The Modern Regime Volume I Part 2

His constructive imagination.--His projects and dreams.

--Manifestation of the master faculty and its excesses.

But this mult.i.tude of information and observations form only the smallest portion of the mental population swarming in this immense brain; for, on his idea of the real, germinate and swarm his concepts of the possible; without these concepts there would be no way to handle and transform things, and that he did handle and transform them we all know.

Before acting, he has decided on his plan, and if this plan is adopted, it is one among several others,[1170] after examining, comparing, and giving it the preference; he has accordingly thought over all the others. Behind each combination adopted by him we detect those he has rejected; there are dozens of them behind each of his decisions, each maneuver effected, each treaty signed, each decree promulgated, each order issued, and I venture to say, behind almost every improvised action or word spoken. For calculation enters into everything he does, even into his apparent expansiveness, also into his outbursts when in earnest; if he gives way to these, it is on purpose, foreseeing the effect, with a view to intimidate or to dazzle. He turns everything in others as well as in himself to account--his pa.s.sion, his vehemence, his weaknesses, his talkativeness, he exploits it all for the advancement of the edifice he is constructing.[1171] Certainly among his diverse faculties, however great, that of the constructive imagination is the most powerful. At the very beginning we feel its heat and boiling intensity beneath the coolness and rigidity of his technical and positive instructions.

"When I plan a battle," said he to Roederer, "no man is more spineless than I am. I over exaggerate to myself all the dangers and all the evils that are possible under the circ.u.mstances. I am in a state of truly painful agitation. But this does not prevent me from appearing quite composed to people around me; I am like a woman giving birth to a child.[1172]

Pa.s.sionately, in the throes of the creator, he is thus absorbed with his coming creation; he already antic.i.p.ates and enjoys living in his imaginary edifice. "General," said Madame de Clermont-Tonnerre to him, one day, "you are building behind a scaffolding which you will take down when you have done with it." "Yes, Madame, that's it,"

replied Bonaparte; "you are right. I am always living two years in advance."[1173] His response came with "incredible vivacity," as if a sudden inspiration, that of a soul stirred in its innermost fiber.--Here as well, the power, the speed, fertility, play, and abundance of his thought seem unlimited. What he has accomplished is astonishing, but what he has undertaken is more so; and whatever he may have undertaken is far surpa.s.sed by what he has imagined. However vigorous his practical faculty, his poetical faculty is stronger; it is even too vigorous for a statesman; its grandeur is exaggerated into enormity, and its enormity degenerates into madness. In Italy, after the 18th of Fructidor, he said to Bourrienne:

"Europe is a molehill; never have there been great empires and great revolutions, except in the Orient, with its 600,000,000 inhabitants."[1174]

The following year at Saint-Jean d'Acre, on the eve of the last a.s.sault, he added

"If I succeed I shall find in the town the pasha's treasure and arms for 300,000 men. I stir up and arm all Syria.... I march on Damascus and Aleppo; as I advance in the country my army will increase with the discontented. I proclaim to the people the abolition of slavery, and of the tyrannical government of the pashas. I reach Constantinople with armed ma.s.ses. I overthrow the Turkish Empire; I found in the East a new and grand empire, which fixes my place with posterity, and perhaps I return to Paris by the way of Adrianople, or by Vienna, after having annihilated the house of Austria." [1175]

Become consul, and then emperor, he often referred to this happy period, when, "rid of the restraints of a troublesome civilization," he could imagine at will and construct at pleasure.[1176]

"I created a religion; I saw myself on the road to Asia, mounted on an elephant, with a turban on my head, and in my hand a new Koran, which I composed to suit myself."

Confined to Europe, he thinks, after 1804, that he will reorganize Charlemagne's empire.

"The French Empire will become the mother country of other sovereignties... I mean that every king in Europe shall build a grand palace at Paris for his own use; on the coronation of the Emperor of the French these kings will come and occupy it; they will grace this imposing ceremony with their presence, and honor it with their salutations."[1177] The Pope will come; he came to the first one; he must necessarily return to Paris, and fix himself there permanently.

Where could the Holy See be better off than in the new capital of Christianity, under Napoleon, heir to Charlemagne, and temporal sovereign of the Sovereign Pontiff? Through the temporal the emperor will control the spiritual,[1178] and through the Pope, consciences."

In November, 1811, unusually excited, he says to De Pradt:

"In five years I shall be master of the world; only Russia will remain, but I will crush her.[1179]... Paris will extend out to St. Cloud."

To render Paris the physical capital of Europe is, through his own confession, "one of his constant dreams."

"At times," he says,[1180]"I would like to see her a city of two, three, four millions of inhabitants, something fabulous, colossal, unknown down to our day, and its public establishments adequate to its population....

Archimedes proposed to lift the world if he could be allowed to place his lever; for myself, I would have changed it wherever I could have been allowed to exercise my energy, perseverance, and budgets."

At all events, he believes so; for however lofty and badly supported the next story of his structure may be, he has always ready a new story, loftier and more unsteady, to put above it. A few months before launching himself, with all Europe at his back, against Russia, he said to Narbonne:[1181]

"After all, my dear sir, this long road is the road to India. Alexander started as far off as Moscow to reach the Ganges; this has occurred to me since St. Jean d'Acre.... To reach England to-day I need the extremity of Europe, from which to take Asia in the rear.... Suppose Moscow taken, Russia subdued, the czar reconciled, or dead through some court conspiracy, perhaps another and dependent throne, and tell me whether it is not possible for a French army, with its auxiliaries, setting out from Tiflis, to get as far as the Ganges, where it needs only a thrust of the French sword to bring down the whole of that grand commercial scaffolding throughout India. It would be the most gigantic expedition, I admit, but practicable in the nineteenth century. Through it France, at one stroke, would secure the independence of the West and the freedom of the seas."

While uttering this his eyes shone with strange brilliancy, and he acc.u.mulates subjects, weighing obstacles, means, and chances: the inspiration is under full headway, and he gives himself up to it. The master faculty finds itself suddenly free, and it takes flight; the artist,[1182] locked up in politics, has escaped from his sheath; he is creating out of the ideal and the impossible. We take him for what he is, a posthumous brother of Dante and Michael Angelo. In the clear outlines of his vision, in the intensity, coherency, and inward logic of his dreams, in the profundity of his meditations, in the superhuman grandeur of his conceptions, he is, indeed, their fellow and their equal. His genius is of the same stature and the same structure; he is one of the three sovereign minds of the Italian Renaissance. Only, while the first two operated on paper and on marble, the latter operates on the living being, on the sensitive and suffering flesh of humanity.

[Footnote 1101: Reforms introduced by Napoleon after his coup d'etat 9 Nov. 1799. (SR.)]

[Footnote 1102: The main authority is, of course, the "correspondance de l'Empereur Napoleon I.," in thirty-two-volumes. This correspondance, unfortunately, is still incomplete, while, after the sixth volume, it must not be forgotten that much of it has been purposely stricken out.

"In general," say the editors (XVI., p.4), "we have been governed simply by this plain rule, that we were required to publish only what the Emperor himself would have given to the public had he survived himself, and, antic.i.p.ating the verdict of time, exposed to posterity his own personality and system."--The savant who has the most carefully examined this correspondence, entire in the French archives, estimates that it comprises about 80,000 pieces, of which 30,000 have been published in the collection referred to; pa.s.sages in 20,000 of the others have been stricken out on account of previous publication, and about 30,000 more, through considerations of propriety or policy. For example, but little more than one-half of the letters from Napoleon to Bigot de Preameneu on ecclesiastical matters have been published; many of these omitted letters, all important and characteristic, may be found in "L'eglise romaine et le Premier Empire," by M. d'Haussonville. The above-mentioned savant estimates the number of important letters not yet published at 2,000.]

[Footnote 1103: "Memorial de Sainte Helene," by Las Casas (May 29, 1816).--"In Corsica, Paoli, on a horseback excursion, explained the positions to him, the places where liberty found resistance or triumphed. Estimating the character of Napoleon by what he saw of it through personal observation, Paoli said to him, "Oh, Napoleon, there is nothing modern in you, you belong wholly to Plutarch!"--Antonomarchi, "Memoires," Oct. 25, 1819. The same account, slightly different, is there given: "Oh. Napoleon," said Paoli to me, "you do not belong to this century; you talk like one of Plutarch's characters. Courage, you will take flight yet!"]

[Footnote 1104: De Segur, "Histoire et Memoires," I., 150. (Narrative by Pontecoulant, member of the committee in the war, June, 1795.) "Boissy d'Anglas told him that he had seen the evening before a little Italian, pale, slender, and puny, but singularly audacious in his views and in the vigor of his expressions.--The next day, Bonaparte calls on Pontecou1ant, Att.i.tude rigid through a morbid pride, poor exterior, long visage, hollow and bronzed.... He is just from the army and talks like one who knows what he is talking about."]

[Footnote 1105: Coston, "Biographie des premieres annees de Napoleon Buonaparte," 2 vols. (1840), pa.s.sim.--Yung, "Bonaparte et son Temps,"

I., 300, 302. (Pieces genealogiques.)--King Joseph, "Memoires," I., 109, 111. (On the various branches and distinguished men of the Bonaparte family.)--Miot de Melito, "Memoires," II., 30. (Doc.u.ments on the Bonaparte family, collected on the spot by the author in 1801.)]

[Footnote 1106: "Memorial," May 6, 1816.--Miot de Melito, II., 30. (On the Bonapartes of San Miniato): "The last offshoot of this branch was a canon then still living in this same town of San Miniato, and visited by Bonaparte in the year IV, when he came to Florence."]

[Footnote 1107: "Correspondance de l'Empereur Napoleon I." (Letter of Bonaparte, Sept.29, 1797, in relation to Italy): "A people at bottom inimical to the French through the prejudices, character, and customs of centuries."]

[Footnote 1108: Miot de Melito, I., 126, (1796): "Florence, for two centuries and a half, had lost that antique energy which, in the stormy times of the Republic, distinguished this city. Indolence was the dominant spirit of all cla.s.ses.. . Almost everywhere I saw only men lulled to rest by the charms of the most exquisite climate, occupied solely with the details of a monotonous existence, and tranquilly vegetating under its beneficent sky."--(On Milan, in 1796, cf. Stendhal, introduction to the "Chartreuse de Parme.")]

[Footnote 1109: "Miot de Melito," I., 131: "Having just left one of the most civilized cities in Italy, it was not without some emotion that I found myself suddenly transported to a country (Corsica) which, in its savage aspect, its rugged mountains, and its inhabitants uniformly dressed in coa.r.s.e brown cloth, contrasted so strongly with the rich and smiling landscape of Tuscany, and with the comfort, I should almost say elegance, of costume worn by the happy cultivators of that fertile soil."]

[Footnote 1110: Miot de Melito, II., 30: "Of a not very important family of Sartene."--II., 143. (On the canton of Sartene and the Vendettas of 1796).--Coston, I., 4: "The family of Madame Laet.i.tia, sprung from the counts of Cotalto, came originally from Italy."]

[Footnote 1111: His father, Charles Bonaparte, weak and even frivolous, "too fond of pleasure to care about his children," and to see to his affairs, tolerably learned and an indifferent head of a family, died at the age of thirty-nine of a cancer in the stomach, which seems to be the only bequest he made to his son Napoleon.--His mother, on the contrary, serious, authoritative, the true head of a family, was, said Napoleon, "hard in her affections she punished and rewarded without distinction, good or bad; she made us all feel it."--On becoming head of the household, "she was too parsimonious-even ridiculously so. This was due to excess of foresight on her part; she had known want, and her terrible sufferings were never out of her mind.... Paoli had tried persuasion with her before resorting to force... . Madame replied heroically, as a Cornelia would have done.... From 12 to 15,000 peasants poured down from the mountains of Ajaccio; our house was pillaged and burnt, our vines destroyed, and our flocks. ... In other respects, this woman, from whom it would have been so difficult to extract five francs, would have given up everything to secure my return from Elba, and after Waterloo she offered me all she possessed to restore my affairs." (" Memorial," May 29, 1816, and "Memoires d'Antonomarchi," Nov. 18, 1819.--On the ideas and ways of Bonaparte's mother, read her "Conversation" in "Journal et Memoires," vol. IV., by Stanislas Girardin.) d.u.c.h.esse d'Abrantes,"

Memoires," II., 318, 369. "Avaricious out of all reason except on a few grave occasions.... No knowledge whatever of the usages of society....

very ignorant, not alone of our literature, but of her own."--Stendhal, "Vie de Napoleon": "The character of her son is to be explained by the perfectly Italian character of Madame Laet.i.tia."]

[Footnote 1112: The French conquest is effected by armed force between July 30, 1768, and May 22, 1769. The Bonaparte family submitted May 23, 1769, and Napoleon was born on the following 15th of August.]

[Footnote 1113: Antonomarchi, "Memoires," October 4, 1819. "Memorial,"

May 29, 1816.]

[Footnote 1114: "Miot de Melito," II., 33: "The day I arrived at Bocognano two men lost their lives through private vengeance. About eight years before this one of the inhabitants of the canton had killed a neighbor, the father of two children.... On reaching the age of sixteen or seventeen years these children left the country in order to dog the steps of the murderer, who kept on the watch, not daring to go far from his village.... Finding him playing cards under a tree, they fired at and killed him, and besides this accidentally shot another man who was asleep a few paces off. The relatives on both sides p.r.o.nounced the act justifiable and according to rule." Ibid., I., 143: "On reaching Bastia from Ajaccio the two princ.i.p.al families of the place, the Peraldi and the Visuldi, fired at each other, in disputing over the honor of entertaining me."]

[Footnote 1115: Bourrienne, "Memoires," I., 18, 19.]

[Footnote 1116: De Segur, "Histoire et Memoires," I,, 74.]

[Footnote 1117: Yung, I., 195. (Letter of Bonaparte to Paoli, June 12, 1789); I., 250 (Letter of Bonaparte to b.u.t.tafuoco, January 23 1790).]

[Footnote 1118: Yung, I., 107 (Letter of Napoleon to his father, Sept.

12, 1784); I., 163 (Letter of Napoleon to Abbe Raynal, July, 1786); I., 197 (Letter of Napoleon to Paoli, June 12, 1789). The three letters on the history of Corsica are dedicated to Abbe Raynal in a letter of June 24, 1790, and may be found in Yung, I., 434.]

[Footnote 1119: Read especially his essay "On the Truths and Sentiments most important to inculcate on Men for their Welfare" (a subject proposed by the Academy of Lyons in 1790). "Some bold men driven by genius.. .. Perfection grows out of reason as fruit out of a tree....

Reason's eyes guard man from the precipice of the pa.s.sions... The spectacle of the strength of virtue was what the Lacedaemonians princ.i.p.ally felt.... Must men then be lucky in the means by which they are led on to happiness?.... My rights (to property) are renewed along with my transpiration, circulate in my blood, are written on my nerves, on my heart.... Proclaim to the rich--your wealth is your misfortune, withdrawn within the lat.i.tude of your senses.... Let the enemies of nature at thy voice keep silence and swallow their rabid serpents'

tongues.... The wretched shun the society of men, the tapestry of gayety turns to mourning.... Such, gentlemen, are the Sentiments which, in animal relations, mankind should have taught it for its welfare."]

[Footnote 1120: Yung, I., 252 (Letter to b.u.t.tafuoco). "Dripping with the blood of his brethren, sullied by every species of crime, he presents himself with confidence under his vest of a general, the sole reward of his criminalities."--I., 192 (Letter to the Corsican Intendant, April 2, 1879). "Cultivation is what ruins us"--See various ma.n.u.script letters, copied by Yung, for innumerable and gross mistakes in French.--Miot de Melito, I., 84 (July, 1796). "He spoke curtly and, at this time, very incorrectly."--Madame de Remusat, I., 104. "Whatever language he spoke it never seemed familiar to him; he appeared to force himself in expressing his ideas."--Notes par le Comte Chaptal (unpublished), councillor of state and afterwards minister of the interior under the Consulate: "At this time, Bonaparte did not blush at the slight knowledge of administrative details which he possessed; he asked a good many questions and demanded definitions and the meaning of the commonest words in use. As it very often happened with him not to clearly comprehend words which he heard for the first time, he always repeated these afterwards as he understood them; for example, he constantly used section for session, armistice for amnesty, fulminating point for culminating point, rentes voyageres for 'rentes viageres,' etc."]

[Footnote 1121: De Segur, I., 174]

[Footnote 1122: Cf. the "Memoires" of Marshal Marmont, I., 15, for the ordinary sentiments of the young n.o.bility. "In 1792 I had a sentiment for the person of the king, difficult to define, of which I recovered the trace, and to some extent the power, twenty-two years later; a sentiment of devotion almost religious in character, an innate respect as if due to a being of a superior order. The word King then possessed a magic, a force, which nothing had changed in pure and honest b.r.e.a.s.t.s....

This religion of royalty still existed in the ma.s.s of the nation,, and especially amongst the well-born, who, sufficiently remote from power, were rather struck with its brilliancy than with its imperfections....

This love became a sort of worship."]

[Footnote 1123: Bourrienne, "Memoires," I. 27.--Segur, I. 445. In 1795, at Paris, Bonaparte, being out of military employment, enters upon several commercial speculations, amongst which is a bookstore, which does not succeed. (Stated by Sebastiani and many others.)]