Heroes of Modern Europe Part 11

The saying of Frederick that the Frenchman was only an orange, of which, having squeezed the juice, he {161} should throw away the skin, very naturally rankled in the poet to whom it was repeated.

There was jealousy and tale-bearing at Potsdam which went far to destroy the mutual admiration of those two strong personalities who had thought to dwell so happily together. Voltaire spoke disparagingly of Frederick's literary achievements, and compared the task of correcting his host's French verses with that of washing dirty linen. Politeness had worn very thin when the writer described the monarch as an ape who ought to be flogged for his tricks, and gave him the nickname of _Luc_, a pet monkey which was noted for a vicious habit of biting!

In March 1753, Voltaire left the court, thoroughly weary of life in a place where there was so little interest in letters. He had a _fracas_ at Frankfort, where he was required to give up the court decorations he had worn with childlike enjoyment, and also a volume of royal verses which Frederick did not wish to be made public. For five weeks he lay in prison with his niece, Madame Denis, complaining of frightful indignities. He boxed the ears of a bookseller to whom he owed money, attempted to shoot a clerk, and in general committed many strange follies which were quite opposed to his claims to philosophy. There was an end of close friendship with Prussia, but he still drew his pension and corresponded with the cynical Frederick, only occasionally referring to their notorious differences. In dispraise of the niece Madame Denis, the King abandoned the toleration he had professedly extended. "Consider all that as done with," he wrote on the subject of the imprisonment, "and never let me hear again of that wearisome niece, who has not as much merit as her uncle with which to cover her {162} defects. People talk of the servant of Moliere, but n.o.body will ever speak of the niece of Voltaire."

The poet resented this contempt of his niece, for he was indulgently fond of the homely coquette who was without either wit or the good sense to win pardon for the frivolity of her tastes and extravagances.

Living in a learned circle, she talked, like a parrot, of literature and wrote plays for the theatre of Ferney. "She wrote a comedy; but the players, out of respect to Voltaire, declined to act in it. She wrote a tragedy; but the one favour, which the repeated entreaties of years could never wring from Voltaire, was that he would read it."

In spite of his quarrels, Voltaire spoke favourably of the German freedom which allowed writings to be published reflecting on the Great Elector. He could not endure the hostile temper of his own land and deserted Paris to settle at Geneva, that free republic which extended hospitality to refugees from all countries. He built two hermitages, one for summer and one for winter, both commanding beautiful scenes, which he enjoyed for twenty years to come, though he was not content with one shelter. He bought a life-interest in Tournay and the lordship of Ferney in 1758, declaring that "philosophers ought to have two or three holes underground against the hounds who chase them."

From Ferney he denounced the religion of the time, accusing the Church of hatred of truth and real knowledge, with which was coupled a terrible cruelty and lack of toleration.

To make superst.i.tion ridiculous was one of the objects of Voltaire's satire, for, in this way, he hoped to secure due respect for reason.

All abuses were to be torn away, and such traditions as made slaves of the {163} people. The shameful struggles between Jesuits and Jansenists were at their height. How could religion exist when one party believing in works denied the creed of a second believing grace better than deeds, and when both sides were eager to devote themselves to persecution?

In Voltaire's day, the condemnation of free writing came chiefly from the clergy. They would shackle the mind and bring it in subjection to the priesthood. Here was a man sneering at the power claimed by members of a holy body. The narrow bigotry of priests demanded that he should be held in bondage. Yet he did not mock at men who held good lives but at the corrupt who shamed their calling. The horrors of the Inquisition were being revived by zealous Jesuits who were losing authority through the increasing strength of another party of the Catholic Church, then known as Jansenists.

The Jansenists followed the doctrines of Calvin in their belief in predestination and the necessity for conversion, but they differed widely from the Protestants on many points, holding that a man's soul was not saved directly he was converted although conversion might be instantaneous. They were firmly convinced that each human soul should have personal relation with its Maker, but held that this was only possible through the Roman Church. Their chief cause of quarrel with the Jesuits was the accusation brought against the priests of that order that they granted absolution for sins much too readily and without being certain of the sinners' real repentance.

Voltaire's blood boiled when he heard that three young Protestants had been killed because they took {164} up arms at the sound of the tocsin, thinking it was the signal for rebellion. He received under his protection at Geneva the widow and children of the Protestant Calas, who had been broken on the wheel in 1762 because he was falsely declared to have killed his son in order to prevent his turning Catholic. A youth, named La Barre, was sentenced, at the instance of a bishop, to have his tongue and right hand cut off because he was suspected of having tampered with a crucifix. He was condemned to death afterwards on the most flimsy evidence.

Voltaire was all aflame at the ignorance of such fanatics. There was laughter in the writings of the unbelievers of the time, but it was laughter inspired by the miserable belief that jesting was the only means of enduring that which might come. "Witty things do not go well with ma.s.sacres," Voltaire commented. There was force in him to destroy, and he set about destruction.

The clergy had refused in 1750 to bear their share of taxation, though one-fifth of France was in their hands. Superst.i.tion inevitably tends to make bad citizens, the philosopher observed, and set forth the evils to society that resulted from the idle lives which were supported by the labour of more industrious subjects. But in his praiseworthy attack upon the spirit of the Catholicism of his day which stooped to basest cruelty, Voltaire appealed always to intelligence rather than to feeling. He wanted to free the understanding and extend knowledge. He set up reason as a G.o.ddess, and left it to another man to point the way to a social revolution.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau it was who led men to consider the possibility of a State in which all citizens {165} should be free and equal. He suffered banishment and much hardship for the bold schemes he presented. The Parlement of Paris was ruthless when the two books--_emile_ and the _Social Contract_--were published in 1762.

Rousseau, a writer of humble origin, had been the close student of Voltaire since his mind had first formed into a definite individuality.

He had been poor and almost starving many times, had followed the occupations of engraver and music-copier, and had treated with ingrat.i.tude several kindly patrons. Like Voltaire, too, he journeyed over Europe, finding refuge in Geneva, whence came his father's family.

He was a man of sordid life and without morality; but he was true to his life's purpose, and toiled at uncongenial tasks rather than write at other bidding than that of his own soul.

Rousseau's play _Le Devin du Village_ had a court success that brought him into favour with gay ladies. Many a beauty found it difficult to tear herself away from the perusal of his strangely romantic novel _La Nouvelle Helose_, which preached a return to Nature, so long neglected by the artificial age of Paris. All conventions should be thrown off that man might attain the purity which G.o.d had originally intended.

Kings there should not be to deprive their subjects of all liberty, nor n.o.bles who claimed the earth, which was the inheritance of G.o.d's creatures.

At first, this theory of return to Nature pleased the ruling cla.s.ses.

The young King and Queen were well-meaning and kindly to the people.

Louis XVI went among the poor and did something to alleviate the misery that he saw. Marie Antoinette gave up {166} the extravagant career of fashion and spent happy hours in the rustic village of Trianon. n.o.bles and maids of honour played at rusticity, unconscious of the deadly blows that Jean-Jacques had aimed at them in the writings which appealed so strongly to their sentiment. There was a new belief in humanity which sent the d.u.c.h.ess out early in the morning to give bread to the poor, even if at evening she danced at a court which was supported in luxury by their miseries. The poet might congratulate himself on the sensation caused by ideas which sent him through an edict of Parlement into miserable banishment. He did not aim at destruction of the old order, but he depicted an ideal State and to attain that ideal State men butchered their fellows without mercy. The _Social Contract_ became the textbook of the first revolutionary party, and none admired Rousseau more ardently than the ruthless wielder of tyranny who followed out the theorist's idea that in a republic it was necessary sometimes to have a dictator.

There were rival schools of thought during the lifetime of Voltaire and Rousseau. The latter was King of the Markets, destined in years to come to inspire the Convention and the Commune. Voltaire, companion of kings and eager recipient of the favours of Madame de Pompadour, had little sympathy with the author of a book in which the humble watchmaker's son flouted sovereignty and showed no skill in his handling of religion. The elder man offered the younger shelter when abuse was rained upon him; but Jean-Jacques would have none of it, and thought Geneva should have cast out the unbeliever, for Jean-Jacques was a pious man in theory and shocked by the worship {167} of pure reason. The mad acclamations which greeted the return of Voltaire to Paris after thirty years of banishment must have echoed rather bitterly in the ears of Rousseau, who had despised salons and chosen to live apart from all society.

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Chapter XV

The Man from Corsica

Born on August 15th, 1769, Napoleon Buonaparte found himself surrounded from his first hours by all the tumult and the clash of war. Ajaccio, on the rocky island of Corsica, was his birthplace, though his family had Florentine blood. Let.i.tia Ramolino, the mother of Napoleon, was of aristocratic Italian descent.

Corsica was no sunny dwelling-place during the infancy of this young hero, who learned to brood over the wrongs of his island-home. The Corsicans revolted fiercely against the sovereignty of Genoa, and were able to resist all efforts to subdue them until France interfered in the struggle and gained by diplomatic cunning what could not be gained by mere force of arms. This conquest was resented the more bitterly by the Corsicans because they had enjoyed thirteen years of independence in all but name under Paoli, a well-loved patriot. It was after Paoli was driven to England that the young Napoleon wrote, "I was born when my country was perishing, thirty thousand Frenchmen vomited upon our coasts, drowning the throne of Liberty in waves of blood; such was the sight which struck my eyes."

Corsican Napoleon declared himself in the youth of poverty and discontent, when he had dreams of {169} rising to power by such patriotism as had enn.o.bled Paoli. Charles Buonaparte, his father, went over to the winning side, and was eager to secure the friendship of Marboeuf, the French governor of Corsica.

Napoleon, the second of thirteen children, owed a.s.sistance in his early education to Marboeuf for it was impossible for his own family to do more than provide the barest necessities of life. Charles Buonaparte was an idle, careless man and the family poverty bore hardly on his wife Let.i.tia, who had been married at fifteen and compelled to perform much drudgery.

Napoleon entered the military school at Brienne in April 1779, and from there sent letters which might well have warned his parents that they had hatched a prodigy. All the bitterness of a proud humiliated spirit inspired them, whether the boy, despised by richer students, begged his father to remove him, or urged, with utter disregard of filial piety, the repayment by some means of a sum of money he had borrowed.

"If I am not to be allowed the means, either by you or my protector, to keep up a more honourable appearance at the school I am in, send for me home and that immediately. I am quite disgusted with being looked upon as a pauper by my insolent companions, who have only fortune to recommend them, and smile at my poverty; there is not one here, but who is far inferior to me in those n.o.ble sentiments which animate my soul.

. . . If my condition cannot be ameliorated, remove me from Brienne; put me to some mechanical trade, if it must be so; let me but find myself among my equals and I will answer for it, I will soon be their superior. You may judge {170} of my despair by my proposal; once more I repeat it; I would sooner be foreman in a workshop than be sneered at in a first-rate academy."

In the academy Napoleon remained, however, censured by his parents for his ambitious, haughty spirit. He was gloomy and reserved and had few companions, feeling even at this early age that he was superior to those around him. He admired Cromwell, though he thought the English general incomplete in his conquests. He read Plutarch and the _Commentaries_ of Caesar and determined that his own career should be that of a soldier, though he wrote again to the straitened household in Corsica, declaring, "He who cannot afford to make a lawyer of his son, makes him a carpenter."

He chose for the moment to disregard the family ties which were especially strong among the island community. "Let my brothers'

education be less expensive," he urged, "let my sisters work to maintain themselves." There was a touch of ruthless egotism in this spirit, yet the Corsican had real love for his own kindred as he showed in later life. But at this period he panted for fame and glory so ardently that he would readily sacrifice those nearest to him. He could not bear to feel that his unusual abilities might never find full scope; he was certain that one day he would be able to repay any generosity that was shown to him.

The French Revolution broke out and Napoleon saw his first chance of distinction. He was well recommended by his college for a position in the artillery, despite the strange report of the young student's character and manners which was written for the private perusal of those making the appointment. {171} "Napoleon Buonaparte, a Corsican by birth, reserved and studious, neglectful of all pleasures for study; delights in important and judicious readings; extremely attentive to methodical sciences, moderately so as to others; well versed in mathematics and geography; silent, a lover of solitude, whimsical, haughty, excessively p.r.o.ne to egotism, speaking but little, pithy in his answers, quick and severe in repartee, possessed of much self-love, ambitious, and high in expectation."

Soon after the fall of the Bastille, Napoleon placed himself at the head of the revolutionary party in Ajaccio, hoping to become the La Fayette of a National Guard which he tried to establish on the isle of Corsica. He aspired to be the commander of a paid native guard if such could be created, and was not unreasonable in his ambition since he was the only Corsican officer trained at a royal military school. But France rejected the proposal for such a force to be established, and Napoleon had to act on his own initiative. He forfeited his French commission by outstaying his furlough in 1792. Declared a deserter, he saw slight chance of promotion to military glory. Indeed he would probably have been tried by court-martial and shot, had not Paris been in confusion owing to the outbreak of the French war against European allies. He decided to lead the rebels of Corsica, and tried to get possession of Ajaccio at the Easter Festival.

This second attempt to raise an insurrection ended in the entire Buonaparte family being driven by the wrathful Corsicans to France, which henceforth was their adopted country. The Revolution blazed forth and King and Queen went to the scaffold, while treason that might, in time of peace, have served to send an {172} officer to death, proved a stepping-stone to high rank and promotion. It was a civil war, and in it Napoleon was first to show his extraordinary skill in military tactics. He had command of the artillery besieging Toulon in 1793 and was marked as a man of merit, receiving the command of a brigade and pa.s.sing as a general of artillery into the foreign war which Republican France waged against all Europe.

The command of the army of Italy was offered Napoleon by Barras, who was one of the new Directory formed to rule the Republic. A rich wife seemed essential for a poor young man with boundless ambitions just unfolding. Barras had taken up the Corsican, and arranged an introduction for him to Josephine Beauharnais, the beautiful widow of a n.o.ble who had been a victim of the Reign of Terror. He had previously made the acquaintance of Josephine's young son Eugene, when the boy came to ask that his father's sword might be restored to him.

Josephine pleased the suitor by her amiability, and was attracted in turn by his ardent nature. She was in a position to advance his interests through her intimacy with Barras, who promised that Napoleon should hold a great position in the army if she became his wife. She married Napoleon in March 1796, undaunted by the prediction: "You will be a queen and yet you will not sit on a throne." Napoleon's career may then be said to have begun in earnest. It was the dawn of a new age in Europe, where France stood forth as a predominant power.

Austria was against her as the avenger of Marie Antoinette, France's ill-fated Queen, who had been Maria Theresa's daughter. England and Russia were in alliance, though Russia was an uncertain and disloyal ally.

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Want of money might have daunted one less eager for success than the young Napoleon. He was, however, planning a campaign in Italy as an indirect means of attacking Austria. He addressed his soldiers boldly, promising to lead them into the most fruitful plains in the world.

"Rich provinces, great cities will be in your power," he a.s.sured them.

"There you will find honour, fame, and wealth." His first success was notable, but it did not satisfy the inordinate craving of his nature.

"In our days," he told Marmont, "no one has conceived anything great; it falls to me to give the example."

From the outset he looked upon himself as a general independent of the Republic. He was rich in booty, and could pay his men without appealing to the well-nigh exhausted public funds. Silently, he pursued his own policy in war, and that was very different from the policy of any general who had gone before him. He treated with the Pope as a great prince might have treated, offering protection to persecuted priests who were marked out by the Directory as their enemies. He seized property everywhere, scorning to observe neutrality. Forgetting his Italian blood, he carried off many pictures and statues from the Italian galleries that they might be sent to France. He showed now his audacity and the amazing energy of his plans of conquest. The effect of the horror and disorders of Revolutionary wars had been to deprive him of all scruples. He despised a Republic, and despised the French nation as unfit for Republicanism. "A republic of thirty millions of people!" he exclaimed as he conquered Italy, "with our morals, our vices! How is such a thing possible? The nation wants a chief, a chief covered with glory, not theories of {174} government, phrases, ideological essays, that the French do not understand. They want some playthings; that will be enough; they will play with them and let themselves be led, always supposing they are cleverly prevented from seeing the goal toward which they are moving."

But the wily Corsican did not often speak so plainly! Aiming at imperial power, he was careful to dissimulate his intentions since the army supporting him was Republican in sympathy.

Napoleon had achieved the conquest of Italy when only twenty-seven. In 1796 he entered Milan amid the acclamations of the people, his troops pa.s.sing beneath a triumphal arch. The Italians from that day adopted his tricolour ensign.

The Directory gave the conqueror the command of the army which was to be used against England. The old desperate rivalry had broken out again now that the French saw a chance of regaining power in India. It was Napoleon's purpose to wage war in Egypt, and he needed much money for his campaign in a distant country. During the conquest of Italy he had managed to secure money from the Papal chests and he could rely, too, on the vast spoil taken from Berne when the old const.i.tution of the Swiss was overthrown and a new Republic founded. He took Malta, "the strongest place in Europe," and proceeded to occupy Alexandria in 1798. In the following February he marched on Cairo.

England's supremacy at sea destroyed the complete success of the plans which Napoleon was forming. He had never thought seriously of the English admiral Nelson till his own fleet was shattered by him in a naval engagement at Aboukir. After that, he understood that he had to reckon with a powerful enemy.

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The Turks had decided to antic.i.p.ate Napoleon's plan for securing Greece her freedom by preparing a vast army in Syria. The French took the town of Jaffa by a.s.sault, but had to retire from the siege of Acre.

The expedition was not therefore a success, though Napoleon won a victory over the Turkish army at Aboukir. The English triumphed in Egypt and were fortunate enough to win back Malta, which excluded France from the Mediterranean. Napoleon eluded with difficulty the English cruisers and returned to France, where he rapidly rose to power, receiving, after a kind of revolution, the t.i.tle of First Consul. He was to hold office for ten years and receive a salary of half a million francs. In reality, a strong monarchy had been created.

The people of France, however, still fancied themselves a free Republic.