Napoleon - Napoleon and the West

Book III - Napoleon and the West

I wished that the title of Frenchman
should be the best and most desirable on earth,
and that the French nation should be justly entitled
`The Great Nation.'

— Napoleon

In consequence of important tidings regarding the critical situ­ation in France, the loss of Italy and the threatening attitude of a formidable coalition, Napoleon resolved, in the midst of these herculean toils, to leave the ambiguous Orient and return to the country of his adoption, now well-nigh distracted by civil dissen­sion, his most cherished aspiration - an Empire rivalling that of Alexander, and extending from the solitudes of the Lybian desert to the sacred Ganges - having, from the day he raised the siege of Acre, proved but a chimera of the land of dreams.

So, in the summer of 1799, accompanied by Lannes, Murat, Duroc, and others of his devoted companions in arms, he em­barks for Provence, propitious and promise-laden winds blowing this daring spirit over the "Midland Sea" to the coast of Europe, which ere long he was to confound and subjugate.

Landing at Fréjus, on the Provence coast, October 9, 1799, he is greeted there with every demonstration of enthusiasm as the conqueror of the East.

Within the space of a month from the date of his touching French soil, he is absolute master of France.

Once in Paris, in the vortex of political hysteria, with his char­acteristic daring and alacrity, he assails the Constitution - the Directory, at the auspicious moment, having in the interim, with consummate artifice, matured his plans for his elevation to su­preme power.

Portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul, by Ingres

Backed by his coadjutors, his brother Lucien, Sieyes, Barras, and Ducos, he annuls or, to be more accurate, dispels, with his grenadiers, the Council of Five Hundred, assembled at St. Cloud, and shapes a new Government, drawn upon republican lines, the legislative authority being vested in three magistrates or con­suls, he subsequently taking precedence with the title of First Consul, with administrative prerogatives as entire as those of any dictator.

We may here pause awhile to cast a retrospective glance upon the remarkable manner in which fortune or chance, or whatever it be, befriended Napoleon on his journey from Egypt, and to indicate how mightily an event, had it come to pass, would have affected the whole trend of modern thought.

This hypothetical event, that might as likely as not have been an accomplished fact, was his capture by the British in the Mediterranean. Had Nelson, after the battle of the Nile, kept in the proximity of Egypt instead of being lured to Naples and suc­cumbing there to Circean wiles, and had Sir Sydney Smith not been detained at Cyprus, whither he betook himself to refit, the history of the next hundred years would have had a different sig­nificance. The intellect of manhood would not have been dazed by such a rapid succession of extraordinary events, the modern world would never have known such overbearing military might, nor could it have conceived the art of war carried to such a pitch of colossal extravagance. The nations of Europe would never have been welded into a conglomeration of vassal states with him as suzerain, nor would we have witnessed the unprecedented sight of one man dictating to a continent with all its potentates from the Straits of Messina and Gibraltar to the Niemen ancillary to his will.

The unity of Germany and Italy would undoubtedly have been deferred to a much later date but for his wars that kindled, in the former country more especially, the flame of patriotism, that amalgamated all Germans in a common cause - the liberation of the Fatherland.

Many a feudal law valid then in Europe might have remained in

vogue much longer but for his Code that enlarged the horizon of legislative administration, yielding an ampler scope for the diffu­sion of a more rational system of legal dispensation.

But for the vicissitudes of life and the frailty of human nature, the advancement of mankind would assuredly have been deferred by at least ten decades, for it is preposterous to imagine a mental force as cogent as Napoleon's, as his substitute, assuming he had never existed.

During Napoleon's absence in Egypt Italy had been lost to France, the allies under Suwarrow having driven the French from all his recent conquests, Massena, invested in Genoa, alone pre­senting a defiant attitude to the victors. He found the army demor­alised - the results of his late achievements entirely undone.

With his advent, however, the whole position is transformed into one of triumphal sublimity. The Alps are no longer Nature's insurmountable barriers, but a high-road leading the French to glory and conquest.

The breast of every Gallic warrior throbs in unison, a pulsa­tion born of the fire of martial frenzy as they behold their mighty leader, like Mars incarnate, guiding them over the mountain des­olations to gather fresh laurels, to bedeck their battle-furrowed brows in fields consecrated by the blood of heroes, their former companions in glory.

By his victory at Marengo Napoleon reconquers the whole of Italy. Although not to be compared, as far as the number of com­batants is concerned, with his other gigantic victories, still, in its abiding results, Marengo was perhaps the most potent of all his mighty triumphs, its effects lasting thirteen years. It is moreover distinguishable as being the only great victory he all but lost, that closed with signal success and brought him the longest term of peace.

The plan of this campaign is the most daring, not to say orig­inal, in the annals of modern warfare, its strategy the most subtle. The audacity of attacking the enemy from the declivities of the Alps, the impregnable bulwarks of Italy, is as amazing as the master-mind that conceived it. The undertaking was strenuous

to a degree and taxed the endurance of his heroic army to the ut­most. The artillery, cavalry, and ammunition were conveyed over the wilderness of ice and snow and the dizzy brink of precipices, with a celerity that seems to pertain rather to the domain of leg­endary lore than to the solemn reality of authentic history.

Some writers are inclined to reckon Hannibal's passage of the Alps as a greater feat than that performed by the consular army of France that culminated in Marengo, and ascribe to it a greater share of glory, their plea in favour of the Carthaginians being that they were harassed on their march by hostile tribes of Gauls and encumbered by elephants. Albeit our last design is to depreciate the mighty exploit of the greatest military genius of antiquity, nev­ertheless, the achievement executed by the French army in 1800, if it does not surpass, certainly equals that of the Carthaginian hero. Despite the casualties among his soldiers, the difficulties to Hannibal's march over Mount Genevre (presuming this to have been the route taken by him in his invasion of Italy) were not so immeasurably greater than those which Bonaparte had to con­tend against in his passage of the Great Saint Bernard, as some writers postulate. In any case a comparison between Hannibal's achievement and Bonaparte's, performed 2,000 years later, seems unreasonable - a just one impossible. Both exploits were marvel­lous feats which only such men as these were capable of executing - both equally extraordinary for their respective ages.

The peace of Luneville, that followed Marengo, gave Napoleon leisure to concern himself with the internal affairs of France. We now see him applying his vigorous intellect to questions concerning the Church, its re-establishment in France, and the renewal of sa­lutatory understandings with the Holy See. It is highly improbable that the Concordat was the product of feelings of a religious nature in him, but rather the outcrop of legislative ideas compatible with the welfare and domestic stability of France. The Organic Articles which he subsequently affixed as a corollary to the Concordat, without sanction from the Pontiff, sufficiently prove how little he dreaded the prerogatives of the Court of Rome and how drastic were his measures towards the liberties of the clergy.

Napoleon at the pass of St Bernard, by David

Whatever Napoleon's shortcomings may have been - and we fear he was as far removed from impeccancy as the rest of humanity (was he not after all but mortal like ordinary men?) - dissimulation in religious matters can scarcely be reckoned as a failing of his. There is no instance in the whole course of his career in which he admitted holding religious convictions, whereas there are many which prove that his views were anything but consis­tent with dogmatical faith. He who had reopened the churches in France, restored to her her ancient religion, and by the Concordat brought France once more in touch with the Holy See, might well be supposed to harbour strong feelings of religion, but from the outset Napoleon never attempted to dissemble his opinions with regard to spiritual matters as he might well have done had he been a hypocrite, for at Malmaison (Josephine's beautiful country seat near Rueil), at the time when the Concordat was but newly in­stituted, he averred to Volney the Orientalist and others, during a discussion on the ecclesiastical concerns of France, that he be­lieved not in Christianity, that in re-establishing the Church in France he acted not so much in conformity with his own wishes as with those of the French people. If this be not candour, what then is? Had he wished to pose as a good Catholic, as a sincere Christian, to simulate a belief negative in him, surely nothing would have been easier. The motives that incited him in re-estab­lishing the Church in France were purely of a political nature. He no doubt deemed that a religion of some sort was more compat­ible with legislative stability than the irreverent doctrine of the Revolution, and therefore chose the Roman Catholic faith as the religion of France, in preference to the Protestant, as being in the first place her pristine faith, and secondly less subject to sectarian dissensions than the Protestant, and in consequence the more readily controlled by the ruling will, namely, his will. [...]

Although, in moments of dejection, Napoleon frequently condemned his pact with the Holy See - to wit, the institu­tion of the Concordat, which really meant regret for the revival of Christianity in France - he nevertheless held religion to be so essential to her welfare, that at Saint Helena he asserted that

religion was such a necessity to France that had there been no Pope, one ought to have been created if only for the sake of the Concordat. Strange, incomprehensible being! The thing he re­jected as regarded himself he yet deemed of vital moment to the interests of mankind. Still more, he could even appreciate the full significance of religion in connection with others. The tolling of the church bells of Rueil moved his imperturbable soul deeply. If this call to divine worship could so affect him, how much more, he declared, would it not appeal to the truly devout? [...]

The liberality of Napoleon's all-providing genius is forcibly characterised by his formation of an Order for military and civil merit - the Legion of Honour, thereby inciting the abilities of the civil classes as well as those of the military, and consequently widening the range of human capability and stimulating its aspirations.

Education likewise received the impress of his strenuous per­sonality and benefited largely from his organising genius, although its centralisation in the University of France, and the military­like system of its administration, were undoubtedly hurtful to a thorough development of primordial talent, that, after all, only fructifies fully in an atmosphere of entire freedom.

We have already alluded to the Code, that colossal monument of legal ramifications and its beneficent influence to Germany. How arduous was its adjustment from a chaotic mass of legal tangle into a practical instrument of law may be imagined, when we take into account that besides State administration it embraced family, matrimonial and divorce regulations, and division of property. It was adopted by Italy in 1806, and subsequently, in part, by several of the South American States. Napoleon instituted it in Holland and North Germany; its influence has been felt in Prussia, Central and Southern Germany, Switzerland, and Spain. This stupendous legal fabric shows the magnitude of the area of Napoleon's mental comprehension and his astonishing grasp of administrative detail.

On August 1, 1802, Napoleon is appointed Consul for life. How universal was his popularity and firm his hold on the imagination of the French people is amply substantiated by the overwhelming

majority of votes in favour of his life tenure of the Consulship. The Consulship for life foreshadowed the splendour of the em­pire that was to emulate, in the modern age, that of Charlemagne. Proclaimed Emperor, he places with his own hands the Imperial crown, which he had won with his invincible sword, upon his brow. Shortly afterwards, in the cathedral of Milan, he crowns himself King of Italy with the iron circlet of the Lombard kings. Thus, we behold him, who ten years previous was unknown to fame, the ruler of an empire almost as vast as that of the Carlovingian hero. A few observations in connection with the rites attending Napoleon's coronation may perchance clarify his motives for an apparent ostentatious exhibition of exuberant magnificence at the ceremony that some writers attribute to an immodest spirit of audacious effrontery, actuated from the instincts of the vulgarian, but which, to those who have attempted the analysis of his occult character, would seem to pertain rather to his boundless ambition and to a yearning that ever goaded him into accomplishing deeds unsurpassed in magnitude in former and perhaps future ages. His enjoinment to the Pontiff to repair to Paris to lend additional so­lemnity by his presence to the functions of his coronation, was a procedure instigated more from a sense to accomplish an his­torical precedent and to demonstrate to the world a pre-eminence that even surpassed that of Charlemagne, than from motives ema­nating from the intuitions of the parvenu or tumid vulgarity. His injunction to Pius VII to attend his coronation, and the presence of the Head of the Catholic Church in Paris, on a mis­sion derogatory to the confirmed principles of the Holy See - a mission preternatural in history- and his supercilious demeanour towards the Pontiff in repudiating from his hands the diadem of the West, thus disdaining the prerogatives of the Church in such observances, was a manifestation that besides his hankering to outstrip all past renown, he likewise disowned, as far as his own person was concerned, the spiritual control wielded heretofore by the successors of St. Peter, placing the Church in subservience to his ambition and glory.