at the opinion that
the student of history, in classifying the over-
whelming personalities of the ages, will find him-
self forced to discriminate between great spirits
and great men of action. A Lincoln, a Gladstone
— here assuredly great spirits. A Napoleon, a
Bismarck — arch-pragmatists, if ever. No ; the
spirit of pure philanthropy is altogether wanting
in these.
Certainly, too, we have long since reached the con-
viction that Napoleon could never have imposed
himself and his reclame on any race of Anglo-Saxon
men — or even on a sane Germany- — in any modern
age, in any political circumstance, or with all his
achievements multipKed by ten, in the same way
as he succeeded in imposing his iron personality
on a temperamental race whose greater spirits
had gone under in that bloody Revolution which
made his career a possibility. Indeed we have
found by experience that the bias in favour of, or
against Napoleon provides a satisfactory enough
test of a man's nationality and character — whether
he be a true Anglo-Saxon, a true Kelt, a true
Latin, a true Teuton, and of the type of rigid and
self-disciplined men who — to adapt Goethe — will
drink no foreign wine.
And yet, for all the sordid materialism that
underlies the epic of Napoleon, it must be
conceded that it remains one of the moving
288 CONCLUSION
inspirations of all time. That great age of lustred
exploit and adventure was, when the worst is said,
insi^ired and led by one the supremacy of whose
heroic mind was clear and incontestable as the
limpid logic of its action and effect. And when
in these days we contemplate the halting and
convulsive performance of the puny histrion who
would fain play the role of Avorld-conqueror,
vainly seeking to impress itself and its foul
mission upon the mocking hemispheres, then, in
truth, we of the unconquered Islands may well
admit, with reverence of mind, if not of heart,
the vast measure of our most formidable foe, the
mighty Corsican — so wise in word and counsel, so
sound in thought and project, and in act so
swift, so unerring, so magical — Napoleon !
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Following is a list of works which were either read or con
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Chuquet : La Jeunesse de Napoleon. Paris. 1897.
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T 289
290 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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De Stael : Germany. London. 1813.
Eckermann : Gesprache mit Goethe. Leipzig. 1885.
Fleischmann : Une Maitresse . . . Paris. 1908.
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Humphreys : Napoleon — ^Thoughts on Love , . . London.
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Harrys : Das Kaiserbuch. Weimar. 1837.
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HoLZHAUSEN : Der Erste Konsul . . . Bonn. 1900.
Hopkins (Tighe) : The Women Napoleon Loved. London.
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Hardenberg : Denkwiirdigkeiten. Leipzig. 1877.
Johnston : The Corsican. London. 1910.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 291
KiRCHEiSEN (F.) : Gesprache Napoleons des Ersten. Stutt-
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KiRCHEisEN (G.) : Die Frauen und Napoleon. Munich and
Leipzig. 1912.
Lacretelle : Analogies et Contrastes . . . Paris. 1837.
Lecomte : Napoleon et le Monde dramatique. Paris. 1912.
Lescure : Napoleon et sa Famille. Paris. 1868.
LuMBROso : Napoleone — La sua Corte. . . . Rome. 1911.
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Paris. 1853.
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Masson : Napoleon dans sa Jeunesse. Paris. 1907.
Masson : Napoleon et les Fem.mes. Paris. 1906.
Masson : Huit Conferences. Paris. 1909.
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Panckoucke : CEuvres de Napoleon Bonaparte (Genealogy,
Vol. L). Paris. 1822.
Petetin : Commentaires de Napoleon L Paris. 1867.
Pelet : Napoleon in Council. Edinburgh. 1837.
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Remusat : Lettres, 1804-1815. Paris. 1881.
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Rose (J. H.) : Life of Napoleon. London. 1913.
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1853.
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1882.
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1830.
INDEX
A
Accent, Napoleon's bad, 55
Account of Corsica, 56
Acta Diurna, 227
Acton, Lord, 19
/Eyieid, Books I., II., VI., 51
^sop, work of, 51
Agamemnon, 82
Aime -Martin, M., 237
Ajaccio, 2?) et seq.
Alcibiades, 162
Alexander I., Emperor, loi passim
Alexander VI., Pope, 173
Alexander the Great, 41
Allemagne, De !' , 247
Ambition, Napoleon and, 47
Ami des Lois, I' , 223
Antichambre, 1', 71
ApoUonius of Tyana, 57
Arc de Triomphe, 136
Architects, Napoleon dislikes, 134
Aristotle, 32
Arnault, dramatist, 68, 81
Artaud, M., diplomat, 164
Art collection. Napoleon's, 138, 139,
140
Artists' fees, 134
Atala, 259, 261
Athalie, tragedy, 112
Auerstadt, 44
Augereau, Marshal, 235
Aune, L6on, 42
Austerlitz, 43
Auxonne, garrison town, 54, 55
B
Baciocchi, Signor, 29
Baour-Lormian, 68
Barrow, historian, 54
Bardre, 220
Beyle, H. (Stendhal), 264 tt stq.
Benckendorff, Count, 10 1
Bellum Cimbricum, 116
Berthier, Marshal, ii8 passim
Beethoven, 1S2
293
Beugnot, orator, 228
Bernadotte, Marshal, 241
Beauterne, ChevaUer de, 193
Berton, R. P., 53
Beaconsfield (Disraeli), 45
Bible, Napoleon's, 59
Biogi, artist, 254 et seq.
Bonaparte pire, 27 passim
Bozzi, Signor, 30
Bozzi, family of, 38
Bossuet, 52 '
Boileau, 52
BosweU, James, 56
Bourgoin, Mademoiselle, 83
Bourrienne, de, 115 passim
Bonaparte Crossing the Alps, 146
Borghese Marbles, 167
Bonaparte et les Bourbons, 228
Brienne, school of, 50
Brutus (Voltaire), 66
Britannicus, 78
Brizzi, tenor, 181
Brumaire, Day of, 219
Brunswick, Duke of, 246
Brigadier GSrard {\. Conan Doyle),
250
Buona Parte, 33
Buonaparte, Francis, 34
Buonaparte, Gabriel,
Buonaparte, Ludovico (More), 34
Buonaparte, Jerome (1579), 34
Buonaparte, Augustus, 35
Buonaparte, Sebastian, 37
Buonaparte, Joseph (1660), 38
Buonaparte, Sebastian Nicholas. 38
Buonaparte, Nicolo, 68
Buffon, 54
Bulletin de Paris, 220
Byron, Lord, 263 passim
Cacault, diplomat, 159
Carthaginians in Corsica, 24
Capulets and Montagues, 27
Calonne, M. de,
294
INDEX
Caesars, Byzantine, 33
Caesars, Roman, 33
Castracani, Castruccio, 33
Caesar, Julius, 41
Caesar, works of. 51
Camoens, work of, 51
Canova, 158 et seq.
Campo-Formio, 159
Catholicity and Art, 172
Catechism, the Imperial, 209 et seq.
Caprara, Cardinal, 215 e/ seq.
C6sar, coachman, 91
Charlemagne and Corsica, 25
Charles VI., Emperor, 26
Churchill, family of, 32
Charles XII., 43
Chateau, R. P., 53
Choiseul, Due de, 70
Chaptal, Minister, 83
Chameroi, Mademoiselle, 83
Chantilly, chateau de, 133
Chatsworth House, 165
Chaband, Monsieur, 237, 238
Christ, Napoleon on, 196
Chateaubriand, 259 et seq.
Chuquet, biographer, 52, 56
Cicero, works of, 51
Cinna, 93
Claudius, Emperor, 124
Cluny, chateau de, 133
Cimarosa, 183
Corsica, 20 et seq.
Corsican Vendette, 22
Colonna gens, 30, 33
Cond6, 42
Cornelius Nepos, 51
Corneille, 18, 51, 62 et seq.
Confrat Social, le, 55
Constant, Benjamin, 237 et seq.
Constant, body servant, 82 passim
Com6die Fran9aise, 100 passim
Corregio : Saint JerSme, 138
Coronation of Napoleon, 151 et seq.
Consalvi, Cardinal, 160
Correspondance, 180
Courrier de VArmie. 231
Commons, House of, 195
Crescentini, tenor, 181
Cromwell, Oliver, 32
Cumberland, Duke of, 43
D
Daedalus and Icarus, 158
Davout, Marshal, 44
Daru, of&cial, 109
Dazincourt, M., 112
David, Imperial painter, 142 et seq.
David, J. L. I., biographer, 146
Denou, an intellectual, 58
Decrds, official, 130
Deists and God, 192
Delphine. 241
De I'Allemagne, 247
De Virts (Nepos), 51
De la LittSrature, 240
Diodorus Siculus, 25
Disraeli, Benjamin, 45
Dion Cassius, 124
Dow, artist, 138
Drost, Barou, 27
Douglas, Marquis of, 155
Dreyfous, Maurice, 260 .
Duval, Alex., 70
Dupaty, dramatist, 71
Duroc, Earl Marshal, 76
Durer, A., 138
Duphot, General, 259
EcKERMANN, secretary, 107, 108
Education, Napoleon on, 206
Elisa Bonaparte, 56
En Corse (Merim6e), 29
Encyclopaedists. 264
Enghien, Due d', 113, 201, 223, 262
Erasmus, works of, 51
Erfurt, Congress of, 108 et seq.
Eroica, symphony, 182
Esprit des Lois, 55
Etruscans in Corsica, 24
Eutropius, 51
F^NfeLON, Archbishop, 52
Fesch, Cardinal, 197
Fievee, editor, 220 et seq.
F16chier, 52
Fleet, the (prison), 27
Fleury, director, 91
Fontanes, M. de, 117
Fontenelle, 18
Fouche (Otranto), 219 et seq.
Frederick II., of Prussia, 43
Freemasonry, 57
Friedland, battle of, 116
INDEX
295
Gautier, critic, 237
Gazette de France , fa , 2 1 8
Georgics, Fourth Book of the, 51
G6nin, R. P., 53
Genoa, 20
George, Mademoiselle, 88 et seq.
Genres tranchds, 119
Gepp, Professor, 209
Genlis, Madame de, 220
GSnie dii Christianisme, 226, 260
" Georges Sand," 242
G6rard, painter, 137 passim
Gibbon, historian, 59
Goethe, J. W. von, 32, 106 et seq.
Gourgaud, Baron, 41 passim
Gobelins, les, 136
Greeks in Corsica, 24
Graudmaison, poet, 81
Gregory VII. (Hildebrand) , 203
Grotthus, F. von, 247
Gros, painter, 137 passim
Grassini, la, 161 et seq.
Guelphs and Ghibellines, 27
Gustavus Adolphus, 43
Guzman, Mademoiselle (Empress
Eug6nie), 267
Guizot, historian, 226
Jacobin Press, the, 239
Janfeld, podesid, 33
Janin, Jules, loi
Jena, battle of, 44
Jerome Bonaparte, 10 1 passim
Jewry and Napoleon, 57
Joseph Bonaparte, 55 passim
Josephine, Empress, 161 passim
Journalism, Napoleon and, 218
seq.
Journal des Dibats, 218 et seq.
Journal de Paris, 218
Journal Unrvetsel, le, 230
Julian House, the, 32
Junot, General, 46
Julius II., Pope, 173
K
King of Rome, the, 206
Knights of Malta, 52
Korsakoff, General, 43
Kotzebue, patriot, 114
H
Habsburg, House of, 32
Hamlet, Napoleon sees, 63
Hannibal, 41
Hector, a tragedy, 69
Hennequin, artist, 134
Henri IV., 41
Hinard, Damas, 42
Hobhouse, Cam, 265
Hoche, General, 44
Hohenlinden, battle of, 45
Homer, 51 passim
Horace, works of, 51
Iberians in Corsica, 24
Iliad, the, 72
Institut de France, 122
Invalides, Les, 133, 145
Iphigenia, 89
Isabey : Malmaison picture, 147
Italian Campaign, 1796, 43 passim
La Bruy^re, 20, 51
Lawyer, the Corsican. 35
La Villetta, estate, 37
La F6re, Battery XII . of, 58
Lannes, Marshal, 62, 109 passim
La Vedova, play, 68
La Fontaine, 73
Las Cases, Memoirs, 80
Lansdowne House, 164
La Rochefoucauld, de, 243
Les Templiers, 64, 65
Les Bardes, opera, 184
Lemercier, poet, 81
Lessing, 114
Le Moniteur, 109 passim
Lefivre, Robert, 138
Lebrun, 150
Leo X., Pope, 173
Lesueur, composer, 184
Lemarrois, General, 259
Ligurians in Corsica, 24
Livy, Book XXL, 51
Library, Napoleon's, 59
Lockhart, historian, 19
296
INDEX
Louis Bonaparte, 56 passim
Louis XI., 41
Louis XIV., 41
Louis XVI., 21, 31
Louis XVIII., 165
Lunegiana, canton, 20
Luther, Martin, 32
Lucca, dictator of, 33
Lucian, work of, 51
Lucien Bonaparte, 56 passim
Luce de Lancival, 69
Lyons, A.cademy of, 57
M
Mably, historian, 34
Marius, dictator, 32
Marlborough, Duke of, 32, 42
Mala Parte, 33
Macedon, House of, 33
Marceau, General, 44
Marengo, battle of, 45
Massena, Marshal, 45
Manasseh, tribe of, 45
Massillon, 52
Marigny, historian, 54
Macbeth, Napoleon sees, 63
Machiavclli, 54 passim
Maret, Minister, 109
Mahomet (Voltaire), 115 passim
Marly, chateau de, 133
Marie Louise, 166 ei seq.
Masson, Frederic, 170 passim
Marcus Aurelius, 174
Marchesi, tenor, 185
Manning, Cardinal, 190
Macaulay, Lord, 192, 220
Merim6e, P. de, 29
Memoirs of de Grammont, 5g
Medici Venxis, 138
M6neval, M. de, 181
M6hul, composer, 180
Meaux, Bishop of (Bossuet), 210
Mercure de France, 225
Mir ope (Voltaire), 83
Milton, 51
Military School, Paris, 53
Mirabeau, M. de, 54
Mincio, operations on the, 234
Moreau, General, 45
Mouravit, G., 50
Montesquieu, Baron de, 55
Moli^re, his place, 64 passim
Montmorency, de, 243
Murat, Joachim, 97 passim
Miiller, Chancellor, 107
Miiller, Johann von, 116 passim
Music and Politics, 180
N
Nansouty, M. de, 120
Napoleon : the Last Phase (Rose-
bery), 18
" Napoleon." variously spelled, 28
Napoleon III., 193, 201
Narbonne, M. de, 232
Newman, Cardinal, 19, 190
New Blood, a theory, 31
Neuhof, Theodore, 26
Ney, Marshal, 46 passim
Neo-Christian notions, lyi
Necker, banker, 238
Norvins, M. de, 199
O
Opinions of Napoleon, 42
Oratory, three styles of, 31
Organic Articles, the, 209
Ornano, Jacopo, 26
Ornano, Signor, 30
Orsini, family of, 33
Ossian, songs of, 56
Othello, Napoleon sees, 63
Otranto (Fouchd), 219 et seq.
Ouvrard, array contractor, 10 1
Pabr, Monsieur, 183 et seq.
Paisiello, composer, 182
Pale, the Corsican, 35
Paoli, 27
Paravisino (Paravicini), 20
Pauline Bonaparte, 153 passim
Petrus Cyrnceus, 21
Phaedrus, Fables of, 51
Pietra-Santa, 20
Pius VII., Pope, 160 passim
Plato's Republic, 54
" Politics and Fate," 66
Pont des Arts, Paris, 133
INDEX
297
Pozzo di Borgo, 22, 33
Portalis, M. de, 209
Priests and politics, 173
Prudh'on, 137
Publicistt, le, 223
R
Racine, 51 passim
Ramolini family, 20
Ramolini, Letitia, 27
Rape of Sabine Women, 143, 144
Rationalism, scientific, 264
Rawdon Crawley, 198
Raynouard, playwright, 65
Razel, writer, 24
Regnault, painter, 151
Reichstadt, Duke of, 59
Reinhardt, Graf von, no
Rembrandt, 138
Religion and Art, 172
Remusat, Madame de, 41 passim
Remusat, Monsieur de, 41 passim
Richard III. of England, 34
Rigel, pianist, 80
Rivoli, battle of, 255, 257
RivoU, dukedom of, 45
Roederer, official, 47
Rocquain, Felix, 219
Rocca, Monsieur de, 249
Rossini, composer, 182
Rostopchin, M., 248
Rousseau, J. J., 53 passim
Roustan, mameluke, 91, 97
Royalist Press, 239
Rubens, P. P., 138
Rudolph of Habsburg, 32
Sidnnia, 45
" Sixifime latine," 50
Solus : a degree, 62
Sonper de Beaucaire, 58
" Soul of Mihtarism," 269
St Helena, 41 passim
Stagira, 32
Stael, Augustus de, 244
Stael, Madame de, 234 et seq.
Stein, Baron, 248
Strabo on Corsica, 25
Suard, Monsieur, 117,223, 224
Suetonius, 124
Tacitus, 121 et seq.
Talma, 67, 76 et seq.
Talleyrand, 62
Tartuffe (Mohdre), 64
Tasso, work of, 51
Tilimaqiie, 120
T6niers, David, 138
The Wolf and the Lamb, 73
Theocritus, work of, 51
Thiebault, historian, 46
Thiers: coronation sketch, 148, 149,
200
Thirty Years' War, 43
Titus, Emperor, 174
Tott, Baron, 54
Toumai, See of, 197
Trajan, Emperor, 174
Treviso, records of, 21
Troy, Siege of, 71
Turenne. 4.2
Tusoli, Maria, 38
Tuscany, Grand Duke of, 138
Saint Martin, Abbey, 133
Sallust, works of , 51
Sapieha, Prince, 89, 92
Saracens in Corsica, 25
Saxe, Marshal, 43
Schiller, 114
Schlegel, author, 242
Seneca on Corsica, 21
S6gur, de, family, 243
Shakespeare, 62, 63, 73 passim
Shaw, Lifeguardsman, 42
Sifiyes, Abb6, 237
VfeLY, historian, 73
Venice, oligarchic, 175
Venus and Adonii, 159
Verona, 27
Vertot, Abb6, 52
Vignon, 131
Villa Buonaparte. 28
Villemain, Monsieur de, 232
Villoteau, singer. 81
Volnais, actress, 91
Voltaire, 51 passim
298
INDEX
w
Wag RAM, battle of, 42
Walewska, Madame, 268
Walpole, Horace, 27
Waterloo, 42 passim
Waverley, author of, 31
Wellesley, family of, 32
Wellington, Duke of, 32, 187
Werther, Sorrows of, 62
Wieland, 114 et seq.
Wurmser, Marshal, 43
Wurtemburg, Prince of, 26
ZiNGARELLi, Signor,
Zola . Rome, 169
Zurich, battle of, 45
IPfiSOJsgfcA^^DUE
miA 198
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