Array Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - The Collected Works of Napoleon Bonaparte

"I, found the crown of France lying on the ground," Napoleon once said, "and I picked it up with my sword," a vivid summary of an important chapter in his biography.

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The Empire lasted ten years, from 1804 to 1814. It was a period of uninterrupted warfare in which a long series of amazing victories was swallowed up in final, overwhelming defeat. The central, overmastering figure in this agitating story, dominating the decade so completely that it is known by his name, was this man whose ambition vaulted so dizzily, only to o'erleap itself. Napoleon ranks with Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, as one of the most powerful conquerers and rulers of history. It would be both interesting and instructive to compare these four. It is by no means certain that Napoleon would not be considered the greatest of them all. Certainly we have far more abundant information concerning him than we have concerning the others.

When he became emperor he was thirty-five years old and was in the full possession of all his magnificent powers. For he was marvelously gifted. His brain was a wonderful organ, swift in its processes, tenacious in its grip, lucid, precise, tireless, and it was served by an incredibly capacious and accurate memory. "He never blundered into victory," says Emerson, "but won his battles in his head, before he won them on the field." All his intellectual resources were available at any moment. He said of himself, "Different matters are stowed away in my brain as in a chest of drawers. When I wish to interrupt a piece of work I close that drawer and open another. None of them ever get mixed, never does this inconvenience or fatigue me. When I feel sleepy I shut all the drawers and go to sleep."

Napoleon possessed a varied and vivid imagination, was always, as he said, "living two years in advance," weaving plans and dreams and then considering coolly the necessary ways and means to realize them. This union of the practical and the poetic, the realistic and the imaginative, each raised to the highest pitch, was rendered potent by a will that recognized no obstacles, and by an almost superhuman activity.

Napoleon loved work, and no man in Europe, and few in all history have labored as did he. "Work is my element, for which I was born and fitted," he said at St. Helena, at the end of his life. "I have known the limits of the power of my arms and legs; I have never discovered those of my power of work." Working twelve or sixteen and, if necessary, twenty hours a day, rarely spending more than fifteen or twenty minutes at his meals, able to fall asleep at will, and to awaken with his mind instantly alert, he lost no time and drove his secretaries and subordinates at full speed. We gain some idea of the prodigious labor accomplished by him when we consider that his published correspondence, comprising 23,000 pieces, fills thirty-two volumes and that 50,000 additional letters dictated by him are known to be in existence but have not yet been printed. Here was no do-nothing king but the most industrious man in Europe. Happy, too, only in his work.

The ordinary pleasures of men he found tedious, indulging in them only when his position rendered it necessary. He rarely smiled, he never laughed, his conversation was generally a monologue, but brilliant, animated, trenchant, rushing, frequently impertinent and rude. He had no scruples and he had no manners. He was ill-bred, as was shown in his relations with women, of whom he had a low opinion. His language, whether Italian or French, lacked distinction, finish, correctness, but never lacked saliency or interest. The Graces had not presided over his birth, but the Fates had. He had a magnificent talent as stage manager and actor, setting the scenes, playing the parts consummately in all the varied ceremonies in which he was necessarily involved, coronation, reviews, diplomatic audiences, interviews with other monarchs. His proclamations, his bulletins to his army were masterpieces. He could cajole in the silkiest tones, could threaten in the iciest, could shed tears or burst into violence, smashing furniture and bric-a-brac when he felt that such actions would produce the effect desired. The Pope, Pius VII, seeing him once in such a display of passion, observed, " tragedian," " comedian."

He had no friends, he despised all theorists like those who had sowed the fructifying seeds of the Revolution broadcast, he harried all opponents out of the country or into silence, he made his ministers mere hard-worked servants, but he won the admiration and devotion of his soldiers by the glamor of his victories, he held the peasantry in the hollow of his hand by constantly guaranteeing them their lands, and their civil equality, the things which were, in their opinion, the only things in the Revolution that counted. He was as little as he was big. He would lie shamelessly, would cheat at cards, was superstitious in strange ways. He was a man of whom more evil and more good can be said and has been said than of many historical figures. He cannot be easily described, and certainly not in any brief compass.

Now that Napoleon was emperor he proceeded to organize the state imperially. Offices with high-sounding, ancient titles were created and Napoleon filled. There was a Grand Chamberlain, a Grand Marshal of the Palace, a Grand Master of Ceremonies and so on. A court was created, expensive, and as gay as it could be made to be at a soldier's orders. The Emperor's family, declared Princes of France, donned new titles and prepared for whatever honors and emoluments might flow from the bubbling fountain-head. The court resumed the manners and customs which had been in vogue before the Revolution. Republican simplicity gave way to imperial Napoleon pretensions, attitudes, extravagances, pose. The constitution was revised to meet the situation, and Napoleon was crowned in a memorable and sumptuous ceremony in Notre Dame, the Pope coming all the way from Rome to assist but not to crown. At the critical point in the splendid ceremony Napoleon crowned himself and then crowned the Empress. But the Pope poured the holy oil upon Napoleon's head. This former lieutenant of artillery thus became the "anointed of the Lord," in good though irregular standing. He crowned himself a little later King of Italy, after he had changed the Cisalpine Republic into the Kingdom of Italy.

The history of the Empire is the history of ten years of uninterrupted war. Europe saw a universal menace to the independence and liberty of all states in the growing and arrogant ascendency of France, an ascendency and a threat all the more uninterrupted obvious and dangerous now that that country was absolutely in the hands of an autocrat, an autocrat who had grown great by war and whose military tastes and talents would now have free rein. Napoleon was evoking on every occasion, intentionally and ostentatiously, the imperial souvenirs of Julius Caesar and of Charlemagne. What could this mean except that he planned to rule not only France, but Europe, consequently the world? Unless the other nations were willing to accept subordinate positions, were willing to abdicate their rank as equals in the family of nations, they must fight the dictatorship which was manifestly impending. Fundamentally this is what the ten years' war meant, the right of other states to live and prosper, not on mere sufferance of Napoleon, but by their own right and because universal domination or the undue ascendency of any single state would necessarily be dangerous to the other states and to whatever elements of civilization they represented. France already had that ascendency in 1804. Under Napoleon she made a tremendous effort to convert it into absolute and universal domination. She almost succeeded. That she constant failed was due primarily to the steadfast, unshakable, opposition of one power, England, which never acquiesced in her pretensions, which fought them at every stage with all her might, through good report and through evil report, stirring up opposition wherever she could, weaving coalition after coalition, using her land and her navy untiringly in the effort. It was a war of the giants. A striking aspect of the matter was the struggle between sea-power, directed by England, and land-power, directed by Napoleon. While the Empire was being organized in 1804 a new coalition was being formed against France, the third in the series we are studying. England and France had made peace at Amiens in 1802. That peace lasted only a year, until May 17, 1803. Then the two states flew to arms again. The reasons were various. England was jealous of the French expansion which had been secured by the treaties of Campo Formio and Luneville, French control of the left bank of the Rhine, French domination over considerable parts of the Italian peninsula, particularly French conquest of Belgium, including the fine port of Antwerp. England had always been opposed to French expansion, particularly northward along the Channel, which Englishmen considered and called the English Channel. The English did not wish any rival along those shores. However, despite this, they had finally consented to make the Peace of Amiens. The chief motive had been the condition of their industries. The long war, since 1793, had damaged their trade enormously. They hoped, by making peace with France, to find the markets of the Continent open to them once more, and thus to revive their trade. But they shortly saw that this was not at all the idea of France. Napoleon wished to develop the industries of France, wished to have French industries not only supply the French market but win the markets of the other countries on the Continent. He therefore established high protective tariffs with this end in view. Thus English competition was excluded or at least greatly reduced. The English were extremely angry and did not at all propose to lie down supinely, beaten without a struggle. That had never been their custom. War would be less burdensome, said their business men. For England, commerce was her very breath of life. Without it she could not exist. This explains why, now that she entered upon a struggle in its defense, she did not lay down her arms again until she had her rival safely imprisoned on the island of St. Helena.