The Modern Regime Volume I Part 27

"n.o.body," says Napoleon,[3334] "is interested in overthrowing a government in which all the deserving are employed."

Then, again, comes his significant exclamation at the end, his summary of modern society, a solemn grandiose figure of speech found in the legendary souvenirs of a glorious antiquity, a cla.s.sic reminiscence of the n.o.ble Olympian games,

"Henceforth, all careers are open to talent!"

IV. The Struggle for Office and t.i.tle.

Compet.i.tion and prizes.--Mult.i.tude of offices.--How their number is increased by the extension of central patronage and of the French territory.--Situation of a Frenchman abroad.--It gives him rank.--Rapidity of promotion.

--Constant elimination and multiplicity of vacancies in the army.--Preliminary elimination in the civil service.

--Proscription of cultivated men and interruption of education during the Revolution.--General or special instruction rare in 1800.--Small number of competent candidates.--Easy promotion due to the lack of compet.i.tors.--Importance and attraction the prizes offered.--The Legion of Honor.--The imperial n.o.bility.--Dotations and majorities.--Emulation.

Let us now consider the career which he thus opens to them and the prizes he offers. These prizes are in full view, ranged along each racecourse, graduated according to distances and more and more striking and magnificent. Every ambition is provided for, the highest as well as the lowest, and these are countless; for they consist of offices of every grade in the civil and military hierarchies of a great centralized State whose intervention is universal, under a government which systematically tolerates no authority or influence outside of itself and which monopolizes every species of social importance for its own functionaries.[3335]--All these prizes, even the smallest and most insignificant, are awarded by it. In the first place, Napoleon has two or three times as many offices to bestow, on the soil of old France alone, as the former kings; for, even in the choice of their staff of officials, the latter were not always free; in many places they did not have, or no longer had the right of appointment. At one time, this right be longed from time immemorial to provincial or munic.i.p.al corporations, laic or ecclesiastic, to a certain chapter, abbey or collegiate church, to a bishop in his diocese, to the seignior in his seignory. At another time the king, once possessing the right, had surrendered or alienated it, in whole or in part through gratuitous favor and the concession of a survivorship or for money and through the sale of an office; in brief, his hands were tied fast by hereditary or acquired privileges There are no privileges now to fetter the hands of the First Consul. The entire civil organization dates from him. The whole body of officials is thus of his own selection, and under him it is much more numerous than that of the ancient Regime; for he has extended the attributions of the State beyond all former bounds. Directly or indirectly, he appoints by hundreds of thousands the mayors and councilors of munic.i.p.alities and the members of general councils, the entire staff of the administration, of the finances, of the judicature, of the clergy, of the University, of public works and of public charity. Besides all this, myriads of ministerial and notarial officials lawyers, ushers, auctioneers, and by way of surplus, or as a natural result, the members of every great private a.s.sociation since no collective enterprise, from the Bank of France and the press to stage lines and tontines, may be established without his permission, nor exist without his tolerance. Not counting the latter, and after deducting likewise the military or active duty and the functionaries who draw pay, the prefect from the earliest years report that, since 1789, the number of people "employed or under government pay" has more than doubled: In Doubs, in the year IX, instead of 916 there are 1820; in Meurthe in the year XIII, instead of 1828 there are 3091; in Ain, in 1806 instead of 955 there are 1771[3336].

As to the army, it has tripled, and according to the First Consul's own calculations, instead of 9,000 or 10,000 officers as in 1789, there are more than 20,000.--These figures go on increasing on the old territory through the very development of the new organization, through the enormous increase of the army, through the re-establishment of religious worship, through the installation of droits reunis, through the inst.i.tution of the University, owing to the increasing number of officials, cures and a.s.sistant-priests, of professors and school-teachers, and of retired and pensioned invalids.[3337]

And these figures, which already swell of themselves, are to swell an additional half through the extension of the ancient territory. Instead of 86 departments with a population of 26 millions, France ends in comprising 130 departments with 42 million inhabitants--Belgium and Piedmont, then Hanover, Tuscany, Central Italy, Illyria, Holland and the Hanseatic provinces, that is to say 44 departments and 16 millions of annexed Frenchmen;[3338] affording another large outlet for little and big ambitions.--Add still another, as a surplus and not less extensive outlet, outside of France: for the subject princes and the va.s.sal kings, Eugene, Louis, Jerome, Murat, and Joseph, each with their governments, import into their realms a more or less numerous body of French officials, familiars, court dignitaries, generals, ministers, administrators, even clerks and other indispensable subalterns, if for no other purpose than to bring the natives within the military and civil compartments of the new Regime and teach them on the spot the conscription, the administration, the civil code, and systems of accounts like those of Paris. Even in the independent or allied States, in Prussia, in Poland, in the confederation of the Rhine, there are, at intervals or permanently, Frenchmen in position and in authority to command contingent forces, to garrison fortresses, to receive supplies and secure the payment of war contributions. Even with the corporal and custom-house inspector on duty on coast at Dantzig and at Reggio, the sentiment of victorious priority equals the possession of rank; in their eyes the natives of the country are semi-barbarians or semi-savages, a backward or prejudiced lot, not even knowing how to speak their language; they feel themselves superior, as formerly the senor soldado of the sixteenth century, or the civis roma.n.u.s. Never since the great Spanish monarchy and the Old Roman empire has a conquering State and propagator of a new regime afforded its subjects such gratifications of self-esteem, nor opened so vast a career to their ambitions.

For, having once adopted their career, they know better than the Spaniards under Charles V. or the Romans under Augustus, how far they can go and how fast they can get ahead. No obstacle impedes them; n.o.body feels himself confined his post; each considers the one he occupies as provisional, each takes it only to await a better one, antic.i.p.ating another at a very early date; he dashes onward, springs aloft and occupies in advance the superior post which he means to secure on the first vacancy, and, under this Regime, the vacancies are numerous.--These vacancies, in the military service and in the grade of officers, may be estimated at nearly four thousand per annum;[3339]

after 1808 and 1809, but especially after the disaster of 1812 and 1813, places are no longer lacking but subjects fill them; Napoleon is obliged to accept youths for officers as beardless as his conscripts, eighteen-year-old apprentices who, after a year or six months in the military academy, might finish their apprenticeship on the battle-field, pupils taken from the philosophy or rhetoric cla.s.ses, willing children (de bonne volonte): On the 13th of December 1808, he draws 50 from his lycees, who don the gold-lace of under-officers at once; in 1809, he calls out 250, to serve in the depot battalions; in 1810, he calls out 150 of the age of nineteen who "know the drill," and who are to be sent on distant expeditions with the commission of second-lieutenant; in 1811, 400 for the school of noncommissioned officers at Fontainebleau, 20 for the Ile-de-Re and 84 who are to be quartermasters; and, in 1812, 112 more and so on. Naturally, thanks to annually increasing gaps made by cannon and bayonet, the survivors in this body of youth mount the faster; in 1813 and 1814, there are colonels and lieutenant-colonels of the age of twenty-five.

In the civil service, if fewer are killed everybody is almost equally over tasked. Under this reign one is soon used up, physically and morally, even in pacific employments, and this also supplies vacancies.

Besides, in default of deaths, wounds and violent elimination, there is another elimination, not less efficacious, operating in this direction, and for a long time, in favor of men of ability, preparing places for them and accelerating their advancement. Napoleon accepts none but competent candidates; now, in 1800, there is a dearth of acceptable candidates for places in the civil service and not, as in 1789, or at the present time, a superabundance and even too great a crowd.--In the military service especially, capacity is innate; natural endowments, courage, coolness, quick perception, physical activity, moral ascendancy, topographical imagination form its princ.i.p.al elements; men just able to read, write and cipher became, in three or four years, during the Revolution, admirable officers and conquering generals.--It is not the same in relation to civil capacity; this requires long and continuous study. To become a priest, magistrate, engineer, professor, prefect or school-teacher, one must have studied theology or law, mathematics or Latin, administration or the finances. If not, the functionary is not qualified to serve: he must, at the very least, know how to spell, be able to write French, examine a law-case, draw up a report, keep accounts, and if needs be, comprehend a plan, make an estimate and read off a map. Men of this stamp are rare at the beginning of the Consulate. As notables,[3340] the Revolution mowed them down first. Among all their sons and so many well-bred youth who have become soldiers through patriotism, or who have left their families to prevent these from becoming suspect, one half repose on the battlefield or have left the hospital only for the cemetery; "the muscadin[3341] died from the first campaign." In any event, for them and their younger brothers, for the children beginning to learn Latin and mathematics, for all who hoped to pursue liberal professions, for the entire generation about to receive either a superior, a common, or even a primary instruction, and hence to furnish brains prepared for intellectual work, there was a lack of this for ten years. Not only were the endowments which provided for instruction confiscated but the educational staff, nearly all ecclesiastic, was one of the most proscribed among those proscribed.

Whilst military requisition and the closing of the schools suppressed the pupils, ma.s.sacres, banishment, imprisonment, dest.i.tution and the scaffold suppressed the teachers. Whilst the ruin of universities and colleges did away with theoretical apprenticeship, the ruin of manufactures and of trade abolished practical apprenticeship. Through the long interruption of all studies, general instruction as well as special competency became rare product in the market.--Hence it is that, in 1800, and during the three or four following years, whoever brought to market either one the other of these commodities was certain of a quick sale;[3342] the new government needed them more than anybody. The moment the seller made up his mind, he was bought, and, whatever he may be, a former Jacobin or a former emigre; he is employed. If he brings both commodities and is zealous, he is promptly promoted; if, on trial, he is found of superior capacity, he will, like Mollien, Gaudin, Tronchet, Pasquier and Mole, attain to the highest posts, for he finds scarcely any compet.i.tors. These he would have had had things followed their usual course; it is the Revolution which has cleared the ground around him; without that the road would have been obstructed; competent candidates would have swarmed. Reckon, if possible, how many men of talent who were destroyed, royalists, monarchists, feuillants, Girondists and even Jacobins. They were the elite of the n.o.blesse, of the clergy, of the bourgeoisie, of the youth and those of riper age.

Thus rid of their most formidable rivals the survivors pursue their way at top speed; the guillotine has wrought for them in advance; it has effected openings in their own ranks, made by bullets in every battle in the ranks of the army, and, in the civil hierarchy as in the military hierarchy, merit, if demonstrated by services, or not arrested by death, reaches the highest summit in very few years.

The prizes offered on these summits are splendid; no attraction is lacking. The great trainer who displays them has omitted none of the seductions which excite and stimulate an ordinary mind. He has a.s.sociated with the positive values of power and wealth every value incident to imagination and opinion; hence his inst.i.tution of decorations and the Legion of Honor.[3343]

"They call it a toy,"[3344] said he, "but men are led by toys...

Frenchmen are not changed by ten years of revolution.... See how the people prostrate themselves before foreign decorations: they have been surprised by them and accordingly do not fail to wear them.... The French cherish but one sentiment, honor: that sentiment, then, requires nourishing--they must have honors."

A very few are satisfied with their own achievements; ordinary men are not even content with the approbation they perceive in the eyes of others: it is too intermittent, too reserved, too mute; they need fame that is brilliant and noisy; they want to hear the constant hum of admiration and respect whenever they appear or whenever their name is mentioned. Even this does not suffice; they are unwilling that their merit should rest in men's minds in the vague state of undefined greatness, but that it should be publicly estimated, have its current value, enjoy undisputed and measured rank on the scale above all other lesser merits.--The new inst.i.tution affords complete satisfaction to all these exigencies of human and French nature. On the 14th of July, 1804,[3345] the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, Napoleon administers the oath to the legionaries and, after a solemn ma.s.s, distributes the insignia under the dome of the Invalides in the presence of the empress and the court; and again one month later, August 16, 1804, on the anniversary of the Emperor's birth, in the camp at Boulogne, facing the ocean and in full view of the flotilla a.s.sembled to conquer England, before one hundred thousand spectators and the entire army, to the roll of eighteen hundred drums. No ceremony, probably, was ever more exciting. The eminent surgeon, Larrey, then decorated, a man of austere virtue, spoke of it with emotion to the end of his life and never alluded that unique day but with a trembling voice. On that day, nearly all the men of superior and tried merit and talent in France[3346] are proclaimed, each with the t.i.tle proportionate his degree of eminence--chevaliers, officers, commanders, grand-officers, and, later on, grand-eagles; each on the same plane with his equals of a different cla.s.s, ecclesiastics alongside of laymen, civilians alongside of soldiers; each honored by the company of his peers, Berthollet, Laplace and Lagrange alongside of Kellermann, Jourdan and Lefebvre, Otto and Tronchet alongside of Ma.s.sena, Augereau, Ney, Lannes, Soult and Davout; four cardinals side by side with eighteen marshals, and likewise even down to corporal, and to Egyptian veterans blinded by ophthalmia on the banks of the Nile, comprising common soldiers who, through some brilliant achievement, had won a sword or a gun of honor, as, for instance, Coignet,[3347] who, dashing ahead with fixed bayonet, kills five Austrian artillerymen and takes their cannon himself alone. Six years before this he was a stable-boy on a farm and could neither read nor write; he is now mentioned among the first of those promoted, a colleague and almost a comrade of Monge, the inventor of descriptive geometry, of de Fontanes, grand-master of the university, of marshals, admirals, and the highest dignitaries, all sharing in common an inestimable treasure, the legitimate heirs of twelve years' acc.u.mulated glory by the sacrifice of so many heroic lives and all the more glorified because so few,[3348] and because, in these days, a man did not obtain the cross by twenty years of plodding in a bureau, on account of routine punctuality, but by wonderful strokes of energy and audacity, by wounds, by braving death a hundred times and looking it in the face daily.

Henceforth, legally as well as in public opinion, they form the staff of the new society, its declared, verified notables, enjoying precedences and even privileges. On pa.s.sing along the street the sentinel presents arms; a company of twenty-five soldiers attends their funeral procession; in the electoral colleges of the department or arrondiss.e.m.e.nt they are electors by right and without being balloted for, simply by virtue of their rank. Their sons are ent.i.tled to scholarships in La Fleche, at Saint-Cyr, and in the lycees, and their daughters at Ecouen or Saint-Denis. With the exception of a t.i.tle, as formerly, they lack nothing for filling the place of the old n.o.bility, and Napoleon re-creates this t.i.tle for their benefit. The t.i.tle itself of chevalier, count, duke or prince carries along with an idea of social superiority; when announced in a drawing room, when it precedes the first sentence of an address, those who are present do not remain inattentive; an immemorial prejudice inclines them to award consideration or even deference. The Revolution tried in vain to destroy this power of words and of history; Napoleon does better: he confiscates it; he arrogates to himself the monopoly of it, he steals the trade-mark from the ancient Regime; he himself creates 48,000 chevaliers, 1000 barons, 388 counts, 31 dukes and 4 princes. Furthermore, he stamps with his own mark the old n.o.bles whom he introduces into his n.o.bility: he coins them anew and often with an inferior t.i.tle; this or that duke is lowered a notch and becomes simply a count: taken at par or at a discount the feudal coin must, in order to pa.s.s, receive the imperial stamp which gives it its recognized value in modern figures.

But, let the old-fashioned metal be what it may, whether gold, silver or copper, even crude and plebeian, the new coin is of good alloy and very handsome. Frequently, like the old currency, it displays coats of arms in high relief, a heraldic crown and the name of a locality; it no longer bears the name of territory, and it does not call to mind a primitive sovereignty. On the contrary, it bears the name of a victory or of a conquest and reminds one of recent exploits. Duc de Montebello or a Prince de la Moskowa is equivalent in the imagination contemporaries to a Duc de Montmorency or a Prince de Rohan; for, if the prince or duke of the empire is without ancestors, he is or will be an ancestor himself. To these prizes coveted by vanity Napoleon tacks on every substantial and pecuniary advantage, in ready money or landed property, not alone large salaries, adjunctive senatoreries, occasional munificent gifts,

* a million at one time to General Lasalle, but likewise vast revenues from the extraordinary domain[3349],

* 32,463,817 francs a year divided amongst 4970 persons,

* pensions from 250 to 5000 francs for all legionaries,

* villas, large estates, private incomes, distinct and superb endowments for those of the highest rank, a fortune of 100,000 livres income and more to 34 of these,

* a fortune of 450,000 livres in the public funds to Cambaceres, of 683,000 livres in the public funds to Ma.s.sena, of 728,000 livres in the public funds to Ney, of 910,000 livres in the public funds to Davout, of 1,354,000 livres in the public funds to Berthier,

* and besides all this, three "sovereign princ.i.p.alities," Neufchatel to Berthier, Benevento to Talleyrand, and Ponte-Corvo to Bernadotte.--

This last attraction which, in these times of violent and premature death, is of no little account. Napoleon opens out hereditary and undefined prospects beyond the perspectives of life and of inferior interests. Each of the t.i.tles conferred by him, that of prince, duke, count, baron, and even that of chevalier, is transmissible in direct descent, according to primogeniture from father to son, and sometimes from uncle to nephew, under specified conditions which are very acceptable, and of which the first is the inst.i.tution of an inalienable majority, inattackable, consisting of this or that income or real property, of bank stock or state securities, from 3000 francs for common chevaliers up to 200,000 francs for the dukes, that is to say, a certain fortune in perpetuity due to the sovereign's liberality, or to the prudence of the founder, and intended to support the dignity of the t.i.tle from male to male and from link to link throughout the future chain of successive inheritors. Through this supreme reward, the subtle tempter has a hold on the men who care not alone for themselves but for their family: henceforth, the work as he does, eighteen hours a day, stand fire, and say to themselves, while sinking at their desks or facing cannon-ball that their pre-eminence survives them in their posterity:

"In any event my son will succeed me and even become greater by my death."

All the temptations which serve to overcome the natural lethargy of human matter are simultaneously united and; with the exception of personal conscience and the desire for personal independence, all other internal springs are strained to the utmost. One unusual circ.u.mstance gives to eager ambitions a further increase of energy, impulse and enthusiasm.--All these successful or parvenu men are contemporaries: all have started alike on the same line and from the same average or low condition in life; each sees old comrades superior to himself on the upper steps; he considers himself as good they are, suffers because he is not on their level, and strives and takes risks so as to mount up to them. But, however high he mounts, he still sees higher yet others who were formerly his equals; consequently, no rank obtained by them seems to him above his deserts, and no rank that he obtains suffices for his pretensions.

"See that Ma.s.sena," exclaimed Napoleon,[3350] a few days before the battle of Wagram; "he has honors and fame enough, but he is not satisfied; he wants be a prince like Murat and Bernadotte: he will risk getting shot to-morrow simply to be a prince."--

Above these princes who have only the rank, the t.i.tle and the money, come the grand-dukes and reigning viceroys like Murat, grand-duke of Berg, and Eugene, viceroy of Italy. Above Eugene and Murat are the va.s.sal-kings, Louis, Joseph, Jerome, then Murat himself, who, among these, is in a better place, and Bernadotte, the only sovereign that is independent; all more or less envied by the marshals, all more or less rivals of each other, the inferior aspiring to the superior throne, Murat inconsolable at being sent to Naples and not to Spain, and at having only five millions of subjects instead of thirteen millions.

From top to bottom of the hierarchy and even to the loftiest places, comprising thrones, the steps rise regularly above each other in continuous file, so that each leads to the following one, with nothing to hinder the first-comer, provided he is lucky, has good legs and does not fall on the way, from reaching the top of the staircase in twenty or thirty years. "It was commonly reported in the army--he has been promoted king of Naples, of Holland, of Spain, of Sweden, as formerly was said of the same sort of man, who had been promoted sergeant in this or that company."--Such is the total and final impression which lingers on in all imaginations; it is in this sense that the people interpret the new Regime, and Napoleon devotes himself to confirming the popular interpretation. Accordingly, the first duchy he creates is for Marshal Lefebvre

"purposely," as he says,[3351] because "this marshal had been a private and everybody in Paris had known him as a sergeant in the French guards."

--With such an example before them, and so many others like it, not less striking, there is no ambition that does not become exalted, and often to delirium.

"At this time," says Stendhal, who seized the master-idea of the reign, "there was no apothecary's apprentice in his back shop, surrounded by his drugs and bottles, filtering and pounding away in his mortar, who did not say to himself that, if he chanced to make some great discovery, he would be made a count with fifty thousand francs a year."

In those days there was no under-clerk who, in his labored penmanship, inscribed names on a piece of parchment, that did not imagine his own name appearing some day on a senatorial or ministerial diploma. At this time the youthful corporal who dons his first stripes of gold braid already fancies that he hears the beating of the drums, the blast of the trumpet, and the salvos of artillery which proclaim him marshal of the Empire.[3352]

V. Self-esteem and a good Reputation.

The inward spring from 1789 to 1815.--Its force.--Its decline.--How it ends in breaking the machine down.

A new force, extraordinary, is just apparent in history, a spiritual force a.n.a.logous to that which formerly stimulated souls in Spain in the sixteenth century, in European the time of the crusades, and in Arabia in the time of Mahomet. It stimulates the faculties to excess, increases energy tenfold, transports man beyond or above himself, creates enthusiasts and heroes, blinding or rendering men crazy, and hence the irresistible conquerors and rulers. It stamps its imprint and leaves its memorials in ineffaceable characters on men and things from Cadiz to Moscow. It overrides all natural barriers and transcends all ordinary limits. "The French soldier," writes a Prussian officer after Jena,[3353] "are small and puny. One of our Germans could whip any four of them. But, under fire, they become supernatural beings. They are swept along by an indescribable ardor of which there is not a trace among our soldiers.... What can you do with peasants whom n.o.bles lead into battle, but whose danger they share without any interest in their pa.s.sions or recompenses!"--Coupled with the physical needs which requires a certain amount of ease and of daily food, and which, if too strenuously opposed, produces pa.s.sing jacqueries, there is a still more potent longing which, on suddenly encountering its object, seizes on it, clings to it, gorges it, and produces revolutions that last: this longing is the desire to contemplate one-self with satisfaction and complacency, forming of one's self a pleasing, flattering image, and of trying to impress and plant this image in the minds of others; in short, the ambition for a great self-esteem and of becoming greatly esteemed by others.[3354] This sentiment, according to the quality of the person and according to circ.u.mstances, gives birth sometimes to the n.o.blest virtues and the most sublime devotion, and at other times to the worst misdeeds and the most dangerous delirium: the man becomes transfigured, the sleeping G.o.d or demon which both live within him is suddenly aroused.

After 1789, both appear and both together; from this date onward, says an eye-witness,[3355] and, during one quarter of a century, "for most Frenchmen and in whatever cla.s.s," the object of life is displaced; each has put it outside of himself; from now on, the essential thing for everybody is "to have lived," or "to have died for something," for an idea. A man becomes the slave of his idea, gives himself up to it; consequently, he has experienced the intense satisfaction of considering himself a n.o.ble being, of superior essence, foremost among the first, and of seeing himself regarded in that light and proclaimed and glorified as such.--This keen, profound and intense pleasure was first enjoyed by the French on listening to the Declaration of the Rights of Man; from then, and in good faith, they felt themselves citizens, philosophers, the destroyers of prejudices and wrongs, zealots in behalf of truth, liberty and equality, and then, when the war of 1792 came, the defenders of the country, missionaries and propagators of every grand principle.[3356]--Towards 1796, principles began to recede in the background;[3357] in the ideal portrait which man makes of himself the liberator and benefactor of mankind gradually gives way to the admirable and admired hero capable of great achievements. This inner portrait of himself suffices for his happiness for some years to come: vanity[3358]

properly so called and a calculating ambition are not the incentives of action; if he obtains promotion it is without asking for it; his aspiration is simply to display himself, to be lavish of himself and live or die courageously and gaily[3359] along with his comrade; to be considered, outside the service, the equal, friend and brother of his subordinates and of his chiefs.[3360] Pillage, nevertheless, has begun; for, a long continuance of war depraves the conqueror; brutality, indifference to property and to life grows on him; if callous, or he wishes to become so, he eats, drinks and enjoys the pa.s.sing hour; if provident and wary, he sc.r.a.pes together what he can or levies contributions and h.o.a.rds money.--Under the Empire, and especially towards 1808 and 1809, the ideal figure degenerates still more; from now on, it is the successful or the coming officer, with his rank and its accouterments, his gold-embroidered uniform and badges, exercising authority over so many hundreds and thousands of men and enjoying a certain notable sum of regular salaries, besides other gratifications bestowed on him by the master, along with the profits he can make out of the vanquished.[3361] All that he now cares for is rapid promotion, and in any way, n.o.ble or ign.o.ble, at first, of course, on the main road, that is in straining himself and risking his life, but likewise on a new road, in an affectation of zeal, in practicing and professing blind obedience, in abandoning all political ideas, in devoting himself no longer to France, but to the sovereign: sympathy for his comrades gives way to harsh rivalry; soldierly friendships, under the antic.i.p.ation of advancement, die out. A vacancy due to death is for the benefit of survivors and they know it. "At Talavera," says Stendhal, "two officers stood together at their battery, while a ball comes and the captain falls. 'Good,' says the lieutenant, 'now Francois is dead and I shall be captain.' 'Not yet,' says Francois, who was only stunned and who gets up on his feet. These two men were neither unfriendly nor inimical, only the lieutenant wanted to rise a step higher in rank." And this shrewd observer adds: "Such was the furious egoism then styled love of glory and which, under this t.i.tle, the Emperor had communicated to the French."

On this slope the slide is rapid and abject. Each, at first, thinks of himself; the individual makes of himself a center. The example, moreover, comes from above. Is it for France or for himself that Napoleon works?[3362] So many immense enterprises, the conquest of Spain, the expedition into Russia, the installation of his brothers and relations on new thrones, the constant part.i.tion and rearrangement of Europe, all those incessant and more and more distant wars, is it for the public good and common safety that he acc.u.mulates them? What does he himself desire if not to push his fortunes still farther?--He is too much ambitious (trop ambitionnaire), say his own soldiers;[3363] and yet they follow him to the last. "We have always marched along with him,"

replied the old grenadiers,[3364] who had traversed Poland to penetrate into Russia; "we couldn't abandon him this time and leave him alone by himself."--But others who see him nearer by, those who stand first and next to him, do as he does; and, however high these have mounted, they want to mount still higher, or, otherwise, to keep their places, or, at least, provide for themselves and hold on to something substantial.

Ma.s.sena has acc.u.mulated forty millions and Talleyrand sixty;[3365] in case of a political crash the money remains. Soult tried to have himself elected king of Portugal,[3366] and Bernadotte finds means to have himself elected king of Sweden. After Leipsic, Murat bargains with the allies, and, to retain his Neapolitan kingdom, he agrees to furnish a contingent against France; before the battle of Leipsic, Bernadotte is with the allies and fights with them against France. In 1814, Bernadotte and Joseph, each caring for himself, the former by intrigues and with the intriguers of the interior, also by feeling his way with the foreign sovereigns while the latter, in the absence of Napoleon, by "singular efforts" and "a.s.siduities" beforehand with Marie Louise thinks of taking the place of the falling emperor.[3367] Prince Eugene alone, or almost alone, among the great personalities of the reign, is really loyal, his loyalty remaining always intact exempt from concealed motives and above suspicion. Everywhere else, the coming crash or sinister rumors are heard or antic.i.p.ated; alarm descends from high places, spreads through the army and echoes along the lines of the lowest ranks. In 1815, the soldier has full confidence in himself and in Napoleon; "but he is moody, distrustful of his other leaders.... Every march incomprehensible to him makes him uneasy and he thinks himself betrayed."[3368] At Waterloo, dragoons that pa.s.s him with their swords drawn and old corporals shout to the Emperor that Soult and Vandamme, who are at this moment about going into battle, are haranguing their troops against him or deserting him; that General Dhenin, who has repulsed a charge of the enemy and whose thigh is fractured by a cannon-ball, has just pa.s.sed over to the enemy. The mechanism which, for fifteen years, has worked so well, breaks down of itself through its own action; its cog-wheels have got out of gear; cracks show themselves in the metal which seemed so sound; the divinations of popular instinct verify this; the exaggerations of the popular imagination expand it and suddenly the whole machine rattles down to the ground.

All this is due to Napoleon having introduced into it the craving for success as central motor, as the universal main-spring, unscrupulous ambition, in short, a crude egoism, and in the first place his own egoism, [3369] and this incentive, strained to excess,[3370] puts the machine out of order and then ruins it. After him, under his successors, the same machinery is to work in the same manner, and break down in the same way, at the expiration of a more or less extensive period. Thus far, the longest of these periods has lasted less than twenty years.

[Footnote 3301: "Most of the French provinces down to the time of Richelieu still possessed a special representative body which consented to and levied the taxes; most of these bodies were supported by the all-powerful minister and replaced by intendants who, from that time on, administered, or rather exhausted, the country, divided into thirty-two generalities. A few provinces, however, Brittany, Burgundy, Languedoc, a part of Provence, Flanders, Artois, and some small districts in the Pyrenees kept their old representative body and were called pays d'etat, whilst other provinces were designated, by a strange abuse of language, under the name of pays d'election." (Translated from" Madame de Stael et son Temps," vol. I., p. 38.) TR.]

[Footnote 3302: Cf. on the antiquity of this sort of mind, evident from the beginning of society and of French literature, my "History of English Literature," vol. I., and "La Fontaine et ses fables," pp.10 to 13.]

[Footnote 3303: In relation to this sentiment, read La Fontaine's fable of "The Rat and the Elephant." La Fontaine fully comprehended its social and psychological bearing. "To believe one's self an important personage is very common in France.... A childish vanity is peculiar to us.

The Spaniards are vain, but in another way. It is specially a French weakness."]

[Footnote 3304: Beugnot, "Memoires," I., 317. "This equality which is now our dominant pa.s.sion is not the n.o.ble kindly sentiment that affords delight by honoring one's self in honoring one's fellow, and in feeling at ease in all social relationships; no, it is an aversion to every kind of superiority, a fear lest a prominent position may be lost; this equality tends in no way to raise up what is kept down, but to prevent any elevation whatever."]

[Footnote 3305: D'Haussonville, "l'eglise romaine et le Premier Empire,"