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Never did a harder
master ordain more imperiously, nor understand better
how to command obedience. "This was
because," as Goethe said, "under his orders
men were sure of accomplishing their ends. That is why
they rallied round him, as one to inspire them with
that kind of certainty."
Indeed no man previously ever concentrated authority
to such a point, nor showed mental abilities at all
comparable to his: an extraordinary power of work,
prodigious memory for details and fine judgment in
their selection; together with a luminous decision and
a simple and rapid conception, all placed at the
disposal of a sovereign will.
No head of the state
gave expression more imperiously than this Corsican to
the popular passions of the French of that day:
abhorrence for the emigrant nobility, fear of the
ancien régime, dislike of foreigners, hatred of
England, an appetite for conquest evoked by
revolutionary propaganda, and the love of glory.
In this Napoleon was a soldier of the people: because
of this he judged and ruled his contemporaries. Having
seen their actions in the stormy hours of the French
Revolution, he despised them and looked upon them as
incapable of disinterested conduct, conceited, and
obsessed by the notion of equality. Hence his colossal
egoism, his habitual disregard of others, his jealous
passion for power, his impatience of all
contradiction, his vain untruthful boasting, his
unbridled self-sufficiency and lack of moderation -
passions which were gradually to cloud his clear
faculty of reasoning.
His genius, assisted
by the impoverishment of two generations, was like the
oak which admits beneath its shade none but the
smallest of saplings. With the exception of
Talleyrand, after 1808 he would have about him only
mediocre people, without initiative, prostrate at the
feet of the giant: his tribe of paltry, rapacious and
embarrassing Corsicans; his admirably subservient
generals; his selfish ministers, docile agents,
apprehensive of the future, who for fourteen long
years felt a prognostication of defeat and discounted
the inevitable catastrophe.
So First Empire France had no internal history outside
the plans and transformations to which Napoleon
subjected the institutions of the Consulate, and
outside the after-effects of his wars. Well knowing
that his fortunes rested on the delighted acquiescence
of France, Napoleon expected to continue indefinitely
fashioning public opinion according to his pleasure. 
To his contempt for
men he added that of all ideas which might put a
bridle on his ambition; and to guard against them, he
inaugurated the "Golden Age" of the police
that he might tame every moral force to his hand.
Being essentially a man of order, he loathed, as he
said, all demagogic action, Jacobinism and visions of
liberty, which he desired only for himself. To make
his will predominant, he stifled or did violence to
that of others, through his bishops, his gendarmes,
his university, his press, his catechism.
Nourished like
Frederick II and Catherine the Great in 18th century
maxims, he would not allow any of that ideology to
filter through into his rough but regular ordering of
mankind. Thus the whole political system, being summed
up in the emperor, was bound to share his fall.
Although an enemy of idealogues, Napoleon followed
grandiose visions in his foreign policy. A condottiere
of the Renaissance living in the 19th century, he used
France, and all those nations annexed or attracted by
the Revolution, to resuscitate the Roman conception of
the idea of Empire for personal benefit. On the other
hand, he was enslaved by the history and aggressive
idealism of the National Convention, and of the
republican propaganda under the Directory; they guided
him quite as much as he guided them.
Hence the immoderate
extension given to French activity by his classical
Latin spirit; hence also his conquests, leading on
from one to another, and instead of being mutually
helpful interfering with each other; hence, finally,
his not entirely coherent policy, interrupted by
hesitation and counter-attractions.
This explains the
retention of Italy, imposed on the Directory from 1796
onward, followed by his treatment of Venice, the
foundation of the Cisalpine Republic - a foretaste of
future annexations - the restoration of that republic
after his return from Egypt, and in view of his as yet
inchoate designs, the postponed solution of the
Italian problem which the treaty of Lunéville had
raised.
The Battle of Marengo (June 14, 1800 inaugurated the
political idea which was to continue its development
until Napoleon's Moscow campaign. Napoleon dreamed as
yet only of keeping the duchy of Milan, setting aside
Austria, and preparing some new enterprise in the East
or in Egypt. The peace of Amiens, which cost him
Egypt, could only seem to him a temporary truce;
whilst he was gradually extending his authority in
Italy, the cradle of his race, by the union of
Piedmont, and by his tentative plans regarding Genoa,
Parma, Tuscany and Naples.
He wanted to make
this his Cisalpine Gaul, laying siege to the Roman
state on every hand, and preparing in the Concordat
for the moral and material servitude of the pope. When
he recognised his error in having raised the papacy
from decadence by restoring its power over the
churches, he tried in vain to correct it by the
Articles Organiques ? wanting, like Charlemagne, to be
the legal protector of the pope, and eventually master
of the Church.
To conceal his plan
he aroused French colonial aspirations against
England, and also the memory of the spoliations of
1763, exasperating English jealousy of France, whose
borders now extended to the Rhine, and laying hands on
Hanover, Hamburg and Cuxhaven.
By the "Recess" of 1803, which brought to
his side Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden, he followed
up the overwhelming tide of revolutionary ideas in
Germany, to stem which Pitt, back in power, appealed
once more to an Anglo-Austro-Russian coalition against
this new Charlemagne, who was trying to renew the old
Holy Roman Empire, who was mastering France, Italy and
Germany; who finally on December 2, 1804 placed the
imperial crown upon his head, after receiving the iron
crown of the Lombard kings, and made Pope Pius VII
consecrate him in Notre-Dame de Paris.
After this, in four campaigns, the Emperor transformed
his Carolingian feudal and federal empire into one
modelled on the Roman empire. The memories of imperial
Rome were for a third time, after Julius Caesar and
Charlemagne, to modify the historical evolution of
France. Though the vague plan for an invasion of
England fell to the ground, the Battle of Ulm and the
Battle of Austerlitz obliterated Trafalgar, and the
camp at Boulogne put the best military resources he
had ever commanded at Napoleon's disposal.
In the first of these campaigns Bonaparte swept away
the remnants of the old Roman-Germanic empire, and out
of its shattered fragments created in southern Germany
the vassal states of Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg,
Hesse-Darmstadt and Saxony, which he attached to
France under the name of the Confederation of the
Rhine; but the treaty of Pressburg (December 26, 1805)
gave France nothing but the danger of a more
centralised and less docile Germany.
On the other hand,
Napoleon's creation of the kingdom of Italy, his
annexation of Venetia and her ancient Adriatic empire
- wiping out the humiliation of 1797 - and the
occupation of Ancona, marked a new stage in his
progress towards his Roman Empire. His good fortune
soon led him from conquest to spoliation, and he
complicated his master-idea of the grand empire by his
Family Compact; the clan of the Bonapartes invaded
European monarchies, wedding with princesses of
blood-royal, and adding kingdom to kingdom.
Joseph Bonaparte
replaced the dispossessed Bourbons at Naples; Louis
Bonaparte was installed on the throne of the newly
formed kingdom of Holland carved out of the Dutch
Batavian Republic; Joachim Murat became grand-duke of
Berg, Jerome Bonaparte son-in-law to the king of Württemberg,
and Eugène de Beauharnais to the king of Bavaria;
while Stéphanie de Beauharnais married the son of the
grand-duke of Baden.
Meeting with less and less resistance, Napoleon went
still further and would tolerate no neutral power. On
August 6, 1806 he forced the Habsburgs, left with only
the crown of Austria, to abdicate their Roman-Germanic
title of emperor. Prussia alone remained outside the
Confederation of the Rhine, of which Napoleon was
Protector, and to further her decision he offered her
English Hanover.
In a second campaign
he destroyed at Jena both the army and the state of
Frederick William III of Prussia, who could not make
up his mind between the Napoleonic treaty of Schönbrunn
and Russia's counter-proposal at Potsdam (October 14,
1806). 
The butchery at Eylau
and the vengeance taken at Friedland (June 14, 1807)
finally ruined Frederick the Great's work, and obliged
Russia, the ally of England and Prussia, to allow the
latter to be despoiled, and to join Napoleon against
the maritime tyranny of the former.
After the Treaties of Tilsit, however (July 1807),
instead of trying to reconcile Europe to his grandeur,
Napoleon had but one thought: to make use of his
success to destroy England and complete his Italian
dominion. It was from Berlin, on November 21, 1806,
that he had dated the first decree of a continental
blockade, a monstrous conception intended to paralyze
his inveterate rival, but which on the contrary caused
his own fall by its immoderate extension of the
Empire.
To the coalition of
the northern powers he added the league of the Baltic
and Mediterranean ports, and to the bombardment of
Copenhagen by an English fleet he responded by a
second decree of blockade, dated from Milan on
December 17, 1807.
But the application of the Concordat and the taking of
Naples led to the first of those struggles with the
pope in which were formulated two antagonistic
doctrines: Napoleon declaring himself Roman emperor,
and Pius VII renewing the theocratic affirmations of
Pope Gregory VII. The Emperor's Roman ambition was
made more and more plainly visible by the occupation
of the kingdom of Naples and of the Marches, and by
the entry of Miollis into Rome; while Junot invaded
Portugal, Radet laid hands on the pope himself, and
Joachim Murat took possession of formerly Roman Spain,
whither Joseph Bonaparte transferred afterwards.
But Napoleon little knew the flame he was kindling. No
more far-seeing than the Directory or the men of the
year III, he thought that, with energy and execution,
he might succeed in the Peninsula as he had succeeded
in Italy in 1796 and 1797, in Egypt, and in Hesse, and
that he might cut into Spanish granite as into Italian
mosaic or "that big cake, Germany".
He stumbled unawares
upon the revolt of a proud national spirit, evolved
through ten historic centuries; and the trap of
Bayonne, together with the enthroning of Joseph
Bonaparte, made the contemptible prince of the
Asturias the elect of popular sentiment, the
representative of religion and country.
Napoleon thought he had Spain within his grasp, and
now suddenly everything started slipping from him. The
Peninsula became the grave of whole armies and a
battlefield against England. Dupont capitulated at
Bailen into the hands of Castaños, and Junot at
Cintra to Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington;
while Europe trembled at this first check to the
hitherto invincible imperial armies. To reduce Spanish
resistance Napoleon had in his turn to come to terms
with the tsar Alexander I of Russia at Erfurt; so
that, abandoning his designs in the East, he could
maka the Grand Army evacuate Prussia and return in
force to Madrid.
Thus Spain swallowed up the soldiers who were wanted
for Napoleon's other fields of battle, and they had to
be replaced by forced levies. Europe had only to wait,
and he would eventually be found disarmed in face of a
last coalition; but Spanish heroism infected Austria,
and showed the force of national resistance. The
provocations of Talleyrand and England strengthened
the illusion: Why should not the Austrians emulate the
Spaniards? The campaign of 1809, however, was but a
pale copy of the Spanish insurrection.
After a short and
decisive action in Bavaria, Napoleon opened up the
road to Vienna for a second time; and after the two
days' battle at Essling, the stubborn fight at Wagram,
the failure of a patriotic insurrection in northern
Germany and of the English expedition against Antwerp,
the treaty of Vienna (14 December 1809), with the
annexation of the Illyrian provinces, completed the
colossal Empire. Napoleon profited, in fact, by this
campaign which had been planned for his overthrow.
The pope was deported to Savona beneath the eyes of
indifferent Europe, and his domains were incorporated
in the Empire; the senate's decision on 17 February
1810 created the title of king of Rome, and made Rome
the capital of Italy. The pope banished, it was now
desirable to send away those to whom Italy had been
more or less promised.
Eugene de
Beauharnais, Napoleon's stepson, was transferred to
Frankfurt, and Murat carefully watched until the time
should come to take him to Russia and instal him as
king of Poland. Between 1810 and 1812 Napoleon's
divorce of Josephine, and his marriage with
Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, followed by the
birth of the king of Rome, shed a brilliant light upon
his future policy.
He renounced a
federation in which his brothers were not sufficiently
docile; he gradually withdrew power (sociology) from
them; he concentrated all his affection and ambition
on the son who was the guarantee of the continuance of
his dynasty. This was the apogee of his reign.
But undermining forces already impinged: the faults
inherent in his unwieldy achievement. England, his
chief enemy, was persistently active; and rebellion
both of the governing and of the governed broke out
everywhere. Napoleon felt his impotence in coping with
the Spanish Uprising , which he underrated, while yet
unable to suppress it altogether. Men like Stein,
Hardenberg and Scharnhorst had secretly started
preparing Prussia's retaliation.
Napoleon's material omnipotence could not stand
against the moral force of the pope, a prisoner at
Fontainebleau; and this he did not realise. The
alliance arranged at Tilsit was seriously shaken by
the Austrian marriage, the threat of a Polish
restoration, and the unfriendly policy of Napoleon at
Constantinople.
The very persons whom
he had placed in power were counteracting his plans:
after four years' experience Napoleon found himself
obliged to treat his Corsican dynasties like those of
the ancien régime, and all his relations were
betraying him.
Caroline Bonaparte
conspired against her brother and against her husband
Murat; the hypochondriacal Louis, now Dutch in his
sympathies, found the supervision of the blockade
taken from him, and also the defence of the Scheldt,
which he had refused to ensure; Jerome Bonaparte,
idling in his harem
(http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Harem), lost that of the
North Sea shores; and Joseph, who was attempting the
moral conquest of Spain, was continually insulted at
Madrid.
The very nature of
things was against the new dynasties, as it had been
against the old.
After national insurrections and family recriminations
came treachery from Napoleon's ministers. Talleyrand
betrayed his designs to Metternich and sufferred
dismissed; Fouché corresponded with Austria in 1809
and 1810, entered into an understanding with Louis,
and also with England; while Bourrienne was convicted
of peculation.
By a natural
consequence of the spirit of conquest Napoleon had
aroused, all these parvenus, having tasted victory,
dreamed of sovereign power: Bernadotte, who had helped
him to the Consulate, played Napoleon false to win the
crown of Sweden; Soult, like Murat, coveted the
Spanish throne after that of Portugal, thus
anticipating the treason of 1813 and the defection of
1814; many persons hoped for "an accident"
which might resemble the tragic ends of Alexander the
Great and of Julius Caesar.
The country itself, besides, though flattered by
conquests, was tired of self-sacrifice. It had become
satiated; "the cry of the mothers rose
threateningly" against "the Ogre" and
his intolerable imposition of wholesale conscription.
The soldiers themselves, discontented after
Austerlitz, cried out for peace after Eylau.
Finally, amidst
profound silence from the press and the Assemblies, a
protest was raised against imperial despotism by the
literary world, against the excommunicated sovereign
by Catholicism, and against the author of the
continental blockade by the discontented bourgeoisie,
ruined by the crisis of 1811.
Napoleon himself was no longer the "General
Bonaparte" of his campaign in Italy. He was
already showing signs of physical decay; the Roman
medallion profile had coarsened, the obese body was
often lymphatic. Mental degeneration, too, betrayed
itself in an unwonted irresolution.
At Eylau, at Wagram, and later at Waterloo, his method
of acting by enormous masses of infantry and cavalry,
in a mad passion for conquest, and his misuse of his
military resources, were all signs of his moral and
technical decadence; and this at the precise moment
when, instead of the armies and governments of the old
system, which had hitherto reigned supreme, the
nations themselves were rising against France, and the
events of 1792 were being avenged upon her. The three
campaigns of two years brought the final catastrophe.
Napoleon had hardly succeeded in putting down the
revolt in Germany when the tsar of Russia himself
headed a European insurrection against the ruinous
tyranny of the continental blockade. To put a stop to
this, to ensure his own access to the Mediterranean
and exclude his chief rival, Napoleon made a desperate
effort in 1812 against a country as invincible as
Russia.
Despite his
victorious advance, the taking of Smolensk, the
victory on the Moskva, and the entry into Moscow, he
was vanquished by Russian patriotism and religious
fervour, by the country and the climate, and by
Alexander's refusal to make terms.
After this came the
lamentable retreat, while all Europe was concentrating
against him. Pushed back, as he had been in Spain,
from bastion to bastion, after the action on the
Berezina, Napoleon had to fall back upon the frontiers
of 1809, and then - having refused the peace offered
him by Austria at the congress of Prague, from a dread
of losing Italy, where each of his victories had
marked a stage in the accomplishment of his dream - on
those of 1805, despite Lützen and Bautzen, and on
those of 1802 after his defeat at Leipzig, where
Bernadotte turned upon him, Jean Victor Moreau figured
among the Allies, and the Saxons and Bavarians forsook
him.
Following his retreat from Russia came Napoleon's
retreat from Germany. After the loss of Spain,
reconquered by Wellington, the rising in the
Netherlands preliminary to the invasion and the
manifesto of Frankfurt which proclaimed it, he had to
fall back upon the frontiers of 1795; and then later
was driven yet farther back upon. Those of 1792,
despite the wonderful campaign of 1814 against the
invaders, in which the old Bonaparte of 1796 seemed to
have returned. Paris capitulated on 30 March 1814, and
the Delenda Carthago, pronounced against England, was
spoken of Napoleon.
The great empire of
East and West fell in ruins with the emperor's
abdication at Fontainebleau. Only the Hundred Days
revived the flame for a final flicker: France returned
to a restored Bourbon monarchy in the person of Louis
XVIII.
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