b'^r: \'\xe2\x96\xa0u,^^..rr \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\'r\\A\'^^A^ \n\n\n\n.An^^\'r,\' \n\n\n\n^^C^^CA^.!:^^.-:^AXo \n\n\n\n^m \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nm^ft^ \n\n\n\n^A,\xc2\xb1e\'^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\'^^MM&m. \n\n\n\n\n\n\nLIBRARY OF, CONGRESS. \n\n\n\nCliap. ..:!..., Copyright No. \n\nSlielf\xe2\x80\x9e.lD.^-l \n\nUNITED STATES OF AMERICA. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\'^^m^^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n^/^0/^^-^\'^A^, \n\n\n\n\n\n\n^\'^^-^^\'^A-.. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n,^a/^^:a^^^^ \n\n\n\n^^^r^-:;x;AC:c \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n>^^::.^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOA\'/vOa^\'^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nS^Aa\'^\'^^^Ca\'^A^a \n\n\n\n\'^;(*iA\' A/^C\' \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\niTwWiiBlrTT \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n^ooc:^..^c;^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n^-^^ ^\' \' "\': \' \' \'\'\xe2\x96\xa0- ii.^\'^\'^\'^^^ ^\'^^ir^*^ -^^^^^^^1% > -- \'^ \'^^ \n\n\n\n:^2^r.^:A;^^^^?5P \n\n\n\n\n\n\n^%;^^^! \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\nBy Brev. Maj.-Gen. J. Watts de Peyster. \n\n\n\nReprinted from the "College Student," Lancaster, Pa. \n\n\n\n\n/. WATTS DE PEYSTER, \n\nLilt. D. (iSp2), LL. D. {i8g6), Franklin mid Marshall College ; \nLL. D. Nebraska College, {i8yo) ; M. A. Columbia College, or \nUniversity . Brevet Major-Ge7ieral, N. Y. Awarded the^Gold \nMedal of i8gi by the " Society of Lette7\'s, Science and Art," Lon- \ndon, England, "For Literary and Scientific Attainments" {of \nwhich Society he is Honorary Fellow or Member). \n\n\n\n75 \n\n\n\nYears. \n\n\n\n\nNAPOLEONE Dl BUONAPARTE. \n\n\n\nBY THE AUTHOR OF \n\n\n\n"THE REAL NAPOLEON BONAPARTE,\' \n\n\n\n^ J. -WATTS DE PEYSTER, ^ \n\nBrevet Major -General, New York, "with Rank from 20th April, 1863" ("for Meritorious Services rendered to the \n\nNational Guard and to the United States prior to and during the Rebellion," by "Concurrent \n\nResolution" or Special Law, 95th April, 1866.) \n\nM. A. Columbia College, LL. D. Nebraska College 1870, Litt. D. 1892 and LL. D. 1896 Franklin \n\nand Marshall College, Life Member of the Royal Historical Society of Great Britain, \n\nHonorary Fellow of the Society of Science, Letters and Art of London 1893, \n\nand awarded their Gold Medal for 1894 for Scientific and Literary \n\nAttainments, Member of the Maatschappig der Nederland- \n\n\n\nT^ ische Letterkunde, Leyden, Holland, \n\n\n\n&c. &c. &c. \n\n\n\n-^^JO^ \n\n\n\nB\'/ \n\n\n\n41^ \n\n\n\nD \n\n\n\nLANCASTER, PA. : \n\nReprinted by the "College Student," Franklin and Marshall College. \n\n1896. \n\nCOPYRIGHT. 1896, BY J. WATTS de PEYSTER. \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte, \n\n\' \' Flagellum Dei. " \xe2\x80\x94 \' \' hmtiinentia Peccaiomm Flagella . \' \' \n\nTHE MODERN ATTILA. \n\n\n\n" I wovJd not be the villain \nFor the whole space that\'s in the Tyrant\'s grasp, \nAnd the rich East to boot." \n\n\xe2\x80\x94 Shakspere\'s Macbeth \xe2\x80\x94 Title Page. \n\nQUOTED IN COXE\'S "EXPOSE), OR NAPOLEON \nBUONAPARTE UNMASKED," 1809. \n\n"This Napoleone de Buonaparte, \nwho once styled himself Brutus Buona- \nparte.^ citoyen sans culotte ! breathed his \nfirst innocent air in Corsica,"* and con- \ntinued to be nothing more in character \nbut a Corsican to his life\'s end. \n\n" The dawn of this great tnan\'\' s stern and \ninflexible disposition first displayed itself \nat Toulon, where he had the appointment \nof chef- de-brigade, when so much mischief \nwas done to the inhabitants of that city \nafter the British had retreated ; and when, \nunder a deceitful proclamation, those who \nwere deemed disaffected or suspected only, \nwere assembled on the Champ de Mars, to \nthe number of 1,500, and there butchered. \nThis exploit he authenticated by his mem- \norable letter to the Deputies who were sent \nto the different armies by the Convention, \nwhen, under the assumed name of Brutus \nBuonaparte, he stated that \'upon the \n\n*NoTE. \xe2\x80\x94 In reverting to the first mode in which \nNapoleone Buonaparte spelt his name, it is mentioned \nthat that orthography has-been adhered to from motives \nof propriety. Though Buonaparte, when in Egypt, \nchose to drop the final letter in Napoleone, and discard \nthe second letter of his surname, to familiarize the \nsounds and render them more closely analogous to the \nFrench idiom, he cannot prevent them from sinking \nwholly into oblivion. \xe2\x80\x94 Co:>:e\'s Expose, p. 20. \n\n\n\nfield of glory, his feet imi?idated with the \nblood of traitors, he announced, with a \nheart beating with joy, that their orders \nwere executed and France revenged ; that \nneither sex nor age had beeji spared ; and \nthat those who escaped, or were only mu- \ntilated by the discharge of the republican \ncannon, were dispatched by the swords of \nliberty and the bayonets of equality.\' "* \n\nAt page 855, Vol. IV, Dr. Leo gives the \noriginal French of this letter or report, \nwhich Buonaparte\'s friends deny, alleging \nhe was an angel of mercy instead of an \nangel of murder. \n\nDr. Heinrich L,eo, in his lyehrbuch der \nUniversalgeschichte,Vol. IV, 85i,*givesthe \nsynonyms and meaning of Napoleone \xe2\x80\x94 "to \nbecome a word of terror to all Europe" \xe2\x80\x94 \nNeapolio, Nepoluccio, tracing it back to the \nfamous old Germdi-aNibelung^ and concludes \nthat this last fitly descended and belonged \nto a man who was an out-and-out Nibelung, \n(whether the author means by this a mali- \ncious dwarf, a grizzly spectre [Popanz], or \na blasting fog, the writer cannot determine), \nand a Todesdorn \xe2\x80\x94 Sting of Death, or Death \nInflicter. \n\n\n\n*NoTE. \xe2\x80\x94 The reader in following the narrative, it is \nimagined, will observe, that from this massacre at \nToulon, and through the long and frightful round of \nenormities committed by Buonaparte, or by his com- \nmand, extending to the massacre at Madrid, one fero- \ncious principle only has actuated his conduct ; and \nthus accustomed to the shedding of human blood, it \nmay, without exaggeration, be said of him that \n\n\n\nNapolbone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nTo this \xe2\x80\x94 the Reign of Terror and re- \nsulting bloodshed \xe2\x80\x94 Buonaparte with his \nwars of confiscations and extortions was a \nfit successor. \n\nWhoever may object to such a compari- \nson, unquestionably Attila, the Hun (A. D. \n433-453), was a perfect type of Buona- \nparte in every particular, and the stu- \ndent who will study the type and paradigm, \nwill discover how they and their careers \ncomplement each other. Both were \n"Scourges of God" \xe2\x80\x94 Attila for about \nnineteen years ; Buonaparte for exactly \nthe same space of time, 1796-1815. Nor \nwere their strategy and tactics dissimilar. \n\n\n\n"Direness, familiar to his slanght\'rons thoughts, \nCannot once start him !" \n\nAgain : Wherever atrocities could be committed, \nwhenever devastation could take place, like the demon \nof evil, he was ready to direct the storm. In his route \nto Pavia he set fire to the village of Beuasco, which he \nowned himself was a horrid sight, and gave orders to \nset even the city of Pavia in flames ; but the timely \nappearance of the French garrison, which had been \nshut up in the castle, prevented that dreadful catastro- \nphe from taking place ; for had the blood of a single \nFrenchman been spilled, he would have erected, he \ndeclared, a column, on which should have been in- \nscribed \' \' Here Pavia stood. " He demanded of the city \ntwo hundred hostages, to be sent to France, and then \ncalmly ordered the whole municipality to be shot, as a \nsalutarj\' example, as his dispatches mentioned, for the \nobservation of Italy at large. After the battle of Salo, \non the Lake da Guarda\xe2\x80\x94 human nature shudders at the \nbare recital of the deed\xe2\x80\x94 he commanded all who, from \nsevere wounds, were deemed unfit for service, to be \nmingled with the dead, which were to be conveyed \naway in wagons, and to be then strangled, or suffo- \ncated under them, and then thrown into an extensive \npit prepared for the purpose and covered with \nquicklime ! Several of these unhappy people, not \nhaving life quite extinguished in them, the lime \ncoming in contact with their green wounds, were \nsuddenly roused into an excruciating sense of their \nsituation ; and the dreadful screams which were \nuttered, till the ground was finally closed on their suf- \nferings, so affected the humane rector of Salo that he \ndied from the horror which had seized him on hearing \ntheir cries. \xe2\x80\x94 Coxe\'s Expost. \n\nIt is mentioned in Adolphus\'s History of France \nthat so early as the year 1794 the number of French \nwho fell by various means of destruction \xe2\x80\x94 on the scaf- \n\n\n\nVictory was purchased with life, not by \nscience. \n\nWhoever is unprejudiced and will study \nup the statistics of Buonaparte\'s wars \xe2\x80\x94 \nnot in French authorities, for they are too \noften altogether untrustworthy, but in such \ncompilations as those of von Kausler \xe2\x80\x94 the \nstudent will find that it was scarcely won- \nderful that succeeding to the command of \nthe finest classes of experienced officers of \nevery grade, as well as enthusiastic troops, \nhe was so successful at first. \n\nConsuming these without mercy, and \nacquiring greater and more extensive pow- \ner, he could sweep in hundreds of thou- \n\n\n\nfold, in the waves, and on the field by the hands ot \ntheir countrj\'meu \xe2\x80\x94 is estimated at 900,000 ; of whom \n15,000 were women, 22,000 children ; and that more \nthan 20,000 dwellings had been destroyed. \xe2\x80\x94 Coxe\'\'s \nExpose. \n\nSince that period [the \'capture of Toulon and sub- \nsequent massacre], and during Buonaparte\'s career, the \ndestruction of the human species, in battles, sieges, \nnaval combats, executions, military vengeance, massa- \ncres, pestilence, and other attendant consequences of \ntwelve additional years of war and devastation in and \nout of the kingdom, and including the war of extermi- \nnation in I,a Vendee and St. Domingo \xe2\x80\x94 the calculation \nof 2,000,000 of lives must be deemed very far within \nthe compass of a fair statement, than an overcharge. \nThe individual who sacrifices his life for the benefit of \nthe many is a character above all praise ; but to allow \nfor a single moment that the many are to be sacrificed \nfor the benefit of the few ; that is, that the good which \nmay be done in the future, and whicli can never com- \npensate for the mischief of the past, will justify the \nmeans of so attaining that good, is a species of philoso- \nphical calculation far be3\'ond the conception of the \nwriter\'s reasoning faculties. Two centuries of the \nseverest despotism, under the most despotic monarchs \nFrance ever knew, would not have produced a hun- \ndredth part of the mischief which republican despotism \naccomplished from the conmiencement of the French \nRevolution, even to the year 1794, "covering the \nworld with blood, with tears, and with calamities." \nWhen the Bastile was destroyed there were not three \npersons confined within its w!ills ; but France became \nafterwards, by her own act, one continued bastile ; the \nPlace de Greve was extended over the surface of her \nsoil, and the whole nation became in a manner execu- \ntioners against one another. \xe2\x80\x94 Coxe^s Expost. \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nsands of conscripts each year, but gradu- \nally had to rely on levies less and less ac- \nclimated to war. Still utterly regardless of \nsacrificing his best and bravest, and con- \ntinuing to use up all his accessible forces, \nthe end had to come sooner or later \xe2\x80\x94 to lose \nground daily from the very exhaustion of \nthe human fuel which he continued to pour \nrelentlessly into the furnace of war. In no \nperiod of his career did he win by scientific \ngeneralship \xe2\x80\x94 Moreau and others declared \nhe ruined the Art of War \xe2\x80\x94 but by what in \npolitical life would be demagogism, by \nappeals to the interests and cupidity in \nevery sense of those whom he could not \ncompel to serve his purposes, if the other \nappeals failed.* \n\nTake for instance those "Infernal Col- \numns," which inflicted such horrible mis- \neries in gleaning the unwilling or re- \nfractory when the harvests of conscripts, \nlevied with wicked injustice, had either \nfailed or had been incompletely gathered. \nNever let it be forgotten, Buonaparte\'s \nblackguard and inhuman declaration, which \nis in no place literally quoted \xe2\x80\x94 when Met- \nter nich called his attention to the unhappy \n\xe2\x80\xa2youth, unfit for military service, who filled \n\nhis ranks \xe2\x80\x94 that "he on the lives of \n\n200,000 men." \n\nIn exactly the same sense that Attila was \nstyled the original " Scourge of God," with \nequal truth Buonaparte may be thus desig- \nnated the modern Scourge of God-f Their \n\n\n\n* " He [Buonaparte] understands enough of mankind \nto dazzle the weak, to dupe the vain, overawe the tim- \nid, and to make the wicked his instruments, but be- \nyond all this Buonaparte is grossly and totally igno- \nrant." "Napoleon\'s Last Voyages," London and Phil- \nadelphia, 1S95, quoting MioT\' s Mejfioirs \'de I\' ^\'Expe- \ndition en Egypte. \n\nt Note.\xe2\x80\x94 Fi,AGEl.LUM Dei. As this term has led to \nerroneous interpretations, it would be wiser to trans- \nlate it God\'s Scourge, just as Isaiah styles the Assyrian \nthe rod of His anger and the staff of His indignation. \n\nDo ordinary readers actually imagine what was a \nFi,AGEl.l,UM, It was not only an instrument of terri- \n\n\n\ncareers lasted about as long and had just \nabout the same termination as that of the \ngreat Hun. Attila\' s invasion of Gaul was \nabout equivalent to Bounaparte\'s Moscow \ncampaign. Attila was not actually defeated \ndisastrously at Chalons, but the moral effect \nwas the same. His subsequent campaigns \nwere not the successes previously achieved. \nThe Hunnish king did not personally have \na Waterloo, but immediately after his death \nhis sons and his Huns did experience such \na cataclysm on the Netad \xe2\x80\x94 " the great plain \nbetween the Drave and the Danube" \xe2\x80\x94 \nwhere their power was broken forever. \nMoscow may be said to have been the \nChalons of Buonaparte. When the fa- \nmous Fre.nch engineer. General Haxo, \nsaw Moscow bursting into flame he said \nto the Baron L,ejeune, "This must lead \nsoon to our having to defend Paris." \n(Lejeune, 222.) Knox, in his famous \n" Races of Men," styles Buonaparte\'s grand \narmy which perished in Russia " an army \nor horde of disciplined savages." "Hol- \nland [purest Anglo-Saxon], too, would have \nrisen," " in their last struggle for liberty " \n[1848?] ; but she remembered the Celtic \ntreachery ; the betrayal of the cause of lib- \nerty by the French Celt in \'92 [how true !]; \nTHE PLUNDER OF EUROPE BY A BODY OF \n\nDISCIPLINED SAVAGES under Napoleon ; \nso she responded not to the Celt." P. 55. \n" The Races of Men^^^ by Robert Knox, \nM. D. , Corresponding Member of the Na- \ntional Academy of Medicine, &c. , L,ondon, \n1850. \n\n\n\nble punishment, but of absolute torture. It was a \nscourge, "a dreadful instrument," not with a single \nlash, but triple and sometimes more. " It was knotted \nwith bones or heavy indented circles of bronze, or ter- \nminated by hooks, in which case it was aptly denomi- \nnated a scorpion." It bruised, it tore, it cut and it \ncould eviscerate. It is a term most applicable to Buo- \nnaparte. He was a bandit, a robber, a ravisher, a thief, \nand his brothers, except Louis, in one line or the other, \nno better than their leader. New York\'s Tweed might \nhave taken a lesson from Lucien. \n\n\n\nNapolrone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nIf the following anecdotes related by Gen. \nBaron Lejeune are absolutely true, it will \ngo to prove that Attila\'s Huns could not \nhave been more barbarous savages \xe2\x80\x94 \nalthough worse than our Apaches \xe2\x80\x94 than \nsome of those under Buonaparte, as re- \nlated by lycjeune (271-2). \n\n"At Croupi (26th November, 1812), in an \ninn, assigned as quarters to Marshal Davout, \nunder the thatch, in the manger, three in- \nfants were discovered, one hardly more \nthan a year old and the others scarcely more \nthan just born. Their clothes were those \nof the poor. They were benumbed with \ncold and remained silent. * * * j \nbegged the Marshal\'s steward to give them \na little soup, if he could make any, and \ndid not occupy myself farther about them. \nSoon the warmth of the horses\' breaths \nawakened these little creatures and their \nplaintive cries resounded for a long time \nthroughout the rooms in which we were \nhuddled together. * * * At 2 A. M. \nwe were told that the village was in flames. \nOur isolated house was the only one intact, \nand the children still cried ; but at the mo- \nment of departure, a little before day, they \ncried no longer. I asked the steward what \nhe had done for them, and this man, who \ndid not suffer less than we did, assuming \nthe satisfied air of one who believes he had \ndone a good deed answered, \'I could not \nshut an eye; their cries pierced my heart ; \nI had no nurse to give them ; then I took \nan axe; I broke the ice of the watering- \nplace, or drinking trough, and I drowned \nthem to put an end to their sufferings. To \n\\what a degree can misfortune debase the \nhuman heart." \n\nG. Bertin, in his "Campagne de 1812," \na wonderful collection of the testimony of \neye witnesses, cites the above. \n\n" For a long time our soldiers were re- \nduced to feeding upon horseflesh. To such \na degree had famine and misery brutified \nthem, that these unfortunate creatures did \n\n\n\nnot wait until the animal was dead to cut \noff the eatable parts. As soon as a horse \ntottered and fell no attempt was made to \nget him on his feet again, but immediately \nthe soldiers precipitated themselves upon \nhim to rip open the flank and tear out the \nliver, which is the least repulsive portion, \nand even without having taken the trouble \nto kill him previous to such torture, they \nseemed, I say, to become irritated at the \nfinal efforts which the animal was making \nto escape from his slaughterers, and they \nwere heard to cry out with fury, while \nstriking the beast, \' Rascal, wretch, can \nyou not then remain quiet.\'" (L,ejeune, \n\n249-50-) \n\nIn a work examined before this article was \nwritten, "A complete picture of Napoleon \nand the French people," from the German, \n1806, Buonaparte\'s army of Italy is com- \npared to "a horde of banditti," and the \nauthor adds, " He suffered them to commit \nravages and excesses such as even the most \nbarbarous ages since Attila have never been \ncommitted against a friendly and a submit- \nting people." \n\nGeneral Baron IvCJeune published some \ntime since a volume, entitled "de Valmy . \na Wagram," and now, in October, 1895, his \nsecond volume appeared, " En Prison et \nen Guerre \xe2\x80\x94 a travers 1\' Europe (1809-1814). \nIn this last above quoted he corroborates in \na great many particulars the statement of \nColonel Pion des Loches in regard to the \nRussian campaign, which I translated and \nwhich was printed in the Golden Magazitie. \n\nGeneral Lejeune, brave and able as he \nproved throughout his military career, \nwhich was terminated by the bursting of a \nshell at Hanau, in 1813, was equally dis- \ntinguished as a painter of battle-scenes, an \nart to which he devoted himself after his \nlast wound. In the narration of the events \nof which he was an eye witness, he was \nlikewise very interesting, although in his, \nas in Marbot\'s narratives, the French \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nalways had the best of it in fighting, and \ntheir stories always leave their readers won- \ndering how under such circumstances the \nAllies ever got possession at last of Paris. \n\nThis reminds one of the astonishment of \nthe Georgia farmer when Sherman was \n"picnicking " through his native state. Re- \nlieved of all his expletives his remarks \nabout amount to this : \'\' For about four years \nwe-uns have heard nothing but we-uns \nlicking you-uns, and I can\'t get it through \nmy wool how you-uns, after being so tarna- \ntion badly whipped, are down here, camped \non my farm, killin\' my hogs, eatin\' my ba- \ncon, swillin\' my sorghum, diggin\' up my \nsweet petaters and burnin\' my fence rails." \n\nThese visible and sensible facts consti- \ntuted an aggregated argumentum ad hoiiii- \nnem to which all his Southern bragging- \ncould find neither explanation nor contra- \ndiction nor excuse. \n\nTwo phases in the career of Buonaparte \nhave been dwelt upon with more admiration \non the part of his friends and more aston- \nishment and disgust on the part of philoso- \nphers and opponents than the servile adu- \nlation paid to the Corsican upstart by the \noldest nobility and monarchs of Continental \nEurope. The assemblages at Tilsit in 1807, \n\xe2\x80\xa2at Urfurt in 1809, and at Dresden in 1813, \nwere simply repetitions of " the crowd of \nvulgar kings, besides sagacious and virtu- \nous sovereigns, which bowed before the \nthrone of Attila, ranged in submissive or- \nder, watching his nod, trembling at his \nfrown, and obedient without hesitation." \n(Gibbon, iii, 392.) Among these kings there \nwere sovereigns who were equal at that pe- \nriod in dignity to the Czar of Russia, the \nEmperor of Austria, and King of Prussia. \nIf Buonaparte did not slay his own brother, \nas Attila is charged with having done, he \ncertainly murdered the Duke d\'Enghien, a \nprince as exalted in character, race and po- \nsition with Bleda. Moreover, if the Empe- \nror of Austria gave his best beloved child to \n\n\n\nthat same upstart, who had repudiated his \nlawful wife without a legal divorce, Hono- \noria, the sister of the Emperor Valentinian, \nwas willing to deliver her person into the \narms of a barbarian, of whose language she \nwas ignorant \xe2\x80\x94 Marie Louise understood \nFrench imperfectly \xe2\x80\x94 whose religion and \nmanners she abhorred. \n\nAttila was a predestinarian and Napoleon \nwas a believer in Fate, or such other term \nas may be applied to the doctrine of "What \nmust be, will be." This doctrine, which \nis the only explanation of the operation \nand effects of Unchangeable, Inflexible \nand Inexorable Daw, can alone account for \nthe rise, progress and fall of such excep- \ntional characters or prodigies 01 combined \ncapacity and crime as Buonaparte, and this \nlaw is as certain as those laws which regUr \nlate the eccentric circuits of comets not \nalways possible to be foreseen and cal- \nculated, but still regulated by the same \ndecree which governs the certain orbits \nof the planets. Napoleon declared that \nhe appeared out of time, because the world \nwas no longer adapted to the full develop- \nopment of a man of his character ; but the \nfact is, at no time, except the period in \nwhich he appeared, could he have so risen \nand so thriven. It was as necessary for him \nto succeed the Reign of Terror, because, to \nuse the liomely adage, "set a thief to catch \na thief," none but a criminal of his calibre \ncould have grappled with such a seething \nand surging condition of crime. No mor- \ntal actuated by virtue could have controlled \nthe millions steeped in vice and totally re- \ngardless of the controlling interests of reli- \ngion, principle, or morality, with such expo- \nnents and examples as Barras, Fouche, Tal- \nleyrand, and hundreds of others, who soon \nbecame the supporters, advisers and ex- \necutives of Buonaparte. Even those \nwho still possessed or professed a deference \nto virtue were soon converted by interest \ninto subservient instruments or will-less \n\n\n\nNapoIvEone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nflatterers. Yea, even those considered the \nbest of the crowd will not bear close scru- \ntiny, for Caulincourt, in the eyes of the true \nand honest, cannot cleanse his vesture of \nthe stain of his connection with that most \natrocious crime, the murder of the Duke \nd\'Enghien and Duroc, however notable as \nfaithful and devoted to his master, is charged \nwith having known no conscience but that \nmaster\'s will. Even Macdonald, generally \naccepted as immaculate, was published by \nthe German (Arndt, 93) as " having stolen \nand plundered like a common Knecht^\'\'\'\' and \nthe General Intendant, Dumas, "believed \nby many Germans as one inspired by a \nnobler soul was stained by many traces of \nhis associates." \n\nCharras, in his "1813" (17), testifies \nBuonaparte "used his victory over Prussia \nwithout generosity, without justice, with- \nout pity." Attila, barbarian as he was, who \nflourished in the Dark Ages, exhibited more \ngenerosity and magnanimity than the mod- \nern Attila, born at the period of the Ency- \nclopsedists and the light of the rising sun \nof mercy even to the speechless animals. \n\nThe coincidences between Buonaparte \nand Attila are not confined to the duration \nand destructions of their careers. They \nresembled each other in size ; both were \nmen of low stature, with full chests and \nshort legs ; also in demeanor. Just as At- \ntila had a custom of fiercely rolling his \neyes as if he wished to enjoy the terror \nwhich he inspired, Buonaparte got up fits \nof simulated rage for the same purpose. \nBoth knew that success "must depend on a \ndegree of skill with which the passions of \nthe multitude were combined and guided \nfor the service of a single man." \n\nAs an instance of this perception of the \ninfluence of superstition, Gibbon tells us \n(iii, 390) : \n\n" One of the shepherds of the Huns per- \nceived that a heifer, who was grazing, had \nwounded herself in the foot, and curiously \n\n\n\nfollowed the track of the blood till he dis- \ncovered, among the long grass, the point of \nan ancient sword, which he dug out of the \nground and presented to Attila. That mag- \nnanimous, or rather that artful, prince ac- \ncepted, with pious gratitude, this celestial \nfavor ; and so the rightful possessor of the \nSword of Mars asserted his divine and in- \ndefeasible claim to the dominion of the \nearth." \n\nJust as the great Hun made the most of \nthis simple superstition, Buonaparte resort- \ned to similar discoveries, or rather inven- \ntions, to stimulate the confidence and \nenthusiasm of the French, as volatile and \nvain as those barbarians. \n\nDuring the period when Buonaparte was \nmenacing England he visited Boulogne, and \nomens were resorted to for exciting and \nkeeping up the enthusiasm of the troops. \nWhen the earth was removed to drain it or \nprepare it for Buonaparte\'s tent, it was pre- \ntended that a Roman battle-axe was found, \nwhich was converted into a portent of the \nsuccess of the pending expedition, designed \nto rival that of Caesar into Britain. Med- \nals of William the Conqueror were also \nproduced as having been dug up upon the \nsame spot. What was this find but a type \nof the Normans\' conquest and a victory \nmore glorious than that of Hastings? \n(Scott, iv, 297-298.) \n\nIt is very difficult to believe that a rusted \nsword, found by accident, should be adopt- \ned, even by barbarian people, as a symbol \nof the deity ; but how much more, that \nwithin the century a people considered as \nhighly enlightened should desire to build a \ntemple to a living man and consecrate his \nSWORD. Nevertheless the words of the \nhigh authority who makes the statement \nwhich follows, clinches the parallel set forth \nbetween Buonaparte and Attila. P. Bon- \ndois. Professor of History in the Lyceum \nBuffon, and also Moliere, in his "Napo- \nleon and Society in His Time" (1793-1821), \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nParis, 1895, Chapter VII, "Vassal Europe," \nPage 187, reads thus : \n\n"Among the official corps the Napoleonic \nenthusiasm approached delirium, after the \npeace of Presburg. The- Tribunate pro- \nposed to reestablish in his favor the ancient \ntriumph, to raise a temple to him in Paris, \nTO CONSECRATE THE SWORD WHICH HE \nWORE AT AUSTERLITZ. \' \' \n\n"No wonder (188) Napoleon intoxicated \nhimself with the incense lavished upon \nhim and commenced to take his divinity \ninto serious consideration ; he was very \nnear passing himself off for God, not after \nhis death, but while yet alive." \n\n(189) "A Saint Napoleon was imagined, \nwhose festival was confounded with that of \nthe Virgin Mary on the 15th August," and \n"next to the Persons of the Sacred Trin- \nity (161) the name of the Emperor was in- \ntroduced," evidences to what a pitch he \nhad reached in his desire to interpret reli- \ngious texts." \n\n" this man \n\nIs now become a god \xe2\x80\x94 \n\n\xe2\x80\x94 whose bend doth awe the world." \n\nHe was also ever with a folly, which jus- \ntifies Michelet in asserting that "there \nwere moments when Napoleon was insane," \nuttering boasts and publishing predictions \nwhich events stultified. Thus, when he \nwent to Spain in 1808, he declared that he \nwould drive the Leopards, as he styled the \nLion Emblems of England, into the sea, \nand he left the work undone and quitted \nthe Peninsula with a speed as extraordinar- \nily rapid as unaccountable, unless he \ndreaded the effects of Spanish vengeance, \nsuch as that from which, at a later date, \nhis brother Joseph had a narrow escape. \n\nPrevious to his contemplated Invasion of \nEngland, he had a medal struck, in assured \nanticipation of occupying London, bearing \ntriumphant effigies and a legend purporting \nthat it had been minted in the British cap- \nital. When his plan failed he had the die \n\n\n\ndestroyed, but exemplars have been pre- \nserved and it appeared among the medals \nof his reign, of that date. In the same \nway, in his carriage captured at Waterloo, \nfeeling assured of victory, there were cap- \ntured large packages of a proclamation, \ndated at the Royal Palace of Lacken, \nfalsely dated and located, as if the French \nwere in possession of the capital, Brussels. \nBefore entering Russia, in 1812, he issued \na manifesto, predicting the certain conquest \nof that country and humiliation of the Czar. \nThe world knows how the verdict was ter- \nribly reversed. On quitting Moscow, 1812, \nwith equal presumption he declared woe \nto the Russians if they attempted to cross \nhis path. They did cross it and his army \nperished, and had it not been for the enor- \nmous reinforcements brought up to his res- \ncue on the Berezina, he and his remnants \nwould have been captured. As it was, 50,- \n000 lives were sacrificed to get him and his \nsuite in safety over that river, and almost \nas many more perished miserably, with the \nonly result of enabling him to effect his \nhis own flight in safety back to the Rhine. \n\nIn 1814, after ephemeral successes, he de- \nclared he was nearer to Munich than the \nAllies were to Paris ; and, again, "if I gain \na battle, as I am sure to do" \xe2\x80\x94 when every \nbattle was occasioning greater actual losses, \nand enormously and greater irreparable \nlosses than those sustained by the Allies \xe2\x80\x94 \n" I shall be master and exact better condi- \ntions. * * * Xhe tomb of the Russians \nis marked out under the walls of Paris ! \nMy measures are all taken and victory can- \nnot fail me." \n\nWithin two months he was on his way to \nElba. \n\nOne question ! It is supposable that At- \ntila, with what is known of him, would \nhave offered up his capital. in which he had \nbeen collecting the spoils and the trophies \nof his whole career, as an incentive to his \ntroops to assail that capital solely for his \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nown personal advantage. Would not the \nbold Hun have manoeuvred to obtain a bat- \ntle-field whence, if victorious, he could \nhave turned to reoccupy the capital with \nall its riches preserved, or else himself have \nperished in the attempt, as he was willing \nand ready to do if he could not have re- \ntreated from Chalons to recuperate his \nstrength and renew the "Trial of Battle." \nIn spite of his tremendous losses in Gaul, \nnow France \xe2\x80\x94 -A. D. 451, corresponding in \na measure to Buonaparte\'s reverses of 1812, \nthe next year, A. D. 452, Attila was suffi- \nciently formidable to invade Italy and \nthreaten Rome. This corresponds to Na- \npoleon\'s reappearance in Germany in 1813. \n\n\n\nA. D. 453, Attila died. In 1814 Napoleon \nabdicated. On the Netad, A. D. 454, on \nthe Second Hunnenschlacht, occurred the \nWaterloo of the Hunnish power. Buona- \nparte\'s first was Leipsic ; his second, La \nBelle Alliance, miscalled Waterloo. \n\nThere Ellac, the eldest son of Attila \xe2\x80\x94 \nbattle and results representing Buonaparte\'s \nutter overthrow in 1815 \xe2\x80\x94 lost his life and \ncrown and 30,000 Huns their lives, just \nabout the number of French who actually \nperished in the Belgian campaign of four \ndays. Similar parallelisms might be added, \nbut sufficient have been adduced, at this \ntime, to manifest the truth of the simile be- \ntween the Corsican and the Hun. \n\n\n\nII. \n\n\n\nDon Juan, xi, 85. \n\n" I\'ve seen the people ridden o\'er like sand \nBy slaves on horseback." \xe2\x80\x94 Byron. \n\n"Thus far, go forth, thou lay, which I will back \nAgainst the same given quantity of rhyme, \nFor being as much the subject of attack \nAs ever yet was any work sublime. \nBy those ivho love to say that white is bi^ack. \nSo much the better ! I may stand alone, \nBut ivoiM not cliange my free tliouglits for a t/irone." \n\n\xe2\x80\x94 Byron. \nMens regnum bona possidit. Seneca. \n\nMy mind to me an empire is \nWhile grace affordeth health. \xe2\x80\x94 Southwell. \n\nBourrienne (Scribner\'s iii, 311), who \nknew him so well, presents the follow- \ning striking exposition or analysis of Buona- \nparte\'s negative and positive qualities. \n\n(This is quoted from the edition of Col. \nR. W. Phipps, late Royal Artillery, pub- \nlished by Charles Scribner\'s Sons, New \nYork, 1889, but the reader is kindly re- \nquested to compare this translation with \nthat of John S. Memes\'s, Edinburgh, 1831, \ngiven herewith as a note.*) \n\n*The character of Bonaparte presents the most inex- \nplicable contrasts ; though the most obstinate of mor- \ntals, no man ever more easily allowed himself to be led \naway by the charm of illusions ; m many respects, to \ndesire and to believe were with him one and the same \n\n\n\n"Bonaparte\'s character presents many \nunaccountable incongruities. Although \nthe most positive man that perhaps ever \nexisted, yet there never was one who more \nreadily yielded to the charm of illusion. In \nmany circumstances the wish and the \n\nact. And never had he been more under the empire \nof illusion than during the early part of the campaign \nof Moscow. The easy progress of his troops, the burn- \ning of towns and villages on their approach, ought to \nhave prepared him for a Parthian warfare, where re- \ntreat, drawing him into the heart of the country, was \nonly preparatory to rendering the advance more fear- \nful. All wise men, too, before those disasters which \nmarked the most terrible of retreats recorded in his- \ntory, were unanimous as to the propriety of spending \nthe winter of 1812-13 in Poland \xe2\x80\x94 there to establish, \nthough only provisionally, a grand nursery for the \nmighty enterprise of the following spring. But the \nillusions of an impatient ambition urged him on, and \nhis ear was deaf to ever}\' other sound save \' \' Forward ! \' \' \nAnother illusion, justified perhaps by the past, was the \nbelief that Alexander, the moment that he should be- \nhold the van of the French columns on the Russian \nterritory, would propose conditions of peace. At \nlength the burning of Moscow revealed to Napoleon \nthat it was a war to the death ; and he that had been \nhitherto accustomed to receive propositions from van- \nquished enemies, now for the first time found his own \nrejected. \xe2\x80\x94 "Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, from \nthe French of M. Fauvelet de Bourrietme, by John S. \nMemes, LL. D., Vol. IV, pp. 94-5, Edinburgh, 1831. \n\n\n\nNapolkone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nREALITY were to him one and THE SAME \nTHING. He never indulged in greater il- \nlusions ihaji at the beginning of the cam- \npaign of Moscow. Even before the ap- \nproach of the disasters whith accompanied \nthe most fatal retreat recorded in history, \nall sensible persons concurred in the opin- \nion that the Emperor ought to have passed \nthe winter of 1812-13 in Poland, and have \nresumed his vast enterprises in the spring. \nBut his natural impatience impelled him \nforward, as it were, unconsciously, and he \nseemed to be under the influence of an in- \nvisible [evil] demon [like the good daemon \nof Socrates] stronger than even his own \nstrong will. This demon was ambition. \nHe who knew so ivell the VALUE (t/TIME \nnever sufficiently understood its POWER, \nand hoiu much is sometimes gained by delay ? \nYet Csesar\'s Commentaries, which were \nhis favorite study, ought to have shown \nhim that Csesar did not conquer Gaul in \none campaign." \n\nDr. Dendy, in his " Philosophy of Mys- \ntery," Harper\'s Edition, 1847, 305~6, re- \nmarks, \' \' There is a somewhat remote \nanalogy to this [the effects of somnambu- \nlism] in the want of balance in the judg- \nment and volition of ambitious minds. In \nthe campaign of Russia, Napoleon\'s march \nwas a sort of somnambulism, for he must \nhave been madly excited to have taken \naction against his better judgment." In \nother words the question presents itself \nwhether he was not partially insane. Mich- \nelet avers that, at times, he was so. After \nhis divorce from Josephine and his marriage \nwith Marie lyouise, he completely changed \nhis habits of life, and, from comparative \nabstention, became luxurious and sensuous \nas well as sensual. For nearly two years \nhe did not take the field, and he undertook \nthe Russian campaign as monarchs with \nless power would get up a grand hunt. \nDeny it who may his health had deterio- \nrated. In 1805 he had fixed the date 1812 \n\n\n\nwhen the bow would lose its elasticity. \nBesides being actually ill at times, as at \nBorodino, on the march to Moscow, he \nsuffered terribly from the heat. His body-- \nservant Constant attests this. On the re- \ntreat or flight the exceeding cold in turn \nmay have affected his brain. That exces- \nsive protracted cold does affect the mind is \na well-known medical fact and has been \nthe subject of investigation and scientific \ntreatises aroused by the conditions observed \nduring this very expedition. Again, emi- \nnent writers, especially Michelet, have \ncome to the conclusion that unlimited and \nirresponsible power in a very short time \nproduces or develops into insanity, of \nwhich the most marked peculiarity is a \ntotal disregard of human life and suffering, \nas in the case of the Roman Csesars and of \nthe Popes prior to the Reformation. More- \nover, what makes this judgment the more \napplicable to Napoleon is the fact that even \nas Buonaparte had attracted so many flatter- \ners, venal-advocates of whom a very few ad- \nhered to him at the last and shared his cap- \ntivity, \xe2\x80\x94 Nero, the worst of the Csesars, was \nfound capable of inspiring attachment, and \nhis reappearance wasjoyously expected; and, \nmarvelous to state, he has suscitated advo- \ncates and excusers. The same is the case \nwith Alexander Borgia, the worst of the \nPopes. He has kindled biographers who \nhave striven to show that he has been ma- \nligned and that he was even a wise and \njust ruler. Judas Iscariot has likewise re- \ncently roused an advocate, a legal light, who \nattempted to argue that his betrayal of his \nMaster was not attributable to criminal but \nto comparatively innocent and mitigating \nmotives. Finally, it is conceded that \nBuonaparte was subject to epilepsy, and \nthat disease indubitably either tempora- \nneously or permanently affects the reason. \nThe mortal who could declare, as Buona- \nparte did, that he was above all law and \nthat no law was applicable to one in his \n\n\n\n10 \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nposition, could not have been in the posses- \nsion of even an ordinarily well-balanced \nmind. A judgment affected to such a de- \ngree amounted to an aberration of intellect. \nConsequently it is no more than just to \nfall back upon an idea which is as old as \nphilosophy rendered by Dryden : \n\nGreat evils are sure to madness near allied, \nAnd thin partitions do their bounds divide. \n\n- And by Pope : \n\nWhat thin partitions sense from thought divide. \n\nDoes it not seem absolutely ridiculous to \nargue that Buonaparte had the slightest \nabhorrence of bloodshed or torture in one \nshape or another or in degree when he shot \nand permitted the infliction of torture ; \nwhen his troops could resort to the most \natrocious modes of punishment, even em- \npalement, as in Calabria ; when he consid- \nered an uprising of the oppressed as a \nfavorable opportunity to teach a lesson \nagainst resistance to oppression by liberal \nblood-letting ; and could issue such orders \nas that of 5th of March, 1813, as Charras \nrecords in his "War of 1813 " (413), to \nthe Viceroy Eugene Beauharnais to employ \n"if necessary terror and devastation " upon \nthe slightest insult of a city or a " Prussian \nvillage." Buonaparte wrote to Eugene \nwith a veritable demoniac ferocity : " Burn \nit, even if it should be Berlin." Baron \nOdeleben, i, 292, records a ferocity even \nmore atrocious than this when, in 1813, \nNapoleon was compelled to evacuate Sax- \nony, the country of an ally who had stuck \nto him to the last. \' \' He ordered his sub- \nordinates to carry off with them all the \ncattle, to burn the woods, to destroy the \nfruit trees and everything else which could \nafford nourishment, so that the portion of \nSaxony on the right or east side of the Elbe \nshould become a frightful desert. \' \' To sum \nup, to such an extent was meanly insane \ndestruction carried on in Russia that the \ntroops in advance destroyed the buildings \nwhich had escaped destruction and which \n\n\n\nmight have served as shelters for the troops \ncovering the retreat. Was there ever a \nmore contemptible exhibition of pure \nmalice than blowing up the bastions of \nVienna when evacuating that city in 1809, \nand blowing up the palace of the Czars, \nthe Kremlin, when compelled to abandon \nMoscow in 1812? Such spite very much \nresembles the action of a child which beats \nits own head against the floor when it can- \nnot injure the object of its anger. \n\nlyaying hands or obtaining or examining \nevery accessible work on the Corsican or \nItalian, Napoleonedi Buonaparte, closer \nand closer examination seems simply to \nprove that he was one of the most over- \nestimated of men, who have become so \nprominent in history, and one of God\'s \nscourges to chastise mortals. He was a \ncompound of elements, in which the vile \nand criminal so greatly predominated that \nvirtues which might have maintained their \nequipoise and influence if existing in no \ngreater degree in ordinary men than in him, \nbecame transmuted into vices through the \npredominance of the evil and energy in \nhis case. \n\n\' \' No one, \' \' says Dr. Johnson, \' \' ever rose \nfrom an ordinary situation in life to high \ndestinies without great and commanding \nqualities in his mind being blended with \nmeannesses which would be inconceivable \nin private life." Napoleon was a remark- \nable example of this singular but just ob- \nservation. He made it an invariable rule \nnever to admit he had judged wrong in \nanything, and, with whatever injustice, to \nlay the blame of every disaster which oc- \ncurred on others, rather than bear the \nblame of any part of it himself* \n\nWhat is more, he had no hesitation in \ndeclaring that he was above the application \n\n\n\n*L,ord Castlereagh and Sir Ctarles Stewart, from the \noriginal papers of the family by Sir Archibald Alison, \nBart, D. C. L., LL. D., etc.. Vol. II, pp. 45-6, Edin- \nburgh and London, 1861. \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nor opei\'ation of all law ; that the laws of \nmorals were not applicable to him ; that \nhis will was the sole law by which he ruled, \nby which he was to be governed, and the \ncatechism which was taught\xe2\x80\x94 by his impe- \nrial and despotic command \xe2\x80\x94 throughout the \nEmpire, is the best proof that he considered \nhimself so far above humanity as actually \nto claim to be divine, if the term denti-god, \nas Ireland states, was actually applied by \nhim to himself. At all events he accepted \nand even demanded an adulation which was \nutterly blasjahemous, and if he dispensed \nrewards and riches with a lavish hand it \nwas simply because he had such a contempt \nfor his fellow-beings that, destitute of virtue, \nas Thiers admits, he believed that his \nhuman beings, his fellows, were so desti- \ntute of virtue themselves that every one of \nboth sexes, person and performance, devo- \ntion, body and soul, could only be pur- \nchased, and kept up to their duty by farther \npayments.* \n\nTwo sayings are attributed to Bismarck, \nwhich have become proverbial : One, \n" Blood and Iron," as the sine qua non of \nVictory; and the other, that "great \nchanges in human affairs and steps in pro- \n\n\n\n*Chapters i and ii of Eyre Evans Crowe\'s "History \nof the Reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X," London, \n1854, present the clearest explanation of the circum- \nstances which constitute the steps by which Buonaparte \nobtained his despotic elevation and maintained himself \nthere ; also the basis of his success and the causes of \nhis fall. There are ample corroborations of the worst \nwhich has been alleged against Napoleon in contempo- \nrary\' records, which either have never been published, \nor, if in print, have been long since swallowed up in \nvast libraries and forgotten. In the "Car?iets of Gen. \nICi<EBER," which are preserved in MSS. among the \narchives of the French Minister of War, that general \nnoted that " Napoleon was not loved, because he loved \nnobody, believing that he could supply the want of \nlove by advancement and by gifts. To sum up, he \nbribed until he had power, and then he used force \nto maintain himself therein. He himself was wont to \nboast that if any of his absolutely necessary instru- \nments were seeking to escape or breaking through the \ntoils, he always knew how to recapture him by bribes \nand lavish rewards. \n\n\n\ngress are, like childbirth, accompanied by \ntorture and hemorrhage, sufferings inex- \npressible and profuse shedding of blood." \nThese expressions are eminently true, but \nthey were not original with Bismarck. \nThe ideas are to be found in German works, \nif not in the very same words, at the time \nwhen the Tugend Bund {Bond., Leagtie or \nKnot of Virtue) was preparing the public \nmind, especially the youth of Prussia, for \nthe great struggle of 1813, which liberated \nGermany and chased Buonaparte and his \nFrench back across the Rhine, and event- \nually carried the Allies into Paris and de- \nthroned Napoleon in 1814 ; and, again, in \n1815, brought the Prussians, under Bluch- \nER, and the Anglo- Allies, under Welling- \nton, on the wings of victory into Paris, \nshattered the hopes and rule of Buonaparte \nand consigned him to his island prison and \nto the grave. \n\nWhen Christ came, welcomed by the \nangelic anthem, " Peace on earth and to \nmen of good-will," or, " to men in whom He \nis well pleased," which last is alleged to be \nthe correct version of St. Luke\'s words, the \nRoman Emperor exercised dominion over \nall that might be considered the more or \nless civilized earth, SUBJECT TO LAW. \nWhat was the condition of all beyond, of \nthat is very little known or understood. \nClouds and tokens were thickening towards \nthe north, where the Goths or Germans \n{Theotiscans)., imperfectly described by \nTacitus, were beginning to imagine and \nperhaps plan those successive inroads or \ninvasions which ended in blotting out the \nWestern Empire ; while the Parthians, \nsucceeded by the Saracens and these by the \nTartars, and those again by the Turks, \nfollowed each other in surges of "blood \nand iron and fire," until the Crescent sup- \nplanted the cross over the whole Eastern \nEmpire, which had more gallantly resisted \ntheir progress than the original Imperial \nCity had been able to do. \n\n\n\n12 \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nWestandeast, andsouth in Africa, a higher \nor lower civilization was actually over- \nwhelmed by tide waves of \' \' blood and iron." \nCountries like the northern coast of Africa, \nwhich were the granaries of Rome, became \ndeserts overspread with mighty ruins. \nThen came the DARK AGES. But dark \nas they were after Attila\'s grave was lost to \nhuman ken and Alaric\'s place of sepulture \nirrecoverably concealed beneath the waters \nof the Bucentinus, there was no conqueror \narose in Europe to occasion such tremen- \ndous losses of life and such sacrifices to the \npride and ambition of an upstart, until \nCorsica vomited forth Buonaparte, his fam- \nily and his satellites, to plunge all Europe \nin promiscuous tortures, devastations, sac- \nrifices and slaughter. Between Attila and \nBuonaparte there had been wars and con- \ntinual wars, but none, not even the re- \nmotest expeditions of Charlemagne, em- \nbraced areas so wide apart as woe and waste \nwere carried or sent by Buonaparte. Yes, \ninto regions utterly unknown to Karl der \nGrosse \xe2\x80\x94 whom Buonaparte ridiculously \naped \xe2\x80\x94 and to his successors and to Europe \nfor over nine hundred years. To the north, \nBuonaparte carried fire and sword to the \nsea. That he could not cross \xe2\x80\x94 it was the \ndominion of Great Britain, against which \nhis impotent efforts were shattered. To \nthe east, to Moscow, at once the ancient \nand holy capital of Russia, with a climate \nwhich, in the wrath of God, as expressed \nin the Psalms, froze that giant force with \nwhich he calculated to complete the con- \nquest of Europe, and thence carry fire and \nsword and oppression into Turkey, Persia \nand India. To the southeast, his deluded \nbattalions subjected Egypt and attempted \nthe subjugation of Syria, which was to \nserve as the threshold for steps with which \nto cross and whereon to rise to that Oriental \ntiara and scepter wherewith the apostate \nRomanist was to revolutionize Europe from \nthe east. Arrested again by Great Britian, \n\n\n\nthe saviour of Europe, through Aboukir \nand at Acre, he abandoned his deluded \ntroops and fled into the willing arms of \nthat nation of which Arndt declared "wind \n[vanity] is the element of the French, \nwater and foam his nature." Not content \nwith crushing free thought and independ- \nence in Europe and Asia, he could not \nleave the poor Africans in the West Indies \nto develop under a native leader, Toussiant \nI\'Ouverture, fully as able as himself in his \ncomparative sphere : and there, in his vain \nendeavor to reverse the liberty accorded by \nFrench Liberals, fighting against tropical \nheat, climate and climatic diseases- \xe2\x80\x94 as in \nRussia ten years afterward against cold \nand space* \xe2\x80\x94 that is against the Almighty, \nassisted by His human instruments. Great \nBritain\'s fleets \xe2\x80\x94 he sacrificed to the west \nthe finest, most honest, most republican \narmy which France ever possessed, an \narmy which, under Hoche, Moreau, and \nsubordinates like St. Cyr, had achieved \nsuch triumphs for the true glory of France. \nBuonaparte, like a cyclone, an earth- \nquake, an eruption, like that of Krackatoa, \nfelt around the earth ball, "the Black Death" \nor the cholera, or any other cataclysm, was \nan instrument to work out God\'s purposes in \na way incomprehensible to mortals. Why \ngood should be evolved through evilisTHE \ngreat question, but, it is certain, victory does \nnot depend on an ideal Napoleon, nor a per- \nfect array, but on the lyord of Hosts and God \nof Battles. The connection between the \n\n\n\n*Space.\xe2\x80\x94 Montalembert (according to Senior ii, 165- \n6) has extracted from I^acordaire\'s Cotiferences de \nNotre Dame a wonderful passage on the power of \nSpace. The following is a translation, but it cannot \nconvey the concrete eloquence of the original : \n\n\' \' For years the last of the \' \' Great Captains \' \' had sub- \njected Fortune to his Will. The Alps aud the Pyre- \nnees had trembled beneath his tread. Europe in silence \nlistened to the reverberation of his thought. When \ntired of this domain, wherever glory had exhausted all \nits resources to satisfy him, he precipitated himself \neven to the boundaries of Asia. Then his glance be- \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\n13 \n\n\n\nvisible and invisible is beyond human com- \nprehension, but it exists and influences \neverything. When progress halts, the Su- \npreme or the Day of Vengeance arrives. \nAs Isaiah declared, "the Lord shall hiss \nfor the fly * * * of Egypt, and for the \nbee * * * of Assyria, and shave with \na razor that is hiied, namely, * * * by \nthe King of Assyria. " \n\nEven as Nimrod was a mighty hunter \nbefore the Lord, of men and beasts \xe2\x80\x94 not in \nthe dawn of the world, as hitherto sup- \nposed, but in the dimmer misty twilight of \nhistory \xe2\x80\x94 so Bwnaparte \xe2\x80\x94 "the torturer of \nnations," pre-ordained by Heaven to fill \nthat part \xe2\x80\x94 ravaged, ruined, slaughtered and \nstrewed the earth with seeds of evil from \nwhich the All Wise caused to grow and \nproduced harvests of progress and ultimate \ngood. Incomprehensible the WHY. Hu- \nmanity can only perceive results. \n\nIt was almost impossible for an individ- \nual who has not had access to books which \ndo not constitute popular reading to imagine \nthe condition of France at the outbreak of \nthe French Revolution. Not only the no- \n\n\n\ncame troubled and his eagles turned their hea(^s for the \nfirst time. What had he then encountered ? Was it a \ngeneral more able than himself? No ! An army \n\xe2\x96\xa0which had not yet been conquered ? No ! Or was it \nthat age had already chilled his genius ? No ! What \nthen had he met ? He had encountered the Protector \nof the Weak, the Asj\'lum of oppressed peoples, the \nGreat Defender of human liberties ; He had encoun- \ntered SPACE, and all his power failed beneath his feet. \nFor if God has created such barriers in the bosom of \nnature it is because He has pity upon us. He knew all \nthat which violent unity concentrates of despotism and \nof misfortune for the human race and He has prepared \nfor us unattainable retreats in the mountains and the \ndeserts. O, inaccessible mountains, eternal snows, \nburning sands, pestiferous marshes, destructive cli- \nmates, to you we return thanks for the past and in you \nwe hope in the future. Yes, you will preserve for us \nfree oases, hidden paths ; you will not permit chemis- \ntrj\' to prevail against nature ; and to make of the globe, \nso wisely moulded by the Hand of God, a horrible area \nand a close dungeon [one from which there is no es- \ncape] , where fire and sword will be the chief officers of \na pitiless autocracy. \' \' \n\n\n\nbility, but the priesthood were steeped in \nimmorality, and the treatment of the \npeasantry and poor was worse than would \nnow be permitted to domestic animals. \nWhen the French officers apd troops re- \nturned from America, in 1782, they set \ntheir nation aflame. Why the Almighty \npermitted the explosion which ensued and \nthe rise of the scum to the surface and to \nrule, is incomprehensible to a reflecting \nmind. The seething of the cauldron in- \ndeed brought the scum to the surface, and \nout of that scum was evolved Buonaparte. \nThat violent diseases require violent reme- \ndies, and horrible accidents, heroic treat- \nment, is also true. Perhaps as the Supreme \nRuler works by Law, it was necessary for \nsuch a wretch as Buonaparte, with his abili- \nties and his abominations, to grasp the \nwand which alone could bring order out of \nchaos. With all his ability he was the \ngreatest actor who ever trod a public stage. \nMendacious and mean, deceitful and des- \nperate, a charlatan and a quack, with some \nknowledge X)f the necessary remedies, he \njust suited the times when crime and \nnot morality, blood-letting and force not \njustice and equity and mercy, were the only \nmeasures capable of disciplining a people \ngone mad. There were generous elements \nat work ; there were honest men, like Hoche \nand Moreau, striving to knead the dough. \nAlas, they were too much governed with \nrectitude, they were too weak in their gen- \nerosity to handle the mass. The instru- \nments which were needed were not men \nlike Washington, but immoralities, like \nRousseau, specious miscreants ; one now \nblatherskiting through the country might \nbe cited as a co-disciple. \n\nBuonaparte has been aptly styled the \n"Torturer of Nations." Eccelino da Ro- \nmano, no greater tyrant for his times, was \na gentleman to him, for if he was cruel and \ndespotic he died like a hero, tearing the \nbandages off" of his wounds received in \n\n\n\nu \n\n\n\nNapoleon E m Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nbattle, and refusing to live out his days \nand die in captivity. \n\nBuonaparte was not always successful as \nrepresented. His vaunted campaign of \n1796 was nothing as fine as that of Prince \nEugene in 1706. He was not always uni- \nformly victorious, like Marlborough or like \nWellington. He was not indomptable, \nlike Blucher. He extricated himself, as in \n1797, by cunning and lies through the \nmiserable weakness of Austria, bribing that \nuntrustworthy government, always, as \nShakspere describes it, " thou ever stronger \non the strongest side." He failed in Syria \nand he fled from Egypt. He was beaten \nat Marengo and saved there by Desaix, \nMarmont and Kellerman, and on the Dan- \nube by Moreau. His threatened invasion of \nEngland was a fiasco. The success of his \nfamous campaign of Austerlitz was due to \na miserable creature. Mack, whose very \nname signifies "disaster," and again by the \nweak back of Austria, when in reality Buon- \naparte was in a terrible predicament. The \nvictorious campaign of Jena again, was \ndue to the unutterable weakness and in- \nefficiency of the Prussian leaders. Fear of \nassassination cut short his campaign in \nSpain, a country to which he never dared \nto return. The result of his campaign of \nWagram was again attributable to Austria\'s \nweak knees. He left the field of Aspern in \na skiff", as he left Russia in a sleigh. He \nabandoned his army in Russia, as he aban- \ndoned his army after Leipsic, as he abdi- \ncated in 1814. Rogniat and Jomini charge \nhim with want of TRUE courage at Leipsic. \nHe was certainly wanting to the situation \nafter Waterloo. To deny him the ordinary \ncourage of a professional soldier is a false- \nhood ; to credit him with the courage of a \nBlucher or a thousand other generals is \nequally a falsehood. As Arndt (64) declares, \n"with him everybody, everything was to \nbe sacrificed for him, the Great Emperor, \nand he, the Emperor, was to make no sac- \nrifice for anything or anybody." \n\n\n\nUndiscoverable are the ways of the Lord, \nand no mortal may judge or attempt to un- \nderstand them. That such a creature as \nBuonaparte should have had such a career of \nsuccess proves that he was the only such \nan one fitted for a scourge of the times. It \nis horrible to contemplate the necessity of \na Buonaparte or a condition of things re- \nquiring the reappearance of a Hun, like \nAttila. \n\nIt was not only in his expenditure of \nFrench life and the infernal outrages against \nhumanity throughout Europe and else- \nwhere, by which his opportunities were ob- \ntained, but by the other devilish meas- \nures by which \xe2\x80\x94 even by forcibly marrying \nheiresses to subordinates, military and civil \n\xe2\x80\x94 that Buonaparte demoralized France. As \nan instance of this, it is mentioned in the \nLife of Lord Stratford de Redcliff"e (born Can- \nning), by his biographer, that when Buona- \nparte returned from Elba, in 1815, "at Lyon, \namid massacre and popular violence," " the \nBlack Flag [was] hoisted and the most im- \npious mottoes stuck about the town," \xe2\x80\x94 for \ninstance, "Hurrah for Hell, the Republic, \nand Death !" [? Meaning the return of the \nRobespierrian " Reign of Terror. " There \nwas something like it, termed the "White \nTerror," in the south of France in 1814.] \n\nThe terrible condition of Europe brought \nabout by the satanic cunning and Attila \napplication of numbers, of that Man of Sin, \nthrough his artful separation of allies by \ndefamation and false pretences, fraud and \nforce, by \' \' the great art of the modern \nMachiavelli," could alone hope for a happy \nchange through the direct interposition of \nthe Lord of Hosts, which came in 1812, by \nHis frost and ice and snow. \n\nPrevious to that, as spoken by Lord \nGrenville, "This [the condition of Europe \nunder Buonaparte, 1800-1812] is the true \nomnipotence of Hell, which Dante \nin the spirit of prophecy paints so sub- \nlimely." (Napoleon and the French peo- \nple, 165). Examine Dante. \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\n15 \n\n\n\nBuonaparte\'s rule in Germany was styled \n"Hell," in 1813, and here in France a like \nreturn was frantically invoked. \n\nStrange to say, Buonaparte was so aware \nof his unpopularity in Paris that when he \nfled home from Russia he entered his capi- \ntal in the night, so again in 1813 \xe2\x80\x94 he did \nnot enter it in 1814, \xe2\x80\x94 and so in 1815. \nMichelet, in his "Jnsqu\' a Waterloo,-" 239, \nsays, "Buonaparte had more fear of Paris \nthan of the whole world besides." It is a \ncurious coincidence that in the last year, \narriving from Elba, he entered his capital \nby the Porte d\'\' Enfer (Gate of Hell), and \nfrom what subsequently occurred it was \nsignificant. What is more curious, when \nthe corpse of Talleyrand \xe2\x80\x94 Buonaparte\'s \narch-manipulator and ultimate Achitophel \n\xe2\x80\x94 left Paris on the way to its last resting- \nplace, the postillion as usual asked by what \nroute he was to drive, and the answer was \n"Porte d\' Enfer." \n\nIf \'Mr. J. K. Bangs is right that Napoleon \nnow reigns in Hell and the expelled Devil \nin Paris, what more appropriate than that \ncity should maintain for one of its en- \ntrances the appellation "Gate of Hell," \nfor if ever there was a city fit for the capi- \ntal of Satan it has been and is Paris, and \nwithin a few years there was a statement \npublished with an account of a Meeting of \nof Disciples, showing that its population \ncomprised among others a Society for the \nWorship of the Devil. \n\nThe world has been filled, now, for nearly \na century, with the renown accorded to \nBuonaparte for his Code Napoleon, with \nwhich he had but little to do except to \nmake it subserve his own illegal purposes. \nAmong other examples of this was its appli- \ncation to divorce, as if he was looking \nforward to his own and other cases in his \nfamily. But even, as Shakspere declared, \nthat Providence often converts our pleas- \nant vices into scourges, Buonaparte in \naffixing his signature to his act of separa- \ntion from Josephine, signed the decree of \n\n\n\nhis own fall. There is no question but \nthat Buonaparte owed his first real rise to \nreceiving the hand of Josephine and with \nit the command of the Army of Italy, and \nshe plaintively but prophetically reminded \nhim when about to repudiate her, \'\xe2\x96\xa0\'\' Remem- \nber, Napoleon, the crown zv as foretold to MU \nand NQT to you /\' \' and that crown, she was \nthe means of his attaining, was undoubtedly \nlost by his bigamy with Marie Louise, who \nwas no more his legitimate wife in spite of \nthe concurrence of servile prelates and \nslavish officials than criminal espousals, \nwhich have sent hundreds upon hundreds \ninto state prisons. Moreover, when Malet \ncame near getting possession of Paris in \n1812 and overthrowing the imperial rule \nthere, and declared Buonaparte\'s son a \nfoundling, born in unlawful wedlock, cer- \ntainly his ideas were in accord with those \nof Pope Pius VII. In the eyes of the law \nthe son which Maria Louisa bore to Buona- \nparte was as illegitimate as the son she bore \nto General Count Neipperg before Buona- \nparte was dead in St. Helena. \n\nBuonapartists claim that all the ameliora- \ntions and improvements in the condition of \nthe different nations of Europe are attribu- \ntable to Napoleon.* They were due to the \n\n\n\n*N0TE. TURCOT the Statesman.\xe2\x80\x94 "To-Aay the world \nreads and talks about Napoleon and pays homage to \nhis genius as a military leader and statesman, even \nwhile condemning his cruel sacrifice of human life upon \nthe altar of personal ambition. But the day will come \nwhen it will be recognized by the world at large, as it \nis to-day by the unprejudiced student of liistory, tliat \na greater tfian Napoleon held the fortunes of France \nin his hands for a brief period in the last half of the \nXVIII Century, and that, with far less opportunity \nand freedom of action, TuRGOT in reality planned and \ncarried out as great reforms as did Napoleon, and dem- \nonstrated that he possessed even greater gejiius ttian \nNapoleon for political administration. True, Tur- \ngot\'s reforms were swept away when he was driven \nfrom office, and France fell back into the slough from \nwhich he was successfully extricating her. But that \ndoes uot alter the facts as they were at that time, when \nTurgot\'s remarkable public career was cut short by the \nrefusal of Louis XVI longer to support him." \n\n\n\n16 \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nprogress of the age, to the Revolution in \nAmerica, to the seed obtained there and \ncarried back to France by the French con- \ntingent permitted to be sent out by Louis \nXVI, for which he paid with his head. \nThe seed planted in France, fructified with \nbloody fertilizers during the French Revol- \nution, was carried forth with deceitful hands \nand sown broadcast by Revolutionary armies \nfor their own wicked ends, not for the pros- \n\n\n\nperity of those among whom it was sown. \nStein, who brought to the. birth the reno- \nvation of Prussia and his coadjutors in the \ngreat work, owed nothing whatever to the \nconceptions or suggestions of Buonaparte ; \nso much so that Stein and those cooperating \nwith him were driven out of Germany by \nthe orders of Buonaparte, and, in exile, \npropagated the ideas which in 1813 bore \nample fruit for their persecutor\'s destruction. \n\n\n\nIII. \n\n\n\n"A 1,IE should be trampled ou and extinguished \nwherever found. I am for fumigating the atmosphere \n\xe2\x80\xa2when I suspect that falsehood, like pestilence, breathes \naround me." \xe2\x80\x94 Carlyle. \n\n" ^The old ma7i is right,\' said Dame Hsedwig [Duch- \ness of Suabia] , when Ekkehard reported to her the re- \nsult of his mission. \'When the enemy threatens \xe2\x80\x94 \nprepare, and when he attacks us \xe2\x80\x94 beat him ; that is so \nsimple that one hardly need ask any one\'s advice. / \nverily believe that the habit of too much reflection and \nhesitation has been sown in Germany by the hands of \nthe enemy. He who hesitates is lost, and he who \nmisses the right moment for action often, digs his own \ngrave. WE WILI, GET READY.\'" Chapter xii, page \n219, Vol. I, " Ekkehard ; A Tale of the Tenth Cen- \ntury." By Joseph Victor von Scheffel. Translated \nfrom, the German. New York, 1890. \n\nI have written a great many things in \nmy day which 1 regret. They were founded \non Faith in older men. Historical criti- \ncism in its true meaning did not arise as a \nrule, only sporadically, until within 30, \ncertainly not more than 50, years. Gradu- \nally I grew, and grew into seeing for my- \nself, and gradually I became an Agnostic, \nnot in the objectionable signification of an \noften too unreflectingly and falsely applied \nterm, but in the sense of Montaigne, \'\'\'\'Que \nsaisje.\'\'\'\' Then I examined everything for \nmyself, and now, what I write is founded on \nwhat are considered bed-rock authorities, \npersonal observation of human nature, re- \nflection, comparison and individual judg- \nment. \n\nNapoleon, Joseph Charles Paul \xe2\x80\x94 known \n\n\n\nunder the name of Prince Napoleon and \nalso the soubriquet of Plon Plon \xe2\x80\x94 wrote in \n1888 a book entitled "Napoleon and His \nDetractors," which was translated and \nedited by Raphael Ledos de Beaufort, Lon- \ndon, 1888. The labors of the author of \nthe Biographical Sketch are simply an imi- \ntation of the panegyrists of " Napolione di \nBuonaparte," such as those that his hero \nrecites, as the best expositors of the charac- \nter of his uncle (152), Thiers, Norvins, Laur- \nent de I\'Ardeche, Armand Carrel, Beran- \nger, Pierre Leroux, likewise the republican \nVaulabelle, the author of a history which \nis a real monument for the years of 1814 \nand 1 81 5. \n\nIn one respect Professor Sloane is most \n\n\n\nIn his "Lifeof Napoleon Bonaparte," London, 1828, \nW. H. Ireland, Esq , Vol. IV, p. 269, would seem to \nbe jocose, when, amid the many falsifications he de- \nliberately publishes to paint his hero in saintly colors, \nhe ventures upon the following mendacious statement, \nwhich caps the climax of his self-stultifications : "/^ is \njustice due to Napoleo7t to state that no man ever pos- \nsessed purer morals or took so much pains to check \nscandal." Prof. William M. Sloane, who, with the \napparently earnest desire to be impartial, seems to \ncarry water on both shoulders as well as on his head, \nsometimes exhibits a regular example of Japanese \nbalanciug-jvigglery. Nevertheless, he comes out very \nhandsomely in his January article of his series in the \nCentury. Previously it seems, honestly to make his \nascriptions like the marked superscriptions of a palimp- \nsest, but in January he speaks his mind more consist- \nently with his reputation as an historian of the Tacitus \nschool and does not seek to whitewash a sepulchre full \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\n17 \n\n\n\ncommendable. He presents us with a lovely \npicture of the winning Queen Louise of \nPrussia, and if ever Buonaparte showed \nhimself in his true colors, as a pre-eminent \nliar and slanderer, it was in his aspersions \nof the character and chastity of one of the \npurest and sweetest of women who ever \nwore a crown, whose only fault was her \nburning patriotism and her faith in the \nqualities of an army inherited from a hero \nand monarch, so far superior to Buonaparte \nas a soldier and sovereign as gold is to \npinchbeck \xe2\x80\x94 one whom von Clausewitz \nplaces on the apex of the pyramid, because \nhis work was complete \xe2\x80\x94 outlived him \xe2\x80\x94 as \nproved by what the Hohenzollerns have ac- \ncomplished, and the world recognizes the \nfact to-day, while Buonaparte\'s crumbled \nwhile he yet ought to have been in his \nprime. \n\nThese authors, praised by Prince Napo- \nleon, are simply perverters of facts, un- \nblushing flatterers, worthy to rank with the \nRev. John S. C. Abbott,* whose produc- \ntion is so utterly untrustworthy, that, to any \nhonest historical student, it must appear \nabsolutely ridiculous. \n\nIt is scarcely surprising that Prince Na- \npoleon gave himself such airs, as his resem- \nblance to his imcle was most startling from \n\nof all unclean uess. He draws it mi dly, but he draws \nit truly. The fact is many biographers are like poor \nFrankinsteiu, who evoked a monster, and, in their \nterror at the horror they vitalized, sought to mask him \nwith the vizor and garments of virtues their subject did \nnot possess, and in doing so produced something like a \nLothario blended with a saint. \n\n*NoTE. \xe2\x80\x94 As far as a youth and young man can be \nintimate with a middle-aged gentleman the writer was \nso with Mr. Harper, the head of Harper Brothers, who \nwas afterwards mayor of New York. When this J. S. C. \nAbbott was publishing his mythical history of Buona- \nparte, a strange blending of fantastic conceptions and \ndistorted facts, often verging on the developments of a \nMunchausen imagination, the writer asked Mr. Harper \nhow such a farrago of exaggerations came to be pub- \nlished. He laughed kindly, and when he had recov- \nered his composure, he said : \' \' Why the Reverend author \n\n\n\nhis boyhood to his grave. The writer who \nsaw him on board the French steamer Henri \nIV., in 1834, in the harbor of Leghorn, re- \nmembers his appearance as well as if it was \nyesterday, and can bear witness to the like- \nness. He was then twelve, and the writer \nthirteen, and, at that early age, seemed to \npose as he did throughout life. To use \nAmerican half-slang adjectives, he was as \n"tonguey and brassy," as he was "brainy \nand bold" in expressing his opinions. A? \nto his mental ability, there can be no doubt. \nM. de Beaufort makes him out a military \nhero likewise, but with that we have noth- \ning to do herein. * \n\nThe vials of bitterest wrath are poured \nforth on M. Taine, then others upon Prince \nMetternich, Bourrienne, Madame de Rem- \nusat, the Abbe de Pradt, Miot de Melito. \nBy the way, there were two Miots, oue of \nwhom was an officer with Buonaparte in \nEgypt, and the other a courtier and diplo- \nmat. Finally, Prince Napoleon appeals to \nhis uncle\'s correspondence. It is not cred- \nible that those who are seeking to exalt \nBuonaparte dared to publish all that ex- \nisted, if such there is, as that to which ref- \nerence is made in this very article in con- \nnection with Professor Sloane\'s Century \narticle. \n\n\n\ntells me he never begins a chapter without praj\'er for \nthe guidance of his pen." " Mr. Harper, forgive me for \nasking you, which way does he direct his prayers? Up \n[to the Fountain of Truth] or down [to the Father of \nLies] ?" Mr. Harper\'skindly eyes were radiant through \nhis spectacles, but no response came from his lips. It \nis a wonder that such a firm as the Harper Brothers \ncould have published such a book was the opinion of \nBishop Potter of Pennsylvania, who wrote some severe \nreviews of it, but perhaps they had been carried away \nby the Life of Buonaparte in four volumes by Ireland, \nwho, in summing up the character of his subject, de- \nclares him. to have been a model of moral purity, \nwhich is about as far from the truth as the zenith of \nfact from the nadir of falsehood. \n\n\n\n* See curious anecdote in Victor Tissot\'s " Voyage au \nPays des Milliards" Paris, i8S4,page 43, Ludwigs- \nbourg. \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nAs to Taine, he needs no defence ; his \nworks speak for themselves. The authen- \nticity of the Memoirs of Caulincourt, and \nthose of Bonrrienne, have been questioned \nlike those of Barras and Talleyrand. It is \nimpossible for any one to sift out the wheat \nof truth from the chaff of error, but if \nBourrienne did slander he has been slan- \ndered in return, and the balance of relia- \nbility has to be adjusted by corroborative \ncontemporaneous evidence, which is in his \nfavor. It has been set down that Buona- \nparte considered that the two writers who \nhad done him the most harm were the Abbe \nde Pradt and the Prussian general, Count \nTruchsess Waldbourg, \xe2\x80\x94 the first, by his \nreport of the interview at Warsaw, in 1812, \nin which Buonaparte repeatedly uttered the \nphrase "there is but one step from the sub- \nlime to the ridiculous," and the second, by \nhis report of the incidents of Buonaparte\'s \njourney to Elba, in 1814, in which Buona- \nparte became a pitiable object through his \ncomplete abandonment of any self-control. \nUnfortunately, de Pradt\'s account is sub- \nstantiated by eye-witnesses of unquestion- \nable veracity, as was that of Truchsess \nWaldbourg equally attested by unimpeach- \nable evidence. \n\nBut if all that we have from those, whose \nreliability Prince Napoleon seeks to demol- \nish, was swept away, hundreds of books \nremain with which few readers are ac- \nquainted, but whose authors are much more \nsevere than those he styles "Detractors." \nA number of these have been referred to, \nsuch as Charras, Pasquier, Chaptal, Bon- \ndo is, M\' Queen, &c., &c. \n\nBut what could he bring forward to meet \na number cited by lyarousse, * and Pierrart in \n\n\n\n*NoTb;. \xe2\x80\x94 The idol has been thrown down, the man \nunmasked. Hatred and scorn have succeeded to the \nlove and admiration of which he had been so long the \nobject. The idolatry which had placed him almost \nupon an altar will forever remain as an example of the \n[deUisive] shock which military glory produced upon \n\n\n\nhis " Drame de Waterloo, \' Paris, 1868, or \nworks which have appeared since that date. \nEven Marshal Macdonald makes revelations \nwhich are far from creditable ; Marshal St. \nCyr is extremely severe, and many others, \nwho, with the evident intention of bolster- \ning up the character of Buonaparte, let out \nmost derogatory secrets. \n\nTo one who has just risen from the spe- \ncious work of " Napoleon and His Detrac- \ntors," to such a one it is alone possible to \nappreciate how the world can be trapped by \nthe able manipulation of words. It was \nsaid of Queen Christiana of Sweden, who, \nin reality, alone engineered the Peace of \nWestphalia, in the interests of petty personal \nresults, at the sacrifice of great general prin- \nciples for which her father, Gustavus Adol- \nphus, died, "the bitter attacks which \nhave clouded her fame originated chiefly \nin her disregard of conventionalities, with \nwhich no rank or station can safely dis- \npense." Even so it is true with an author \n\nminds and of the long success which a great historic \nimposture can obtain. Through his works, his corres- \npondence, his memoirs, of the details known of his con- \nduct, through everything which recent labors have gath- \nered, now a character evolves itself which can be summed \nup in three words : egoism as motor, falsehood and \ncharlatanism as means, domination as objective. Buona- \nparte showed himself brutal in prosperity, pitiable in \nadversity. Loquacious, passionate, peremptory, ar- \nrogant, presumptuous, he meddled with everything \nand in everything blundered. A voluminous collection \nshould be made of the ridiculous opinions, authentic \nstupidities, which issued from his lips. The certain sign \nof a distempered mind is that he had no conception of \nthe nature of things ; not only morality had no exist- \nence for him, he had no conception of [consideration \nfor] the rights of humanity and the power of ideas ; he \nequally despised the one and the other, thinking that, \nthrough terror, deceit and violence, he could attain his \nobject in everything, but even to the end he misconceiv- \ned the limits of the possible, and he precipitated himself \nblindly into insane plans ; his power of calculation ap- \nplied to details only served to justify him in his folly, \nand his words, his insensate dreams, even after Water- \nloo, attest that in this respect his malady was incurable. \n\xe2\x80\x94 Republique Francaise , 15th Januarj\', 1873, quoted \nin the "Summary of Buonaparte," in "Le Grand Dic- \ntionnaire Universel die XIX Siecle," of Pierre Larousse. \n\n\n\nNapoleone Dr Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nwho runs or writes against the prejudices \nand preconceived opinions of multitudinous \ngeneral readers of superficial writers\xe2\x80\x94 mere \nparrots in words, and even ideas, and their \napplication \xe2\x80\x94 whose wheels run in the same \nruts of error, deepening them, as they roll \nalong, until the force of truth is inadequate \nto extricate them. As an instance in point, \na prolific military author has just published \na work on Gustavus Adolphus and the \nThirty Years\' War, in which he shows pro- \nfound ignorance, intentionally, or ignores \nthe efforts and effects of generals who \nwere as much more able than those whom \nhe lauds as suns arc to planets \xe2\x80\x94 generals, \nwhom Colonel, afterwards General, John \nMitchell in his " Wallenstein," and the \nPrussian military critics in their "Geschichte \ndes Kriegwesens," Berlin, 1828, assign to \nso high a rank as commanders that they \nconsider that there were \'\'\'\' even single \nmoments of their lives, [in masterly concep- \ntion and execution] which surpassed all the \nsuccesses, however great, achieved by Gus- \ntavus Adolphus." \n\nThis General Mitchell, in his "Fall of \nNapoleon" \xe2\x80\x94 little known and seldom \nquoted \xe2\x80\x94 furnishes the ablest exhibii. of the \nlittlenesses on all lines and in every degree \nof Buonaparte that has ever been published, \nand he knew more upon the subjects he \ntreated than those who, like Thiers, have \nfilled the eyes and ears of the world with \ntheir splendid mendacities. \n\nWhile scourges, like Attila, Tamerlane, \nBuonaparte and their peers in evil, deluged \nKingdoms and Empires with blood and left \nnothing behind them but ruins and ashes \nand a "name at which the world grew \npale," the advance of human progress has \nbeen decided more than once by a mere \nskirmish, as at Concord, where \n"Once the embattled farmer stood \nAnd fired the shot heard round the world. \' \' \n\nEven so the exaggerated fame of Buona- \nparte \xe2\x80\x94 who, after all, was simply a repeti- \n\n\n\ntion of Wallenstein as a Condottiere on a \nvaster and viler scale \xe2\x80\x94 was built up upon the \nacts of predecessors, and subordinates whom \nhe ignored, taking all the glory to him- \nself, which to ignorant observers, were ap- \nparently as insignificant as those battles of \nthe American Revolution which were stig- \nmatized as having been "fought out by \nsquads of men," of which the shots were \nnot only heard around all the world, but to \nthis day speak out in thunder tones their \neffects on the whole succeeding century and \nthe vast future. \n\nThese remarks may all seem to ordinary \nreaders as phantasmagoria, but it never \nshould be for a moment forgotten that what \nappeared to our fathers as witchcraft and \nfolly, to their children has been shown to \nbe absolute fact \xe2\x80\x94 take, for instance, the \ntriumphs of electricity. The Book of \nBooks declares " Nothing is hid that shall \nnot be manifested," a promise which has \nbeen formulated by the great French philos- \nopher Montesquieu that "sooner or later \neverything makes itself known (or is found \nout)." Thus it is and will be in regard to \nthe truth about Napolione di Buonaparte. \n\nSince the writer commenced posting him- \nself to prepare the articles which have ap- \npeared in connection with Buonaparte, by \nobserving auction catalogues, importations \nand private purchases, quite an extraordi- \nnary library in different languages has been \ncollected. Among these books bought at \nauction is " Les femmes gallantes des Na- \npoleons. Secrets de Cour et de Palais, par \ndes Lettres et des Conversations Authen- \ntiques," par Eugene Mirecourt, published \nin Berlin, 1862, by Jules Abelsdorff. It evi- \ndently belonged to some person of literary \nconsequence, for it has been annotated and \ncorrected with evident care, besides bearing \na complicated monogram and crest em- \nbossed on the title page, and it is well bound \nin morocco by a firm in Glasgow, whose \nname is stamped on the fly-leaf. \n\n\n\n20 \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nAs a strong evidence that the author, \nwhether the name is his own or assumed, \nknew what he was writing about, a friend \ninstituted a search through several books \ntreating of the genealogy of the Buona- \npartes, and established the connection ex- \nactly as stated by Mirecourt. \n\nAs regards the first Buonaparte and his \nfamily and surroundings, Mirecourt is the \nonly one who has met the question so \nsquarel}\'; but most of the statements which \nhe makes are alluded to more or less dis- \ntinctly in other works. As a single in- \nstance : Barras has been bitterly blamed \nfor what he has left on record in regard to \nthe first Emperor\'s first wife. Dr. Leo, the \nhistorian, who published in Halle, 1856, in \nGerman, states, in a cold phlegmatic man- \nner, thatshewas "Barras\' maitresse," which \nshows that he considered he was citing an \nhistorical incident which, when he wrote, \nwas accepted as a recognized fact. Nor let \nit be forgotten, as alluded to in a former \narticle. Admiral Sir George Cockburn, in \nhis Diary of Buonaparte\'s last voyage, re- \ncords : "I must say from what I have \nhitherto seen and learned, I begin to think \nMr. Goldsmith had more foundation for \nmany of his statements in his \' Secret His- \ntory of St. Cloud \' than he has generally \nreceived credit for (p. 24)." Again, at p. 73, \n"it is right that at the same time I should \nremark that there was something of mali- \ncious cunning in General Buonaparte\'s \nmanner whilst making this statement which \ninduced me very much to doubt the truth \nof the whole story, * * \xe2\x80\xa2\xe2\x80\xa2\' and thereby \noffered General Buonaparte some chance of \nbeing revenged upon him for the unquali- \nfied abuse he has so lavishly heaped upon \nthe General and his family." \n\nThese things are alluded to, not to stir up \nthe malodorous facts connected with Buona- \nparte, to which Constant continually refers \nin an apologeticmanner, buttoconfirm what \n\n\n\nMasson says, p. 313 :* " One calls his con- \nduct with women brutal^ because he was \npressed for time and had none to waste on \ndelicacy, and to judge the men of the empire \nand, much more, the Emperor, by the \nhypocritical and scanty morals of the mid- \ndle classes, it becomes necessary first to \nbring this middle class into existence." \n\nThis seen;s to be a very poor excuse, be- \ncause at all times, in France, there has \nbeen a middle class which was as distinctly \nmoral as in any other country. It is true \nthe best part of the truly moral was mostly \nexpunged through the Revocation of the \nEdict of Nantes and the expulsion or de- \nstruction of the Protestant element, but \nmany foreign writers have attested that \nthere is a strong leaven of the strictest prin- \nciple still left in the country, in spite of the \nexamples, seductions and influence of the \nBuonapartes. \n\nAt all events, Masson, with all his ex- \ntenuations, simply corroborates and sup- \nplements lung, d\'Herrisson, Taine, and \nothers, just as they corroborate and amplify \nMasson. It is said there is no smoke with- \nout fire, but there may be considerable \nsmoke with very little fire during the con- \n\n*Constaut pretends to be judicious, and sets forth Na- \npoleon\'s faults as well as his virtues ; but he never quite \nsucceeds in being anything but indulgently apologetic \nfor peccadilloes which are to be conceded to genius and \nfor actions which would have been criminal in a man, \nbut were " statesmanship " in a sovereign. To Constant \nhe seemed wise, patriotic, deepl}\' learned; witty, magnifi- \ncent\xe2\x80\x94 with all his eccentricities a high type of civilized \nman. But Constant drew a portrait much truer than \nhis own ideas ; for in spite of his hero worship, the \nman who is seen in his pages is not a product of civili- \nzation. He is veneered with a certain respect for con- \nventionalities, he has a native kindliness of impulse, a \ndelight in creative work ; but he is at heart primitive, \nstrong, simple, fond of splendor, thirsting for glorj*, at \nonce generous and supremely selfish, a powerful intel- \nlect that knows no restraint, in a word, a barbarian \nborn out of due time. Thus, unconsciously, Constant \ndepicts him. Sucli really Napoleon was. \xe2\x80\x94 New York \nDaily Tribune, Friday\', Januar}\' 17, 1896. \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\n21 \n\n\n\nsumption of more or less rotten heaps. But \nwhen the whole atmosphere over an im- \nmense area is completely surcharged with \nbrooding smoke, there must have been a \nvery extensive conflagration as its origin. \n\nCurious to say, while engaged upon this \narticle, in searching though the dusty \nshelves of the library, which have not been \nexamined for a long time, a work was dis- \ncovered, the title in full of which is as fol- \nlows, viz: "The Secret History of the \nCourt and Cabinet of St. Cloud \xe2\x80\x94 in a Series \nof Letters from a Resident in Paris to a \nNobleman in London, written during the \nmonths of August, September and October, \n1805." "Philadelphia: Printed for and \nsold by John Watts, North East Corner of \nSecond on Dock Street. Sold also by all \nthe Principal Booksellers, 1806." \n\nIn some respects this is truly a wonder- \nful book, because, while it is so severe and \nfull of scandal, it goes into statistics and \nassigns to each of the imperial thieves, \nministers, marshals, &c., the very amounts \nwhich they had already accumulated. \n\nIn many particulars it is fully endorsed \nby the most trustworthy works in the same \nline, differing in only one particular. Louis \nBuonaparte, who is generally spared, re- \nceives the lash in these letters. Schlosser \nv\\ii, p. 187, remarks: "King Louis of \nHolland has often been accused of peculiari- \nties, obstinacy and eccentricity, amounting \neven to insanity." Michelet certainly \ncharges Buonaparte himself with having \nbeen beside himself at times. " Lucien \nhad the cunning of a fox. Joseph certainly \nwas not level-headed where women were \nconcerned (see Larpent\'s Diary, p. 165), \nand Jerome was certainly a despicable char- \nacter. There are stories told of Jerome \xe2\x80\x94 \nespecially his meanness in connection with \nmoney matters \xe2\x80\x94 that lower him a great \ndeal more than established facts in regard \nto his licentiousness and incapacity." \n\nThe writer \xe2\x80\x94 last referred to, who pub- \n\n\n\nlished in 1806 \xe2\x80\x94 appears in some way to have \nbeen attached to Lucien, but while endeavor- \ning apparently to screen and extenuate him, \nhe reveals enough to demonstrate what \nimmense sums he stole. \n\nWhat is most remarkable in this connec- \ntion is the fact that this family, which came \ninto France in absolute indigence, went \nout, with the exception of its chief, with \ncolossal fortunes,* considering they were \nscattered as cattle, if so, as they deserved, \nas Prince Napoleon declares, and lived and \ndiedsurroundedbyelegance and luxury with \nall they loved about them, while the author \nof theirrise and prosperity died a prisoner de- \nprived of the child of his almost idolatrous \nlove, and betrayed by the only woman to \nwhom he appears to have been really re- \nspectable. \n\nAnd now, while upon this subject \xe2\x80\x94 these \nscandals, however true or exaggerated \xe2\x80\x94 to \nshow how utterly untrustworthy are the \ntestimonies of such courtiers as Meneval, \nNapoleon\'s private secretary, he states that \nMarie Loufse saw Neipperg, who became \nher lover, and by whom she had a child or \nchildren, before her husband, from whom \nshe was not divorced, was dead \xe2\x80\x94 for the \nfirst time, at Dresden, in May, 1812. Does \nMeneval make this erroneous or false state- \nment intentionally? He must have known \nthat the contrary was the fact, because \nMarshal de Castellane, in his Diary (Vol. I, \nchap, iii, p. 79), under date of July, 1810, \nrecords that at Schwartzenberg\'s ball he \n"drank a glass of champagne with a \nhandsome hussar ; his face struck me ; he \nwas one-eyed ; this was the Count de Neip- \nperg. I hardly believed that in him I \nshould one day see the husband of this \n\n\n\n* \' \' The Bonapartes were divided like a herd of cattle,\' \' \nPrince Napoleon observes, page 193, " amongst the ene- \nmies of France. \' \' If the original gnawing poverty and \nstruggles for existence be considered they ended their \nlives like princes, and their properties were compara- \ntively colossal for the period. \n\n\n\n22 \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nEmpress Marie Louise, at whose court he \nwas then present, among the great digni- \ntaries and the ministers at such brilliant \nf^tes." \n\nIt will be remembered that lately there \nwere notices of a drama or a novel founded \non Buonaparte\'s jealousy of this Neipperg, \nwho is made to follow Marie Louise to Paris \nand was discovered making love to her \n(acceptably?) \n\nBuonaparte \xe2\x80\x94 according to the plot \xe2\x80\x94 was \nso infuriated that Neipperg was to be assas- \nsinated, as usual in such cases, or shot, and \nhe would have met that fate had he not \nbeen smuggled out of Paris and France. \nThose who would investigate carefully \nwould be disgusted with the depths of \nspiritless servility to which the French \npeople, yes, even some of the highest classes \nin Italy, Germany, Spain, and elsewhere, \nchurch dignitaries, priests and princes, civ- \nilians and soldiers, sunk, and exhibited in \nregard to Buonaparte. There are plenty \nof books, French, particularly the most re- \ncent, like Bondois, which prove this. \nStill greater disgrace to humanity, how- \never, the most servile, in service and flat- \ntery, were the first to desert the tyrant, \nwhen the arras of outraged F,urope forced \nhim to abdicate. \n\nAfter reading Castellane is it not more \nthan probable that there was some basis of \nfact for this story, and that Meneval deliber- \nately falsified history to screen his master \nand mistress? \n\nAs to the relations of Buonaparte with \nhis most immediate relatives, the following \nfrom the Bookman^ Vol. II, No. 3, Novem- \nber, 1895, p. 170, is worthy reflective cour \nsideration : \n\n" Prof W. M. Sloane, after finishing his \n\'Life of Napoleon,\' should publish an ap- \npendix containing the new material which \nhe discovered in the course of his researches, \nbut did not include in his excellent work. \nFor instance, he unearthed, in the Govern- \n\n\n\nmental Archives at Paris, certain letters of \nPauline Bonaparte^ which he was too vere- \ncund [modest or sly ?] to give to the world \nin a magazine that is largely read by the \nYoung Person, but which, nevertheless, \nreveal some very curious and rather re- \nmarkable facts about the vie intime. * \n\n\n\n*The \' \' London Annual Biography and Obituary, \' \' Vol. \nVI, for the year 1822, furnishes a Memoir, 219 pages, \noctavo, on Napoleon Buonaparte. For an English re- \nview it is wonderfully truthful, although severe, espe- \ncially on "Madame Mere," L^TITIA, "Mother of \nJoy," as d\'Herrison says, " the soldiers styled her." It \ncharges Buonaparte\'s paternity to Marboeuf, and ac- \ncording to the laws of heredity, the resemblance of the \nson to the mother is all right. As the stronger creature \nthis son should have favored his mother in every re- \nspect. That is" absolute law. Buonaparte was in no \nrespect like his father, the husband of his mother, ex- \ncept that both died of a cancer in the stomach, which \nit would be strong proof if some doctors had declared \nthat he did not die of that disease, but of a fatal affec- \ntion of the liver, due to his confinement at St. Helena. \nWho shall decide ? \n\nJ. Hereau, former Surgeon-in-Ordinary to Madame \nMere and first surgeon of the Empress Marie Louise, \npublished at Paris, in 1S29 a pamphlet of some 250 \npages - the copy herein cited is either incomplete or \nelse breaks off abruptly. It is labelled " for Dr. Jack- \nson," \xe2\x80\x94 Dr. Jackson was a famous military surgeon and \nauthor \xe2\x80\x94 and inside is a note, " Will Dr. Jackson be so \ngood as to notice this book?" entitled "Napoleon at \nSt. Helena. Opinion of a Physician on the Malady of \nthe Emperor Napoleon and upon the Cause of His \nDeath ; offered to His Son\xe2\x80\x94 the Duke de Reichstadt \xe2\x80\x94 \non the Day of Obtaining His Majority." \nAt page 160-162, ^Conclusion : \n" It follows from the testimony presented : \n" ist. The Emperor did not die from poison, as is \nstill the opinion most generally admitted to-day. \n\n" 2d. The malady of which he did die was a chronic \ngastritis, a malady which has never been regarded as \nhereditary ; and the traces which it left upon the organs \nof which it was the seat, were very improperly con- \nfounded with those of a cancerous affection. \n\n"3d. Not only the influence of the climate sufficed to \noccasion the iualady of which he died, but to such a \ndegree did it alter his constitution that his end was in- \nevitably near at hand. \n\n"4th. That the vexations of which he was the ob- \nject, under the title of \'restrictions,\' and especially \nthe error of his physicians, concurred to hasten his \ndeath." \n\nThere is doubtless much that is true in No. 4, but the \n\' \' vexations \' \' so forcibl)\' dwelt upon are undoubtedly at- \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\n23 \n\n\n\nSir Hudson Lowe summed up his charac- \nter when he said Buonaparte was no gen- \ntleman. This judgment is corroborated by \na thousand instances of bad manners, and \nTalleyrand summed it up when he ob- \nserved, "what a pity it is that so able a \nman should have been so badly brought \nup." See Schlosser viii, p. 230, etc. \n\nAlthough panderers and flatterers, of all \ndegrees and professions, disgraced them- \nselves by the vilest and most blasphemous \nadulations, the Roman Catholic priesthood, \nhigh and low, degrading themselves by \nleading the choruses and pronouncing dis- \ncourses unworthy their profession and their \ndignities, it remained for the usurious and \nmoney- worshipping race which had hitherto \nrespected their religion, to surpass all \nothers in associating the principle of evil \n(Buonaparte) with the principle of good \n(Divinity). The story has been told more \nemphatically and diffusely elsewhere, but \nnever more clearly and succinctly than by \nWilliam M. Sloane in the February Cen- \ntziry : \n\n" They [the Jews] vied in flattery with \nthe Roman priesthood, setting the Imperial \nEagle above the Ark of the Covenant, and \nblending the letters N and J with those of \n\n\n\nthe Jehovah in a monogram, for the adorn- \nment of their meeting-place. " \n\nThe ancient and mediaeval Jew could \nnever have done this nor been forced into \ndoing this by the fiercest tribulations or \ntorments. It remained for the modern Jew \nto be false in every sense to Fatherhood. \n\nTheir mingling of the initial letters N \n[what name did N in reality represent?] \nand J of the Imperial Eagle spreading its \nwings dripping with blood over the cherubs \nsheltering with their significant pinions \nthe Ark of the Covenant. This horrible \nidea recalls the couplet of the brave but \nbarbarian Suworrow after his capture of \nthe Turkish fortress, thus converted into \nJ English verse by Byron (D. J. IX, stanza \nxxxiii) : \n\nGlory to God and to the [Empress Catharine II], \n\n{Powers eternal ! \nSuch names mingled ?) Ismail\'s ours. \n\n.No\'wonder the English bard, with some \nremnant of his national sense of religious \ndecency, could apprehend the horrible as- \nsociation in any degree of the infinitely \n: Divine and the infinitely indecent, and yet \nthe Germano-Russian Catharine was deci- \n\xe2\x96\xa0dedly superior to the Corsican upstart. \nTo the Jews to join the remotest sugges- \n\n\n\ntributable to his own unworthy passions, and to physi- \ncians with preconceived opinions, especially of their \nown capacity, are in many cases of more danger toia \npatient than a disease not immediately recognizable \nlike small-pox, yellow fever, &c. \n\nThe primary mistake of Sir Hudson Lowe was over- \npoliteness to a being to whom politeness, except as a ca- \njolery or lure, was an unknown quantity. He should \nhave acted like Fate, in silence. Napoleon would not \nhave dared to resist by force and expose himself to .the \noperation of military law. Power needs no words, be- \ncause it can crush. There is no necessity of argument \nor explanation when an order is clear, and is backed \nwith discipline. In many respects the harsher Sir \nThomas Reade would have been a better jailer than Sir \nHudson Lowe. \n\nIn Mr. F. A. Ober\'s Josephine,. Empress of the \nFrench, we have a work of the J. S. C. Abbott order, \nwhich, with a delightful disregard of facts and the \n\n\n\nevidence of history, depicts Madame Beauharnais \n\n; as a persecuted but impeccable being, too good for this \nearth, and naturally much too good for her Corsican \n\n. husband. It is always pleasant to believe that an \nempress with a romantic history is good and pure and \n\n\xe2\x96\xa0 generally virtuous, but one has to draw the line some- \nwhere, and we think that we shall draw it at Jose- \nphine. .(The Merriam Company, New York.) From \n,the " Bookman Brevities," p. 540. The Bookman, & \nLiterary Journal, published monthly by Dodd, Mead & \n\n^Co., New York : February, 1896, Vol. II, No. 6. \n\nThis is all fishing in very turbid waters, to use the \nmost respectable adjective, but to sum up the whole \nmatter and dismiss it at once, the entire gang, male and \nfemale, in all directions, were a bad lot altogether with \nthe sole redeeming admission,, that, as a rule, in one \nline or another, worthy admiration or anathema, as far \nas their own interests were concerned, they were a \nbrainy breed. \n\n\n\n24 \n\n\n\nNapoleone Dr Buonaparte. \n\n\n\ntion of one combining under the mortal \nviel of devilish cunning a perfect amalgam \nof crime, demonstrates how truly St. Paul \nspoke when he declared "the love of money \nis the root of all evil." \n\nSill this is simply a reminder of the \napothegm of the elders \xe2\x80\x94 drawing a distinc- \ntion between the three great class of He- \nbrews : In one class, such heroes as stand \nunexceeded in history; in another, of whom \n\n\n\nthere were many magnificent examples, \nlike the prophets and St. Paul; and in a \nthird, which are multitudinous and trans- \nmit the exquisite perception of how to con- \nvert body, soul and spirit simply into the \nservice of mammon. \n\nSome sixty years ago it used to be an ac- \ncepted apotliegm that "Abraham was the \nfriend of God, Isaac was a Hebrew gentle- \nman, and Jacob was a Jew." \n\n\n\nIV. \n\n\n\nBeneath a fine lithograph of Willette (Charles Ver- \nneau, editor), entitled "Death Departs in the Fog," rep- \nresenting Buonaparte himself leading the mortuary \nprocession of the Empire beneath a funereal sky : " Af- \nter accomplishing so many prodigies, Buonaparte left \nFrance enfeebled and impoverished. He himself said, \nwhile yet First Consul, \'The Future wii,i, TBAch \nIF IT WOni,D NOT HAVE BEEN BETTER FOR THE \nPeace [repos) of the wori,d if I had never ex- \nisted.\' In spite of all the glory he won for his (?) \ncountry, history has not yet answered the question." \n\n" Ah," cried Buonaparte (1804,) " would to God that \nFrance had never heard of my name \xe2\x80\x94that her govern- \nment had never done amiss \xe2\x80\x94 that her people had never \nsuffered so much misery ! " (Burdon, 1805). He added \nbravely to that misery for the next eleven years until \nWaterloo finished his opportunities to heap more woes \nupon France. \n\nBuonaparte has not only been compared \nto Attila, but to Zenghis Khan, to Tamer- \nlane, to Darius, and even more than once to \nXerxes. The conquering arms of the first \nwere certainly carried into more extensive \nregions and Tamerlane was a much more \nscientific general than he is conceived to \nhave been, except to a few. Darius failed \nagainst the Scythians for the very same \nreason that Buonaparte did against their \ndescendants. Buonaparte\'s legions never \ninspired such terror as the Tartars down \nto the 13th Century and, as Gibbon ob- \nserves, in 1228, the Swedes and Frieslanders \nwere prevented by their fear of the Tartars \nfrom prosecuting the herring fishery on the \ncoast of England. " It is whimsical enough \nthat the orders of a Mongol Khan, who \nreigned on the borders of China, should \n\n\n\nhave lowered the price of herring in the \nEnglish market." \n\nIt would have been well for Buonaparte \nin 1812, while he imitated the arrogant as- \nsurance of Tamerlane, had he taken a leaf \nout of the latter\'s military book of axioms \nand not pressed on against the advice of his \nbest and wisest counsellors. "The Sultan \nhimself" (says Timour) "must then put the \nfoot of COURAGE into the stirrup of \nPATIENCE." It was impatience that ruined \nBuonaparte and led to his fearful sacrifices \nof life as a military leader. Another of \nTimour\'s axioms Buonaparte did follow in \npractice \xe2\x80\x94 "He who wishes to embrace the \nbride of royalty must kiss her across the \nedge of the sharp sword." (Russia 15, 16, \n17, 30.) Only in Buonaparte\'s case, in \nkissing the royal bride, the Archduchess, \nMaria Eouisa, the sharp edge cut him, and \nit might be said the wound never com- \npletely closed, but through it he was \ndepleted until his strength oozed away, \nuntil finally he fell through his "cowardly \nabdication ; " another of his fainting-fits \n[defaillances)^ one of those weaknesses, to \nwhich Michelet is .so delighted to allude. \n\nIn preparing these articles there is not an \n\nopinion expressed which has not an au- \n\n. thority back of it, and some of the severest \n\ncriticisms emanate from Frenchmen and \n\nwere published in Paris. \n\nThe great trouble is, readers who start \nout with a pre-conceived opinion, only dis- \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\n25 \n\n\n\ncover in the \xe2\x96\xa0 books they read those ideas \nwhich endorse their own. Thus Thiers \xe2\x80\x94 \nwho is a Chauvinist of Buonapartists \xe2\x80\x94 con- \ntains enough reading between the lines, if \ncarefully collocated, to condemn his hero \nin every particular. To exalt the glory of \nFrance, to feed the inordinate variety of its \npeople, French writers are compelled to \ninvest Napoleone with their own character- \nistics. Whereas he was a Frenchman in \nnothi ng. \n\nThe fact is, if his glory inures to any \nplace and people, it is to Italy and to \nItalians. In starting out with avowed \nhatred to France, Frenchmen were nothing \nelse but his dupes, his tools, bodies and \nsouls ; his cash in hand, as it were his \npawns. \n\nBuonaparte was one of the meanest of \nwhite men. Besides all the injustices, cap- \ntivities, tortures, military murders, with \nhis knowledge or by his direct command, \nthe wanton destruction, which he ordered, \nwas unworthy of an)\' but such a tyrant, \nin gross as well as in detail. He not only \njustified in the atrocious destructions and \ndevastations of lyouis XIV, but almost the \nonly praise which he accorded to Welling- \nton\xe2\x80\x94until he was humbled most assuredly, \nand principally by Great Britain \xe2\x80\x94 was for \nthe Iron Duke\'s desolation of Portugal in \n1810, to impede the march of Massena and \nmake it impossible for the French to re- \nmain in the region in front of the lines of \nTorres Viedras. The useless blowing up \nof the Bastions of Vienna was a wanton \nabuse of power, likewise the blowing up of \nthe Kremlin and of the ancient walls of \nSmolensko, dirty pieces of low revenge. \nStill, there were other exhibitions of the \nsame sort which were perpetrated not \nunder the impulse of passion, but out of \nutter wantonness. On the top of a moun- \ntain was a famous old castle, Hohentweil, \ncelebrated for its magnificent position and \nviews over the siirrounding country, par- \n\n\n\nticularly the Boden Sea or Lake of Con- \nstance, most particularly for its remarkable \ndefence against every power, which in turn \nadded misery to misery in Germany during \nthe Thirty Years\' War. This also was \nblown up in 1800 by the orders of Buona- \nparte according to report. To his most \nruthless myrmidon, the convict Vac damme, \nwithout excuse, history accords the de- \nstruction of one of the most ancient and re- \nnowned specimens of feudal architecture \nin Europe. It was the scene of the princi- \npal events in von Scheflfel\'s " Ekkehard, \na tale of the Tenth Century." \n\nIn the preceding article the savagery of \nthe French in Russia was demonstrated . \nthrough two anecdotes from General Le- \njeune. . They might be supported by a \nnumber of other witnesses ; but turn to \nthe Diary of the Marshal de Castellane, \nunder the most different circumstances, not \nof suffering, but of success. \n\nDuring the "Slaveholders\' Rebellion" \none of the Union soldiers ravished a South- \nern woman, and he was prompt!}\' tried, \nconvicted and hung. The same crime in \nthe most magnified proportions, seemed but \nslightly regarded among the French. At \nVol. I, page 25, Castellane records : "Five \ncuirassiers were assigned as safeguards in \nthe lodgings of the Chief of the General \nStaff, Forestier, who did not respect their \nhostess. " "A woman related that she had to \ncomplain of forty soldiers (p. 33)." "The \nmajority of the inhabitants having aban- \ndoned Burgos, it was given up to pillage. \nA staff officer entered a house and rescued \nan unhappy woman who was in the midst \nof fifty soldiers. Each was waiting his \nturn. " " Sometimes in the midst of horrible \nhappenings comic phases occur. In a vil- \nlage, the women to escape the lust {/ureur) \nof the soldiers,- took refuge in the clock \ntower, climbing up the\' ladder. The ad- \nvance guard, seeing their prey escape them \nthrough the arrival of the main body of the \n\n\n\n26 \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nregiment and the reestablishment of disci- \npline, shook their fists \' at their would-be \nvictims \' as if the latter had done them a \nwrong." \n\nIt is not often that writers record acts re- \nflecting upon national character, but the \nFrench seem to do it, as Prime Minister \nOlivier began the war of 1870-71 "with a \nlight heart," as if war was to be carried on \naccording to the principle that the soldiers \nmust be allowed to amuse themselves, \njust as Tilly said, when he permitted \nthat most horrible of all sacks, the sack of \nMagdeburg. \n\nThere is as much difference between \nmoral and physical courage as there is be- \ntween the tropics and the poles. To im- \npute want of personal physical bravery to \nany people or individual influenced by self- \nrespect is a folly and an injustice. Moral \ncourage of a high grade is just as uncom- \nmon as the want of physical courage, indi- \nvidual or national, when roused to the occa- \nsion. Austria would never have sunk so \nlow in 1797, 1800, 1805 and 1809 if want of \nmoral courage had not been the chief defect \nin her rulers \xe2\x80\x94 Austria, said to be " always an \nidea, a battle and a year behind time. " The \nsame was the case in Prussia in 1806, down \nto 1813. And it was this want of moral \nfortitude and rectitude \xe2\x80\x94 not the mere dread \nof death \xe2\x80\x94 which was the cause of all the \nwoes of Continental Europe between 1793 \nand 1813. The exhibition of this grand \nquality was first encountered in Russia in \n1812. Francis I and Frederick William \nIII, "rex Infirmissimus," Francis I worse, \nbut more stubborn and cunning, and, as a \nrule, with exceptions, seemed to have no \nmore real backbone than a sturgeon. Noth- \ning stopped Buonaparte\'s climb to universal \nempire but the inflexible moral vigor of \nEngland, Great Britain- was the barrier \nbetween freedom and slavery and the sa- \nvior of the continental thrones. Not but \nthat Great Britain is as full of defects in \n\n\n\nmany important particulars,- subordinated \nto a selfishness and arrogance, which would \nbe intolerable in any but a government \nwhich, in its Anglo-Saxon Protestant free- \ndom, has been for centuries the breakwater \nto restrain the waves of despotism, physical \nand spiritual. To conclude for the present, \ndoubtless good was evolved out of the evil \nof Buonaparte\'s career, but that good was \nalready germinating before, like a baleful \ncomet, he made his appearance in Euro- \npean skies. Although it is said that the \nbest crop of wine ever produced in France \nwas due to the presence of a comet before \nBuonaparte had attained incipient manhood, \nThurot, eminently his superior as an admin- \nistrator, had striven to introduce wiser re- \nforms in France than any attributed to the \nCorsican upstart. Stein regenerated Prus- \nsia against Buonaparte\'s will. Even in \nAustria the Archduke Charles perceived \nand declared that Europe could never be \nsaved otherwise than by men not in the posi- \ntion of princes. The fact is that everything \nwhich is generally held to be truth is apo- \nchryphal. Take, for instance, Buonaparte\'s \nhealth. He was an epileptic, and subject \nto a variety of diseases, which, although \nlatent, were patent to those immediately \nabout him if they had chosen to tell the \ntruth. These became greatly aggravated \nby his increased and increasing self-indul- \ngence after his marriage in 1809. They \nwere manifest in Russia ; still more so in \n1813. In 1814, his attempt at suicide is not \nonly uncertain, but almost apochryphal. \nIn 1815, his exhibitions of whatever ability \nhe had previously displayed were sporadic, \nand in the campaign of Waterloo these were \ndreams which may be justly compared to \nthose flashes of lightning which illuminate \na tempestuous night and leave the darkness \nblacker than before. \n\nIn 1812, Buonaparte\'s criminal ambition \nhad developed into absolute lunacy at times \n(see Henry Wansey\'s "Visit to Paris in \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\n27 \n\n\n\nJune, 1814,"- pp. 90, 97, &c.), and he \nhurled his armies against space and climate; \nagainst a camp of patriotism, impregnable \nin its sparsely peopled vastness and its ex- \ntremes of climate. Inotherwords, thedespot \ncould mould men to his will, but his poten- \ntial autocracy was as feeble as a child\'s \nagainst natural dynamics. Again, those \nwho measure Napoleon\'s greatness with \nthe rod of adulation and touchstone of \nFrench vanity, are purblind as to the fact \nthat the glory of his falsely so-styled French \nsuccesses must be shared with other races. \n\nHe undoubtedly began his ascent chiefly \nthrough Frenchmen, but gradually increas- \ning strength acquired rather by guile and \ngreed, fraud and falsehood, than by arms, \nhe added people to people, until in 181 2 he \nled against Russia an army styled of \n"twenty nations," but nearer in reality \nof forty victimized nations. Slaves is perhaps \na more fitting term, impelled by a pitiless \ndiscipline of "blood and iron" to fight \nagainst their own people, their own feel- \nings, their own interests. \n\nThe armies which Napoleon originally \ncommanded were as fine as the best that \nwere ever assembled under any otherleader, \nand they were opposed to automatons who \ncould die, but could not die fighting \xe2\x80\x94 as \none of our most scientific generals said of \nthe Mexicans \xe2\x80\x94 under a set of old fogies. \n\nThis is conceded by all military critics. \nAnd yet, with all his advantages in 1797, \nBuonaparte was in a pit, and a deep one, \nfrom which weak Austrian timidity and \nstupidity and cupidity were kind enough \nto help him out. \n\nHis next adventure, in Egypt, which is \nbest known through his charlatan watch- \nword, "from the summit of the Pyramids \nforty centuries look down upon the French \narmy," and his cruel raid, or razzia, into Sy- \nria, were as complete failures in a military \nsense as any ever undertaken and were her- \nalded with flourishes of trumpets, such as a \n\n\n\nquack salver was wont to blow, and with bass \ndrum to announce his arrival to his dupes. \nHonest French critics charge he deserted his \narmy when he saw that his game was up, \nas he always deserted it whenever his own \nselfish interests were in the balance against \nduty to those he was sacrificing. \n\nBuonaparte had a most plausible tongue. \nIn honeyfugling he was unsurpassed. As \nAdmiral Keith said when Buonaparte de- \nsired to obtain an interview with the Prince \nRegent of England, "Damn the fellow; if \nit was granted, in half an hour they would \nbe the best friends in the world." And \nyet, when his temper got the better of his \ncunning, he could use as coarse language \nas is heard in the slums, so that no one has \never dared to translate into English, liter- \nally, many of the expressions he habitually \nused. His slanderous tongue spared no one. \nWitness the foul aspersions upon Queen \nLouisa, one of the noblest and loveliest \nspecimens of womanhood. He even dared \nto impugn her chastity, and the sting of \nthis devilish lie did so much to rouse the \nindignation of her people against the Slan- \nderer, in 1813. He was in a hole at Ma- \nrengo when Desaix extricated him, and his \nrepetitions of reports or narratives of that \nbattle were only successive falsifications \nmodified to centre all the glory in himself \nand obscure that of every other who de- \nserved more than he. Who killed Desaix ? \nIt has been charged to Buonaparte\'s "Man- \ndarin for all work," who tried his "\'pren- \ntice hand " on this occasion, so unfortunate \nfor France. \n\nBuonaparte was in another trap when he \nwas suffered to achieve his greatest triumph \nat Austerlitz, in 1805. Austrian want of \nmoral back-bone even more kindly than in \n1797, aided him to climb out. \n\nIn 1799, however brilliant the feats of \narms performed by his subordinates, his \nutter reverse before Acre, besides his whole- \nsale murders, as at JaS"a, resulted in that \n\n\n\n28 \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nabandonment which brought him back to \nFrance stigmatized as the "Deserter from \nEgypt," when he was declared by honest \nmen as worthy of being shot and by the \nmore violent of being guillotined. \n\nIn 1806, amid the hundreds of thousands \nwho fought under the Black Eagle, how \nfew did honor to the example of the "great \nFrederick." The Prussian heroes of 1806 \ncan almost be counted upon the fingers of \nthe hands \xe2\x80\x94 Blucher standing first and \nhighest. \n\nFrom the parallel between Attila and \nBuonaparte was omitted the only type of a \nstruggle to redeem the German national \nhonor, a type of Blucher\'s glorious stand \nat Lubeck. Otherwise it was a walk-over \nfor Buonaparte. \n\nHistory records but one attempt made to \noppose the progress of Attila on the right \nbank of the Rhine, the heroic opposition \nof 10,000 Burgundians under Gunthachar, \nwho fought and fell like a second Leonidas, \n[or like Blucher\'s return-blow or counter \nat Lubeck in 1806.] \n\nOne incident which has been blazoned \nin a thousand pages, as an instance of mag- \nnanimity \xe2\x80\x94 his coming short of shooting \nPrince Hatzfeldt was "astage trick, playing \nto the galleries." If he had caused him to \nbe shot it would have been as much a cold- \nblooded murder as many of the numerous \nothers which he committed, the crudest, \nthat of the Duke d\'Enghien and the mean- \n\n\n\n" The storm [Attila\' s invasion, A. D. 451] now burst \nupon Germany. Desolation, rapine, and slaughter \nmarked its advance towards Gaul. Obscure 1 egendary \naccounts of the horrors of that period are still extant. \nAll the relics and jewels belonging to the church, still \nin its infancy, were saved at Andecks, on the moun- \ntain, from the rapacity of the invaders. Wimpfen \nowes its name to WI3PIN, [We iberpem , ^o\'mea^ s pain,) \nall the women of this place having been cruelly mur- \ndered by Attila\'s command, and several Huunenberge, \nHunnengraben, (fortifications against the Huns,) are \nstUl to be met with in Germany, although it is uncer- \ntain whether they ought not to be ascribed to the Hun- \ngarians of later date, who were also called Huns. \' \' \n\n\n\nest that of the poor innocent bookseller, \nPalm. \n\nA single pair of battles, twins in 1806, \nserved to dispose of Prussian resistance \xe2\x80\x94 \nJena and Auerstadt ; Buonaparte won the \nfirst with great odds in his favor and Davout \nthe other, with great odds against him ; \nand, yet, all the glory was claimed for \xe2\x80\xa2 \nBuonaparte and by Buonaparte, and except \nthat Davout was afterwards rewarded with \na title, very few knew or know that his \ntriumph was the crowning success of the \nwar, perhaps of Buonaparte\'s whole life, \nor career. \n\nIn 1807 when Buonaparte encountered \nthe Russians, assisted by the real Prussians, \nunder a man somewhat of Blucher\'s stamp, \nof Huguenot descent, Lestocq, it was a dif- \nferent story. At Preuss-Eylan the moral \nvictory was with his enemies, and about no \nbattle except Waterloo did he lie so unblush- \ningly and persistently. On either side thei^e \nwas a loss of over 18,000. The Russians re- \ntreated because they were destitute of food, \nand Buonaparte to recruit, for his army was \nshaken up and almost shattered. \n\nAt Tilsit he cajoled and bought Alexan- \nder ; but, while he duped the Czar, it is \nsaid that he did not even touch a cup of \ntea prepared by Russian hands, so fearful \nwas he of being poisoned \xe2\x80\x94 self-conscious of \nhow many that stood in his way had op- \nportunely perished. It was said of Cardi- \nnal Richelieu that he was most fortimate, \nin that every one who threatened to become \nan obstacle to his plans always died or dis- \nappeared at exactly the right moment. \nBuonaparte endeavored to imitate the \ngreatest of French administrators. \n\nThe right to sit in judgment upon even \nthe worst of criminals pre-supposes the pos- \nsession of an impartiality which can only \nbe influenced by evidence and is inacces- \nsible to prejudice or feeling. In the case \nof a prosecuting attorney it is entirely \ndifferent. If he is not affected by a just \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\n29 \n\n\n\nambition to convict, and the jury and jndge \nperceive the want of it in him, in most in- \nstances he misses his aim. Like the Advo- \ncatus Diaboli, the Roman Ecclesiastical \nCourt, engaged in the examination of the \nrecords of an applicant for beatification \nor sanctification, it is the bounden duty of \nthe people\'s Advocate to look for every flaw \nin character aud career which can prevent \na favorable verdict. Napoleone di Buona- \nparte having so nearly escaped deification \nat the hands of his servile, interested or \nfanatic worshippers, it is now the duty of \nan advocate of Truth to come forward and \npresent every piece of evidence against him \nwhich can be discovered, and none should \nbe rejected until rebutted by absolute facts \n\xe2\x80\x94 not the prejudiced or partial testimony \nof, in too many cases, suborned or ignorant \npartisans. * \n\n\n\n*Memoires, pour Servir a I\'Histoire sous le Direc- \ntoire, le Consulat, et I\'Empire, par Le Marechal \nGouviON Saint Cyr, Tome iii, 1812, and iv, 18:3, \nParis Anailen, Lebraire pour I\'Art MiHtaire, 1831. \n\nI wish to call the reader\'s attention to what is a \nmatter of pride, namely, that all the conclusions \nreached and stated in previous works were published \nbefore the receipt from Europe of the Memoirs of \nMarshal Gouvion Saint Cyr, who, it is conceded, was \none of the very ablest of Buonaparte\'s lieutenants, \nand who did not attain the most important commands \n\xe2\x80\x94not by any means because he was unequal to them, \nbut because he was not sufficiently a courtier ; be- \ncause he held to his own opinions and would express \nthem \xe2\x80\x94 in fact he was too independent \xe2\x80\x94 and, finally, \nbecause some of his characteristics made him by no \nmeans always agreeable for subordinates, or even \nequals or superiors. No one has, however, ever \ndenied his ability ; therefore the criticisms of so calm \nand cold and capab\'e observer are invaluable. \n\nIn the "conclusions" to his third and fourth \nvolumes, he endorses every opinion expre.ssed by the \nwriter, and goes a great deal farther in his severe \njudgment upon Buonaparte ; because, harsh as have \nbeen the expressions lavished by him upon Saint \nCyr\'s superior, those of Saint Cyr are harsher, al- \nthough perhaps more respectful in their language, \nwhich was politic. \n\nSaint Cyr condemns the whole plan and execution \nof the Russian campaign, reveals truths never ad- \nmitted by admirers of Buonaparte, charges him with \na great blunder at Smolensko, and concedes his \n\n\n\nIn the gallery of portraits of the celebri- \nties of the portentous epoch between the \nexecution of lyouis XVI and the second re- \nstoration of Louis XVIII, there is none \nmore striking than that of Jean Antoine \nChaptal, Count of Chanteloup. It is not \nonly attractive in its traits, but they are \nradiant with unusual intellectuality and \nacute intelligence. That he was a scientist \nof the highest order, who to technical \nknowledge added the grandest powers of \nits practical application, is established not \nonly by his books, but by his works. \nBetter than all, with all these mental gifts, \nhis energy, his devotedness, condoned his \nassociation with some of the greatest vil- \nlains that ever existed, and he began, con- \ntinued, lived and died an honest man. One \nof the best proofs perhaps that he was an \nhonest man is that his name does not ap- \n\nleadership at Borodino was far below the occasion. \nTo go into details which could be understood by \nlaymen would require a dilatation of double the \npages (Vol. iii, 1812, 51 ; and Vol. iv, 1813, 58 ; to- \ngether 109 1 filled with language so nervous and con- \ncise as Saint Cyr\'s presentation of his views. \n\nAlthough he does not say so in so many words. \nSaint Cyr perfectly agrees with the opinion of \nMorlau, Kleber, and other great French and foreign \ngenerals, that Buonaparte was not a scientific com- \nmander ; that he trusted to luck and prodigal ex- \npenditure of invaluable life ; that he was by no means \nbold and decided when luck and men failed him ; \nthat he was great for the offensive in his reckless stak- \ning of the result on his destiny ; that he was a leader \nin the style of Attila and Genghis Khan ; and that he \nwas wanting in perseverance and calmness for a suc- \ncessful defensive. This was Wellington\'s opinion \nalso. In these military considerations he admits \nall that one who holds Buonaparte in holy horror \ncould wish, and, what is more and better, unlike \nFrenchmen generally, he does not beat about the \nbush and cover up the falsehoods in regard to the \nterrible expenditure of life with which Buonaparte \npurchased success, and he avows that in some of the \nvictories won, according to general opinion, with \ninferior forces, Buonaparte, if he did not have a vast \nsuperiority in numbers, was undoubtedly superior to \nhis opponents in every element on which a com- \nmander can calculate with precision for achieving a \ntriumph over less trustworthy forces. Personal and \nMaterial. \n\n\n\n30 \n\n\n\nNapoleoisje di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\npear in the French Dictionnaire de Gi- \nrouette^ s (Weathercocks), whose servility \nalways pointed in the direction of the wind \nof Buonaparte\'s favor. Again that Buona- \nparte himself does not notice him among \nhis Biographical References is most likely \ndue to the fact, that with all his brazen ef- \nfrontry and disregard of human feeling, he \ndared not mention him, remembering with \nwhat utterly brutal blackguardism, as was \nstated by Chaptal himself, he treated a faith- \nful servant. \n\nThe list of the scientific works, treatises \nand papers of which M. DE Chaptal was \nauthor is astounding. It fills in smallest \ntype six pages of the 8vo. Life and Labors \n{Vie et r CEiiv7\'e) of Chaptal, Paris, 1893. \n\nj|@"The real cause of Chaptal\'s throw- \ning up his ministerial functions was entirely \ndifferent from that alleged by Meneval. * \n\n*Chaptal- (Jean Antoine), Count de Chanteloup, an \neminent French chemist, born at Nogaret, Lozere, \nJune 5, 1756. He graduated as M. D. at Montpellier, \nin 1777. and became professor of chemistry at that \nplace in 1781. He supported the popular cause of the \nRevolution, and introduced the manufacture of cer- \ntain chemicals for which France had previously been \ndependent on foreigners. About 1796 he was chosen \na member of the Institute. He was Minister of the \nInterior for five years (1S01-05), and afterwards a \nSenator. Treasurer of the Senate, etc. His chief works \nare "Chemistry Applied to the Arts" (1806), and \n"Elements of Chemistry." Died in 1832. (See \nFloureus "Eloge Historique de Chaptal," 1835. \n"Johnson\'s Universal Cyclopaedia," Vol. I, 876. \n\n"The Minister of the Interior was at that time \nM. Chaptal. He was not only a very distinguished \nsavant ; but his varied knowledge of agricultural and \ncommercial matters, his application of chemistry to \nthe industries and the arts, his talents as administra- \ntor, and his studies on public education, had pointed \nhim out as the right man to direct a minisiry so wide \nand so varied in its duties." Memoirs Illustrating \nthe History of Napoleon from 1802 to 1815, by Baron \nNapoleon Joseph de MenEval. Vol. I : New York, \n1894, pp. 140-1. \n\n"It was durmg one of his stays at Calais that \nNapoleon deprived M. Chaptal of his portfolio as \nMinister of the Interior. This department was en- \ntrusted to M. Portalis, Minister of Public Worship, \npending the appointment of a successor to M. \n\n\n\nAccording to " Za Vie et V OEuvre^\'\'^ etc., \nof the Viscount An. Chaptal, the Count re- \nsigned the ministry of the Interior after \nfour years\' faithful service, 5th of August, \n1804, because he would not submit like \nmany others to the brutality of Buonaparte, \nwhich for tlie sake of their interests many \nhumbly accepted while kissing the hand \nwhich inflicted the insult. The Viscount \nwrites : " The public already are ac- \nquainted through the Biographic Michaud^ \nwith the relations which existed between \n\nChaptal, an event which took place two days later, \nM. de Champagny being nominated Minister of the \nInterior. M. Chaptal entered the Senate. I have \nheard Napoleon complaining about this minister on \nthe ground that he did not take any opportunities of \nspeaking to him, that their personal relations were \ntoo few and far between, and that he too rarely in- \nformed him of the various affairs which were being \ndealt with in his department. It may be that the \nEmperor yielded to certain prejudices, which were \ninspired by his recollections of the failure of the \nexperiment he had tried in entrusting the same \nministry to Laplace, who had to be replaced by \nLucien Bonaparte. He may have thought that \nsavants lost by being diverted from their studies, and \nwere incapable of devoting themselves entirely to the \nnumerous details of a great administration. This was, \nhowever, not the case with M. Chaptal, who was a \npractical savant. As a matter of fact, however, he \ncontinued to enjo}\' Napoleon\'s favor and esteem. \nThe Emperor took constant opportunities of showing \nthis distinguished savant the high esteem in which he \nheld his talents, and gave him many proofs of his \nfavorable disposition towards him." \n\nThese remarks constitute one of the instances of \neither the untrustworthiness or dissimulation of \nMeneval\'s Memoirs or his ignorance of what was \noccurring, as it were, under his own eyes, which, how- \never, must have been an utter impossibility since the \nnewspapers revealed the causes of Chaptal\'s resigna- \ntion, not removal or dismissal, or as alluded to in my \nAuthorities on Waterloo and Napoleon Buonaparte. \nMeneval was often gmlty of misrepresentation to white- \nwash each successive stain upon the character of his \nidol. \n\nIf Buonaparte felt such a "favorable disposition" \ntowards Chaptal as Meneval states and held him in \n"high esteem," the more inexcusably disgraceful his \nconduct towards him in regard to Chaptal\'s chere \naniie. \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\n31 \n\n\n\nChaptal and Mile. Bourgoin of the French \nComedy. It is no longer a family secret \nand I have no scruple to allude to it. It is \nwell known that Napoleon, if he took it \ninto his head to satisfy a fancy, never hesi- \ntated to wound the feelings of those upon \nwhom he set the highest value. Mile. \nBourgoin had become an object of desire to \nthe Emperor and my ancestor would not \nput up with it. The simple fact is this, \nthe matter was ventilated in the public \nprints and family tradition adds confirma- \ntion. Napoleon was working one evening \nwith Chaptal when the arrival of Mile. \nBourgoin was announced to him. The \nEmperor begged her to wait for him. It \nwas a theatrical situation which he had got \nup on purpose. Chaptal placed his papers \nin his portfolio and left at once. The same \nnight he prepared his resignation. \' \' Masson \nin his "Napoleon and the Female Sexe," \nIOI-2 Paris, 1894, tells the story more at \nlength but certainly makes it appear more \nto the disadvantage of Buonaparte. The \ntruth is Buonaparte was inherently a black- \nguard and never acquired decent manners. \nHe never received any more polish than \nwas the result of the necessity, at times \nassuming a virtue which he did not possess, \nin order to cajole or deceive where he could \nnot browbeat, bull}\' and coerce. \n\nMeneval, who misrepresents almost every- \nthing to exalt Buonaparte, iii. 21, tells the \nexact truth when he says he was the "most \namiable and charming of men ivhen he chose \nto show himself as siichV \n\nSome of the details of the quarrels of \nBuonaparte and his family gave occasion to \nscenes and language worthy of the lowest \nclasses. When Buonaparte reproached his \nbrother Lucien, which Chaptal (259) relates \nbriefly and decently, for having married a \nwidow, Lucien answered: "And thou \nlikewise, thou didst marry a widow, but \nmine is neither old nor stinking {puaiite).^\' \nJosephine and her daughter Hortense, how- \n\n\n\never lovely and amiable, had a disagreeable \ndefect. \n\nAlthough this series of articles has been \ncriticised as too severe on the " Corsican \nOgre," one sentence in the notice in the \n^^ Bookbziyer^\'\' sums up the matter: "There \nwas nothing natural about Napoleon," says \nthe author, "except his selfishness." To \nthat selfishness may be traced all his crimes \nof great or less magnitude. That is the \nabsolute fact, and if the same process could \nbe applied to him, Buonaparte, to which \nByron alludes in a stanza of his " Don \nJuan," it will be found that the sublime \nresiduum \xe2\x80\x94 to which the poet refers with the \nprecision of experience \xe2\x80\x94 in the mass of \nBuonaparte\'s composition, morals and mat- \nter, was utter devotion solely to his own \nself-interest. \n\n" I\'ll have another figure in a trice : \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nWhat say you to a bottle of champagne ? \n\nFrozen into a very vinous ice. \n\nWhich leaves few drops of that iminortal rain, \n\nYet in the very centre, past all price. \n\nAbout a liquid glassful will remain ; \n\nAnd this is stronger than the strongest grape \n\nCould e\'er express in its expanded shape : \n\n\'Tis the whole spirit brought to quintessence ; \n\nAnd thus the chilliest aspects may concentrate \n\nA hidden nectar under a cold presence." \xe2\x80\x94 \n\nIn Buonaparte the \'quintessence was a sel- \nfishness to which he sacrificed the souls \nand substance of every one and everything \nin his empire who had not the spirit or op- \nportunity to escape its oppression. \n\nSalvandy, a great admirer of him, wound \nup his sketch by stating that he fell because \nhe was incapable of justice : His judg- \nments, his statements, his praises, his re- \nwards, were all the result of his sole \nthought \xe2\x80\x94 self! self! self! \n\nWhatever were the relations of Josephine \nto Barras, Napoleon owed everything to \nBarras, whatever may have been the terms \nof the two sides to the bargain. It gave \nhim that command which was the spring- \nboard which enabled him to leap from pov- \n\n\n\n32 \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nerty and obscurity to power and renown. \nIt is stated that Sobieski \xe2\x80\x94 when his at- \ntention was called before the great battle \nwhich delivered Vienna in 1683 to a Polish \nFoot Regiment, which appeared like a set of \nscarecrows \xe2\x80\x94 said to the Imperial scoffers, \nlooking on, "those men have sworn never \nto put off their rags until they can clothe \nthemselves by captures from the enemy." \nThe historian\'s comment upon this was \n"these words were sufficient to, convert a \nregiment of tatterdemallions into a regi- \nment of heroes." \n\nThis anecdote exactly applies to Buona- \nparte\'s assumption of the command of the \narmy of Italy. He appealed to every in- \nstinct which could make it, like Sobieskie\'s \nPoles, an army of heroes, adding the most \ninflammable fuel to the fire of revolutionary \nenthusiasm. When, in after years, Buona- \nparte cast the slur upon Augerean that he \nwas no longer the Augerean of 1796-1797, \nthe hero of Castiglione \xe2\x80\x94 where he saved \nBuonaparte in one of his weakenings \xe2\x80\x94 the \nMarshal replied that "he would be the \nsame Augerean if he had with him the sol- \ndiers of the period referred to," whom \nBuonaparte had wasted as if such soldiers \nas he threw away could be replaced. \n\nThe British general\'s fjohn Mitchell) view \nof that Revolutionary or Republican Army \nin his unequalled " Fall of Napoleon" (124) \nwas fully justified: "It must be allowed that \nthese first Republican armies were in spirit, \ncomposition and honorable feeling, far su- \nperior to the best of their successors ; and \nthe old French officers, who served in the \ncampaigns of 1793 and 1794, and afterwards \nrose to rank under Napoleon, always spoke \nwith MORE RESPECT of these early \nSOLDIERS OF THE REVOLUTION than of the \nImperial Guard itself" \n\nWhen those glorious spirits had been \ndissipated and, step by step, by the abuse of \npower, Buonaparte had acquired the pos- \nsession of a sceptre, at whose wave one \n\n\n\nhundred millions bowed in servile, blas- \nphemous servility, as before a very God, \nbody, soul and spirit, morals, princi- \nples and conscience, he was enabled to \ngather together hundreds of thousands \nof armed men or less disciplined \nvictims, \xe2\x80\x94 "cannon-food," as he justly \ntermed them \xe2\x80\x94 they were no longer compe- \ntent to meet on equal terms the legions \nwhich his cruelty, greed and pitiless injus- \ntice had invested with all the patriotic en- \nthusiasm which the French had possessed, \nwhen Buonaparte\'s star first rose. \n\nIn the very year in which Napoleon was \nsmitten down, Francia became Dictator of \nParaguay, and acquired that one-man \npower which converted the government of \nthat country into a simple machine of \nwhich the whole population and products \nserved as fuel, and resulting power worked \nsolely for his own personal benefit. Francia \nruled over a semi-barbarous people, a tyrant \n\\n petto, as Buonaparte over a highly civil- \nized population, was a tyrant in maximo. \nNevertheless Francia\'s despotism was not \nmore absolute, more penetrating, more per- \nvading, more exhausting and more crush- \ning, than was Buonaparte\'s over France \nand other highly civilized nations \xe2\x80\x94 a des- \npotism like the circle in the water, growing \nwider and wider, until it broke against the \nbarrier of England, upon the sea, and of \nRussia\'s natural impregnability. \n\nAccording to Chaptal\'s ^^ Soiivenirs de \nNapoleo7t,^^ if the small number of writ- \nings, which will be handed down to pos- \nterity and which can transmit some trust- \nworthy information concerning him [Buon- \naparte], are consulted there will be \nfoimd on the one side the most disgusting \napology for the qualities and virtues of \nthe hero, and on the other the most hide- \nous portrayal of his vices and of his ambi- \ntion. The first represent him as a tute- \nlary god or deity, invested with every \n[grand] quality, with every virtue \xe2\x80\x94 think- \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\n33 \n\n\n\ning, acting, breathing only for the welfare \nof humanity ; the second accord to him \nneither talent nor {moyens) parts or powers. \nAccording to the latter, his successes were \nthe result of chance, his elevation the result \nof audacity and perversity. Both judge \nhim with passion, and posterity can form \nno exact idea of this extraordinary man, bas- \ning it upon the writings which have been \npublished to date (1817). \n\n" As I was charged with important public \nfunctions during the reign of Napoleon, \nand enjoyed very intimate relations with \nhim for sixteen years I was able to study \nand appreciate him. I was able to do this \nwith greater success, becairse while near \nhim I constantly acted as an impassable \n(unbia.=sed) observer. I believe that I have \nnever made any allusion either to his de- \nfects or to his [good] qualities. Thus, to- \nday, 1817, that he is dead for his contem- \nporaries, I can show display these notes set \ndown, after associating with him, in which \nI literally express the opinion which I pre- \nsent in the course of this work, \' My Re- \ncollections of Napoleon.\' I call him Bona- \nparte, because during the Italian campaign, \nin which he covered himself with glory, he \nsuppressed the \'u\' in his name, so as no \nlonger to appear of foreign origin. His \nmother, L,aetitia Fesch, was a very beautiful \nwoman, and it is to her liaisons* [whatever \nChaptal means by that term] with M. de \nMarbeuf, Governor of Corsica, that the \nyoung Napoleon owed the opportunity to \nenter upon a military career and obtain a \ngratuitous scholarship in the Royal School \nof Briennef (187). Paoli said to Volney \n\n\n\n*According to the Century Dictionary the primary \nmeaning of this word, as it is used by Froude in his \n"Ceesar," signifies an illicit intimacy between a man \nand a woman. Same definition in Funk & Waguall. \n\n\n\nthat this young man carried the head of \nCaesar upon the body of Alexander, and \nthat in him were ten Syllas (examine Chap- \ntal, pages 205, 206). \n\nIn the course of these pages mention \nhas been repeatedly made of the Tribun- \nate. This was constituted almost entirely \nof men who had displayed the most con- \nspicuous talent during the different phases \nof the Revolution, who discussed the prop- \nositions for laws, and sent to the legis- \nlative body deputies to defend them \nor to attack them concurrently with the \nCommissioners of the Council of State. \nThe unquiet spirit of the first Consul \nsoon became irritated at the obstacles \nwhich he found [in the admirable con- \nservative arrangements of the constitu- \ntional checks] which opposed the exe- \ncution of his plans. The digested and \nsalutary opposition of the Tribunate to \ncertain laws displeased him. The com- \nplaints presented to the commission of the \nSenate in favor of individtial liberty and \n\n\n\nfHazlitt in one of his treatises on "Depth and Super- \nperficiality," (Bohn\'s edition, "The Plain Speaker, 4S9,) \ndeclares that, and demonstrates how, in tlie infant, in \nthe cradle, exist, latent, the germs of all the good and \n\n\n\nbad, the strength and weakness, which gradually de- \nvelop and characterize the mature individual. If the \nfollowing anecdote is true, Chaptal simply corrobo- \nrates Hazlitt and proves the truth of the proverb, \n" the child is the father of the man." One day when \nM. de Marbeuf was speaking of the means which he \nwas about to employ to pacify Corsica : "Bah!" re- \nplied Buonaparte, then between ten and twelve years \nold, rudely, "Ten days of the rule of a [Turkish] \nPacha would do more to pacify Corsica than ten years \nof your government," and he went off to his room \nwhere he spent his time reading, particularly histori- \ncal works. \n\nIs it likely that Marbeuf would have put up with \nsuch disrespect from a child if there had been no \ncloser tie between them than merely that of protege \nand preceptor ? These words exactly present Buona- \nparte in power. The rule of a Pacha implied the \nsword, the stake, rape, robbery, even extermination, \nif necessary, as at Scio or Chios, nth April, 1S22, the \nextreme measures of an Attila, a Timour, a Genghis. \nIt was exactly Buonaparte\'s methods\xe2\x80\x94 witness Pavia \nin 1796, Jaffa in 1799, Burgos in 180S, all under his \nown eyes ; his orders to his lieutenants, his injunc- \ntions, his counsels. Ali Pacha was scarcely more cruel \nthrough policy or Djezzar Pacha through disposition. \n\n\n\n34 \n\n\n\nNAPOLEONE DI BUONAPARTE. \n\n\n\nthe reclamations of the commission annoyed \n[or incommoded] him. He suppressed the \nTribunate, and he said to me the same \nevening, "from this moment there is no \nlonger any constitution. " Then he organ- \nized a military force which executed his \ndecrees without any observation (remark), \nand his ministers, which his constitutional \nformsshackled in their movements, executed \ndecrees without opposition. \n\n\' \'A sufficient number will describe his cam- \npaigns and will judge his policy and his gov- \nernment. I, who have particularly observed \nhim in his home, am about to penetrate into \nhis private life, and while divesting him of \nall the glitter of his greatness and the illus- \nion of his victories, confine myself to making \nknown his tastes, his character, his prin- \nciples, his affections, his judgments upon \nmen and things. \n\n"The world will be astonished perhaps \nwith the freedom afforded him to bring \nabout all changes for subverting public \nliberty. But this astonishment will cease \nwhen the public reflect that there was a \ngeneral fondness for him individually ; and \nit will be observed that his armies were con- \nstantly victorious ; and that public opinion \nproclaimed him the only man capable of \nmaking France respected without, in sup- \npressing factions not entirely extinct within. \nHis wars were regarded, as yet, less as the \ninsatiable thirst of an immoderate ambition \nthan as measures which the glory and the \nsafetyofthestate required. Only the abilities \nof the man were perceived ; his defects were \nimperfectly apprehended. Thus four millions \nof Frenchmen proclaimed him Fmperor. \nLittle did they then imagine that they were \nlaying out the road to tyranny. The armed \nforce was entirely in his hands and all were \ndisposed to execute his orders, so that he \nhad reached a point where he found no op- \nposition. Often even it happened in the \nCouncil of State to close the discussion which \nhe himself had opened, and bitterly to in- \n\n\n\nsult those who seemed about to raise some \nquestion as to the validity of one of his \npropositions. The result [obtained thus by \ndespotic bullying] nevertheless appeared to \nthe public as having been the result of \ncareful deliberation in the Council of State. \nIn fact the Empire had arrived at the epoch \nwhen there was alieady no longer any \npublic liberty, because there was neither \ncounterpoise nor balance in the powers. \n\n* * Independent of the absolute charac- \nter of Napoleon, which suffered neither dis- \ncussion nor opposition when his opinion \nwas formed and through that alone could \nonly be based on despotism. * * He \nadded that it was only ancient dynasties \nwhich could be popular with impunity. \n\n* * Within and withoiit I only reign \nthrough the fear which I inspire. If I aban- \ndon this system I should soon be dethroned. \n\n* * Thus he believed that in his position \nit was more sagacious to be feared than to \nbe loved. He thought very little of Henry \nIV, and was indignant that this prince de- \nsired to be called the \' Good Henry.\' \' The \n\'Sluggard Kings,\' he added, \'were like- \nwise good sovereigns.\' Philip the Hand- \nsome and Louis XI [cruel, unprincipled \nsovereigns like himself] were the only \nkings of the third race whom he esteemed. \nPerhaps it would have been possible to have \nrestrained Buonaparte within just limits if \nhis first breaking bounds had been rectified \n[repressed] by the higher state authorities \nat the beginning of his career ; then without \ndoubt the nation would have endorsed its \nmost exalted magistrates. Moreover [then?] \nthis man Buonaparte feared the people. \nThe least discontent boldly manifested, the \nmost insignificant insurrection affected him \nmore than the loss of a battle ; but from \nthe moment that this man found himself at \nthe head of an army puffed up with its suc- \ncesses, he held in his hands the instrument \nof our [French] servitude. All resistance \nbecame impossible ; the nation itself through \n\n\n\nNAPOLEONE DI BUONAPARTE. \n\n\n\n35 \n\n\n\nvanity [self-conceit?] (amour-propre) asso- \nciated itself with his successes, and civil \nrights no longer counted for anything." \n\nSee Chaptal (224.) Profoundly ignorant \nof ideas of government. Dreamed, never \nstudied. His reputed knowledge of math- \nematics of no account. \n\n(225.) Misused words in a ridiculous man- \nner. \n\n(226-7.) Despised the counsels of the wise. \n\n(227). He wanted servile boot-licks {Va- \nlets) and not advisers. \n\n(228.) He conceived the project of form- \ning a generation of Seids [i. e. irresponsible \nexecutors of his will, like Turkish mutes \nwith the bowstring]. \n\nBuonaparte had applied his system of \nfusion to every country which became sub- \nject to him. He exacted that the children \nof every country thus absorbed should be \nbrought up in France. He forced the most \npatriotic in these annexes to sell the prop- \nerty at home, to place the product {bien- \nfonds) in real estate in the interior of \nFrance, which, like the seizure of com- \nmunal properties, amounted in many cases \nin the end to virtual confiscation. It was \non a par with its compulsory marriage of \nheiresses, of whom his local satraps were \ncompelled to make out lists and valuations \nto marry (in so many cases) his brutal, dis- \nsipated, unprincipled officers or officials. \n[This was one of the severest charges made \nby Lord Castelreagh in Parliament and it \nexcited the ire of Las Cases, who never \nhesitates at contradiction of facts besmirch- \ning his idol.] \n\n[There was no distinction of persons with \nBuonaparte. Some he regarded as spies, \nwatching for the moment when fortune \nshould prove adverse to him to win back \nwhat they had lost.] No fears that his \nStar would ever pale entered Buonaparte\'s \nmind. He believed himself strong enough \nto shackle everything and enslave every- \nthing-. \n\n\n\n[The unreflecting vast majority, hypno- \ntized by iuch writers as Abbott, regard \nBuonaparte as sagacity incarnate. No \nman made more or greater and more stupid \nblunders.] \n\nThe favor which he had won among the \npeople by the reestablishment of public \nworship turned into hatred of him as soon \nas he began his controversies with the \nPope. * * His quarrels with the Pope \nalienated almost every heart * * thus \nthe effect was directly opposite to what he \nexpected * * he tormented the aged \nPope in every possible manner. [It has \nbeen claimed that he struck him and seized \nhim by the hair.] \n\n[Wellington was of opinion that Napoleon \nwas more afraid of his Marshals than his \nMarshals were of him.] Chaptal says \nNapoleon was unceasingly on his guard \nagainst the ambition of his generals and \nthe discontent of the people and he was \nconstantly occupied in stifling the one and \npreventing the other. He always observed \nthe greatest reserve with his generals, kept \nthem always at a great distance [arm\'s \nlength], hardly spoke to them, and when he \ndid only on indifferent matters. They were \nnever made acquainted with his orders ex- \ncept at the moment when they had to set \nout to execute them. If they distinguished \nthemselves he simply said they had done \ntheir duty. Only once in a while he made \nhonorable mention of them in his bulletins. \nWere they unfortunate the whole fault was \ntheirs, and neither the inferiority of the \ntroops assigned to their command nor the \nunfavorable conditions in which this in- \nferiority placed them were taken into ac- \ncount. Thus, with the exception of two \nor three, whom he had known in his youth \nand who had kept up a certain liberty with \nhim, the others approached him in tremb- \nling and they could not say that they ever \nenjoyed a moment\'s liberty. Even Duroc, \nthat nullity, that slave to Buonaparte\'s \n\n\n\n36 \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nwill, sometimes felt severe constriction of \nthe straight jacket and rebelled without \ndaring to grimace in the presence of his \ndespot. See Bourrienne iii, 342. [Consult \nand compare pages 246, 248, 249, 250, in \nthe original French.] \n\nWhen the treaty of Ruel was signed by \nTwelve Generals, Massena was selected to \nget the signature of Buonaparte, to whom \nas his share Paris, and its dependent dis- \ntricts, was assigned. Massena refused, al- \nleging that he would only leave the \n\n\n\nTuilleries, Buonaparte\'s headquarters, to "be \nshot by the latter\' s guards. Buonaparte \nthereupon remarked, " Massena knew me, \nwell \'\xe2\x80\xa2\' \xe2\x80\x94 admitting he would have shot him. \nIvannes, 252. He would have shot St. Cyr \nfor a trifle; Loison for even less. Lannes \nalone retained his frankness and independ- \nence; Berthier was simply a favorite slave ; \nDuroc was a nullity, but devoted and \nsecret. Buonaparte was surrounded by \nSeids, dumb and blind, instruments of his \ncriminal resolves. \n\n\n\nV. \n\n\n\nTN continuation of Chaptal\'s Souvenirs, \n- , he says: "If Buonaparte could have \n\ntit/VvviXo -S\xe2\x82\xacH4;-i4\xc2\xbbeH-tS\' to his ambition he would be \nstill [1817] upon the throne of France \nloaded with the benedictions of the people, \nbut Providence had decided otherwise. The \nmodest title of First Consul appeared be- \nneath his pretensions ; he wished to estab- \nlish a dynasty and found an empire. Then \nhe re-cast our institutions and arrogated to \nhimself prerogatives which, until that time, \nhad belonged to the great legislative bodies \n[organized corps of functionaries] ; he iso- \nlated himself from the men who until then \nhad lived with him on a comparative species \nof familiarity. He established a severe eti- \nquette at his court. He created for his \ncourtiers a luxury of costumes which had \nnever been seen at the most sumptuous \ncourts. These innovations brought about \na fatal change in public opinion. The men \nwho attached themselves to him lost almost \nin equal degree all interest in their coun- \ntry, and from this moment he had only \nflatterers about him. His will became the \nsupreme law. His courtiers proclaimed \nthat his decrees were oracles. The least \ncriticism was punished as a revolt. The \nsensible portion of the nation became silent \nand confined themselves to groans [lamen- \ntations]. The legislative bodies, who were \nonly consulted to furnish an appearance of \n\n\n\nlegality to the acts of his will, were lowered \nin public opinion ; tlius the most FRIGHTFUL \nDESPOTISM which was ever laid zvith crush- \ning weight upon men^ assumed form and \nbecame consolidated. No sooner able to \ncurb [subject] the nation to his will than \nhis ambition no longer recognized any limi- \ntations. In his delirium he pretended [cal- \nculated] to become the master of the world \nand in the space of six or seven years ; he \nsucceeded in effect in subjecting to his \ndomination almost all Europe ; and he \nwould have executed this gigantic plan if \npublic opinion in France, which had \nturned against him, had not reunited with \nthe foreign coalition to thrust him from \npower. \n\n" Napoleon [at last?] recognized his posi- \ntion, but acquired the conviction too late. \nHe thought that France was inexhaustible \nin its affection for him ; he formed an erro- \nneous judgment at once, both of his own \nnation and of foreigners ; he believed that \nthe first would not abandon him and that \nhis enemies would not dare to penetrate \nthe interior of the kingdom, and his eyes \nwere only opened to the truth when there \nwas no longer any remedy. During the \ncampaign of 1814 he had the misery to per- \nceive that the French appealed to the dom- \nination of foreigners. \n\n" Persons who had been brought but little \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\n37 \n\n\n\nin contact with Napoleon, and only saw \nhim for a short time, could only form a \nvery unfavorable judgment of him. His \nfirst contact was chilling and his remarks \ninsignificant, rude. He was destitute of \nthe agreeable address which results from \nintercourse with the world or a careful edu- \ncation. * * Often, indeed, he was un- \nmannerly and gross [towards women], for \ninstance, \' Ah ! good gracious ! people \nhave told me that you are pretty p * * \nIn general. Napoleon had the manners of a \nbadly brought-up young lieutenant, and in \ncoming in contact with him for the first \ntime, nothing in him revealed either intel- \nlectuality or the slightest good manners. I \nhave seen him at his receptions come out of \nhis cabinet to accost women without inter- \nrupting his tune, and return to it humming \nan Italian air. \n\n"Napoleon one day expressed some regret \nthat the poet Lemercier had not accompa- \nnied him to Egypt. The poet observed that \nhe \' was not happy where human rights \nwere not recognized [or rather, were disre- \ngarded].\' \'Well,\' replied Buonaparte, \n\' you would have seen a country where the \nsovereign set no value on the lives of his \nsubjects, and where the subject set no value \non his own life. [Compare N. W. Senior\'s \n\'Conversations and Journals on Egypt,\' \nii, 35.] Buonaparte would not permit any \none to argue against him. The least inad- \nvertence, the slightest inattention, aroused \nhim into a perfect fury. How could any \none feel at his ease in the neighborhood of \nNapoleon, when everyone was, as it were, \nupon thorns, not knowing when his temper \nwould explode into acts of violence? In \nfact his Court Avas an absolute galley, in \nwhich each one [like a slave on board a \nBarbary corsair] rowed according to strict \nregulation [under momentary danger of the \nlash]. \n\n" No one was at his ease in the society of \nNapoleon except himself He never al- \n\n\n\nlowed himself to be put out in anything and \nhe held everyone about him strictly within \nthe bounds of etiquette and the most severe \nrestraint. The sovereign contempt which \nhe had for men inspired this conduct. Those \nwho have studied Napoleon closely per- \nceived that during the fifteen years of his \nreign the greatest changes took place in \nhim, both physical and moral. Nothing \ncould equal his activity during the four \nyears of his Consulate. At that epoch he \nsought to instruct himself in everything re- \nlating to the administration, and gathered \nin council every day the very ablest men, \nand with them discussed all the questions \nwhich came up. He wore out his counsel- \nlors, while he himself was untiring. When, \nhowever, he had acquainted himself with \nmatters and had formed an opinion for him- \nself upon everything, as I have already \nsaid, he no longer listened to anyone. \nThenceforward his very ministers were \nsimply holders or bearers of portfolios, \nwhich they handed back to Marets [Duke \nof Bassano, Minister-Secretary of State], \nwho made them affix their signatures. \n\n"It was at that epoch that Buonaparte \nproclaimed himself Emperor. At 40 years \nof age he began to be corpulent. He no \nlonger had the same confidence in his \npowers. He had degenerated [or was a de- \ngenerate]. \n\n" It was particularly after his return from \nMoscow that those who were in closest \ncontact with him remarked the very great \nchange which had taken place in the phy- \nsical and moral constitution of Napoleon. \nThis campaign, (without?) lessening his mil- \nitary glory [it completely dissipated his illu- \nsive reputation for military superiority], \nhad shown his want of foresight, and \nthrough him caused the destruction of the \nfinest army which ever existed ; forcing \nhim to renounce the most gigantic plan \nwhich his ambition had conceived. On \nthe other\'hand, the extreme cold to which \n\n\n\n38 \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nhe had been exposed had affected his own \nmorale^ and I confess that after this sad \nperiod I neither could discover in him the \nsame [consequential or coherent] train of \nideas nor the same force of character. \nFlashes [transports] of imagination were \nperceptible, but always incoherent. Neither \nthe same appetite nor the same aptitude for \nwork were perceptible, and I have often \nremarked that of the one hundred fibres of \nwhich his brain might be composed there \nwere no longer fifty in healthy condition." \n\n" From this time forward horseback exer- \ncise became insupportable to him. Somno- \nlence, which until then he had mastered, \nnow mastered him in turn. The table, \nwhich had appeared a matter of indiflFerence \nto him, now commenced to present attrac- \ntions." To prove that acute gastritis, not \ncancer of the stomach, caused his death, \nreflect upon the following statement :* \n\nThis perfectly justifies and explains Dr. \nHereau\'s opinion that Buonaparte died of \nchronic gastritis not cancer of the stomach. \nSee March number of the COLLEGE Stu- \ndent, page io8. \n\n" He alone did not perceive these changes. \nHe wished to repair his fortune without the \nsame means that he had possessed to estab- \nlish it, and, far from attributing this change \nto himself, he charged all his own faults to \n\n\n\n*NoTE.\xe2\x80\x94 " Napoleon defied the laws of nature, in so \nfar as he devoured his food like an animal and treated \nhis organs of digestion as though they were not sub- \nject to natural laws. In consequence he became sub- \nject to violent pains in the stomach, for which physi- \ncians have various obscure names. In plain English, \nhe had been forcing his stomach to do more work \nthan any human stomach could do, and that stomach \nhad finally got out of repair. The pains arising from \nthis complaint are most acute, and Napoleon had sev- \neral times before, notably in the Russian campaign, \nbeen rendered helpless by the result of his gluttony, \ncoupled with a necessarily irregular mode of life." \n\nHarper\'s New Monthly Magazine, No. 55;, April, \n1896, page 764, second column, Poultney Bigelow\'s \n" The Prussians Win Back what the Austrians Had \nLost. \' \' \n\n\n\nthe treason or to the incapacity of his gen- \nerals. General Becker, who was invested \nwith the duty of accompanying Napoleon \nto Rochefort, where he delivered himself \nup to the English, informed me that he ac- \ncused his generals of all his reverses through- \nout his last campaign. \n\n\' \' Since the smallest details often contribute \nto better reveal the character of men than \ngreat events, I will now relate some indi- \ncations of the domestic life of Napoleon \nfrom which his character can be more cor- \nrectly judged. By habit and through char- \nacter Napoleon was a destroyer [an Abad- \ndon]. * * * If a delicate piece of \nsculpture was presented to him it rarely left \nhis hands without being mutilated. * * * \nWhen I observed that the artist would die \nwith mortification if he saw his work thus \nruined, he coldly replied : \' A little paste \ncan repair all the damage.\' If he caressed \na child, he pinched it so as to make it cry. \nAt Malmaison [in the very spirit of Domi- \ntian] he had a fowling-piece in his pri- \nvate room with which he constantly fired \nthrough the window at the rare birds which \nJosephine kept in the ponds of the park. \nThis malevolent genius of destruction pos- \nsessed him to such a degree that he \nnever entered the hot-houses of Malmaison \nwithout mutilating or rooting up some of \nthe precious plants which were cultivated \nthere. Will it be believed that with this \nmania for destruction, he established the \ngreatest order in his expenses [even to \nmeanness], t * * * He was endowed \n\n\n\ntAs a farther exemplification of this genius of de- \nstruction and disregard of the feeling of others, a goat \nand two kids belonging to the Countess Bertraod, \nhaving strayed into his garden at St. Helena and \nmade free with his flowers, Buonaparte took his fowl- \ning piece and shot one of the animals, 20th of January \n1820. If anyone deserved consideration it was this \nlady, whose horror of the anticipated life at St. \nHelena nearly led to her commission of suicide on \nboard the Bellerophon. Fearing her other two pets \nmight be shot likewise, she gave them away. This \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\n39 \n\n\n\nwith an extraordinary memory, especially \nfor figures and names * * * As a rule \nhe was alwaj\'S simply dressed * * * \nbut on grand occasions he displayed great \nluxury, but such costumes sat ill upon \nhim : they seemed to embarrass him * * * \nIt was generally believed that Napoleon \nwas prodigal. It was never at his own ex- \npense. * * * No sovereign gave more \nthan he, but no one ever [when he did \ngive] caused more dissatisfaction. To me \nthe reason appeared perfectly plain. First \n\xe2\x80\x94 his liberalities were bestowed by caprice \nand the gift was never founded on service \nor the necessities of the recipient. Some \nwere overlooked, others [who deserved] \ngot nothing. Secondly, Napoleon never \naccorded a favor nor made a gift in a way \nto inspire gratitude. He always did it as \nif he was bestowing alms, never as a reward \nfor service. He humiliated rather than en- \ncouraged. * * * Napoleon never ex- \nperienced a generous sentiment. It was \nthis which rendered association with him \nso soulless. The result of this, he had not \na single friend. \n\n"According to sentimental Chauvinists or \nNapoleonic idolaters, Duroc was Buona- \nparte\' syr/i?^^. Duroc was simply a willing \nslave, a tool, a blind, dumb, deaf instru- \nment. [Marshal Castellane (i, 230) confirms \nthis opinion.] According to British Judge- \nAdvocate Larpent\'s Diary or Journal : On \nthat day, i6th of June, 1813, General Jeron \narrived, the general of theGallician-Spanish \narmy acting with us, and he dined there. \n* * * Jeron is a man about thirty-six, I \n\n\n\nshooting chickens and kids seemed to afford amuse- \nment to him, Buonaparte, and he had young goats \nbought for him to shoot. On the gth of February, \n1829, he shot two fowls belonging to his Valet \nNovarraz. This so offended his faithful follower, the \nvalet wished to leave his service, but was only dis- \nsuaded from doining so by Governor Lowe. He after- \nwards desired larger game and shot a bullock. \nForsyth\'s "History of the Captivity of Napoleon at St. \nHelena," Vol. Ill, Pages 206-7, etc \n\n\n\nshould think, and looks very much like a \ngentleman and a man of talent ; he is very \nwell spoken of, and considered as one of \nthe best of the Spanish leaders. * * * \nTalking during the dinner of the late ac- \ncounts from Buonaparte, and of the senii- \nmeiilal story about DuROC \xe2\x80\x94 [whose dying \nbed Buonaparte left with the assurance of \n\' a meeting hereafter in a better world \' \n{u7z monde meilleiir). (Marbot iii, 251-2). \nIt would appear that the two greatest favor- \nites of Buonaparte, Lannes (1809) and \nDuroc (1813) were both mortally wounded \nby cannon shots, on the same day of the \nsame month, 22d of May] \xe2\x80\x94 which Lord \nWellington was laughing at, General Jeron \nsaid : \' If there mas such a place as Hell^ \nhe thought Buonaparte quite right^ and \nthat he and Duroc would most certainly \nmeet again there.\'\' [Duroc, with some re- \ndeeming qualities, was simply a cold- \nblooded in.strument of Buonaparte\'s will, \nas much so as cold steel in the hands of a \npractical ruffian]. [Chaptal styles him \n^ un homme nuP (a perfect nullity) and \nother honest writers corroborate this esti- \nmate on similar words more or less forcible. \nHe seems to have been an amiable man \nand a peace, rather than a mischief-maker]. " \nBuonaparte looked upon men as vile, \nsmall change or as instruments to serve for \nthe satisfaction of his caprices and ambi- \ntion. A Russian envoy. Prince Kourakin, \nonce spoke of the recruiting resources of \nhis empire. Yes, I agree said he, but can \nyour master expend as I can 25,000 lives a \nmonth. [This was exactly the counterpart \nof his remark to Metternich at Dresden in \n1813. That he * * * * on the lives \nof 200,000 men. * * * Many of the acts \nof his life must be referred to this insensi- \nbility. He often said to me that to ad- \nminister well the heart must be transferred \nto the head. Napoleon had no attachment \nfor his family. It was through vanity that \nhe had elevated them, but not from any \n\n\n\n40 \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nsentiments of their individual njerits, nor \nfrom affection for either one. He only ap- \npeared sensible to the debaucheries of his \nsisters when they debased themselves in \ntheir love affairs. He often spoke with \ncontempt of his brothers. * * * His \nbrothers had all his obstinacy without hav- \ning the same [stronger] qualities nor the \nsame [startling] defects. Joseph seemed to \nhave more good nature and less ambition, \nentirely possessed with desires for women * \n\n\n\n-*" Colonel Campbell, who is just come into the \ntown [Vittora, 1813,] on business, says that the \nFrench have committed great ravages on their route \nfrom this place, destroying property, committing \nevery excess. A girl at Lord Wellington\'s quarters at \nSalvatierra accuses even King Joseph of an attempt at \nviolence ; but I do not believe it. Some very strange \nthings were found in the baggage." "The Private \nJournal of Judge- Advocate Larpent." Edited by Sir \nGeorge I^arpent, Bart : Third Edition, London, 1854. \nPage 165. \n\nIn the preceding paragraph a hint is given of the \npeculiar tendency of King Pepe, or Joseph Buona- \nparte, to amuse himself with the other sex, from \nwhich none of the Buonapartes were free in a more or \nless genteel or brutal manner. \n\nThe following extract from the " Memoires " of the \nChancellor Pasquier demonstrates that his tastes were \nnot restricted and that he sometimes flew at the low- \nest and sometimes at the highest game. \n\nIn 1S14, at the time of the abdication of the Empe- \nror, the Duke of Rovigo, who was at the head of the \npolice, confided to the Chancellor a locked portfolio \ncontaining his correspondence with the Emperor \n(iii, 237-8). Circumstances occu:red, which influ- \nenced Pasquier as a matter of duty to open the port- \nfolio to judge for himself from the contents if the \nDuke of Rovigo had told the truth in regard to its \nimportance, and whether or not it held matters other \nthan the correspondence indicated. In making this \nverification, which proved his sincerity, my examina- \ntion was naturally directed to the documents which \nwere not bonud up in bundles, and these were the \nlast of ths correspondence such as had been written \nby Napoleon after his departure from Rheims [to \nmake that desperate movement in the rear the of \nAllies which led to the fall of Paris], What was my \nastonishment to find that they dwelt for the most part \nupon the suspicions which he had conceived in regard \nto the Empress Marie Louise, or rather to his brother \nJoseph, whom he accused of having made the most \nodious advances towards her. The Duke of Rovigo \nwas severely reprimanded for not having given him \n\n\n\nand love of an idle life. * * * Jerome had \nnatural ability, but it would be difficult to \nfind a young man more arrogant or worse \nbrought up; more ignorant or more ambi- \ntious. When Buonaparte was placed at the \nhead of the government, Jerome was \nscarcely twelve years old, and since that \ntime he was nourished upon adulation and \ndebauchery, and he was the most servile of \nall the courtiers of Napoleon, who repaid \nthis docility with all the favors it was in \n\n\n\nany information on this subject, and he enjoined \nupon him in the future to exercise the most exact \nsupervision of what occurred in the interior of the \npalace. For a long time I believed that this accusa- \ntion of Napoleon was occasioned through the disor- \nders of a mind which vexations without number dis- \nposed to conceive all sorts of suspicions, but I have \nsince learned from M. de ^aint-Aignan, who, consid- \nering his extremely intimate relations with the Duch- \ness of Monte Bello, was necessarily informed upon \nthis subject, that the suspicion was only too well \nfounded and that the Empress at this epoch was only \ntoo much importuned and had altogether too much to \ncomplain of the overtures of her brother-in-law." \nWas the Empress innocent ? \n\nThey were a jolly lot, these Buonapartes. They \nhad about as much idea of principle as a monkey has \nof logarythms. At Orleans they tried to carry off the \nEmpress as a sort of hostage to aid them in preserv- \ning their plunder, and she had to cry aloud for assist- \nance to save her from their attempts at force. Jerome \nendeavored to get possession by violence of the \nwagons loaded with treasure, and the whole of this \nset were just as anxious at the last to secure what \nspoils they could as they had always hitherto made \ntheir whole lives subservient to their gain and de- \nbaucheries. This charge against Jerome appeared in \none of the narratives of the flight of the Empress \nMarie Louise, in April, 1S14 ; that while at Blois. \nJerome Buonaparte conceived a plan to get possession \nof one of the treasury wagons loaded with coin, and \nat once sent a pistol bullet through the head of the \nsentinel standing guard over it. Tde report, how- \never, roused the guard and the treasure was saved, \nand Jerome\'s attempt was known to so few \xe2\x80\x94 although \nalleged in the Royalist newspapers \xe2\x80\x94 that it is only re- \ncorded in one work examined. \n\nAs previously stated, the Buonapartes came into \nFrance steeped to the lips in indigence, and they went \nout of it sufficiently wealthy, one and all, to maintain \npositions to which they had no claim through\' birth, \nservice or character. \n\nThe author of all their acquisitions, so tolerant of \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\n41 \n\n\n\n[Marshal Castellane confirms Chaptal i, 369] \nhis power to bestow. * * * We have \nalready observed Napoleon was entirely \n\n\n\nwithout instruction. The Greek and Latin \nauthors were almost unknown to him. He \nbelieved neither in virtue nor in probity \n\n\n\ntheir villainies, villain as he was himself, suffered the \nmost of all the criminals. Not but that his sufferings \nwere attributable entirely to himself, and if the Buon- \napartes ever enjoyed any success it was entirely due \nto his crimes. \n\nThere were terrible expiations. The half or one- \nthird Dutch-Napoleon III (N.W. Senior\'s "Conversa- \ntions with Distinguished Persons during the Second \nEmpire," ii, 104,) certainly had full swing for eigh- \nteen years, but his fall and physical sufferings almost \natoned for his terrible sins. As for his bigot wife \nand his innocent son their after-life was torture, and \nthe end an expiation regularly consonant with \nGreek tragedy. The worst, Jerome Buonaparte, \ndied in peace and plenty, and his son, the brightest \nin intellect of them all, suffered no punisnment at all. \nIf there is no other world and there is no retri- \nbution beyond the grave, they justified the Ivucretian \nmaxim: "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we \ndie." His noble wife, the Sardinian Princess Chlo- \ntilde, sacrificed to diplomatic exigencies, drove out of \nParis in the face of day like a royal lady, the scion of \na race of kings and hei oes The Empress Eugenie \nstole out abandoned by all her sycophants aud the \nservile herd who had fed upon her ill-directed boun- \nties \xe2\x80\x94 saved by an American dentist. With all the \nhorror possible to conceive, Napoleone di Buonaparte \nwas punished almost as exquisitely as his worst enemy \ncould desire. With a wife \xe2\x80\x94 to whom he was more \nattentive than to any other human being \xe2\x80\x94 " the dire- \nful spring" of his, misfortunes, in the embraces of a \none-eyed Austrian General, the husband of a divorced \nwoman and the paramour of an Empress not di- \nvorced, a wife who would not even receive the physi- \ncian who brought her the heart of a husband, who \ndied clinging to her memory ; with a son born to the \ntitle of Imperial Rome, a prisoner of State, although \na Duke \\>y title ; with a cancer or acute maladies eat- \ning at his vitals and a cancer gnawing at his pride, \n" cribbed, cabined and confined," it was not a pleas, \nant life to live or a pleasant death to die. " You are \nnot a gentleman," said Sir Hudson Lowe to Buona- \nparte. He was perfectly correct in his judgment. \n" It is a great pity that so great a man should have \nbeen so badly brought up," quoth the arch-courtier \nTalleyrand. Exact truth ! If Buonaparte had within \nhim the smallest sentiments of gentlemanly feeling \nhis captivity at St. Helena would have been assuaged \nby the faculty of adapting himself to altered circum- \nstances and to accepting the situation with grace and \ndignity, if not with satisfaction. His repudiated wife, \ngood or bad, to whom he owed his elevation, died \nsurrounded with respect and bedewed with honest \n\n\n\ntears ; his Imperial consort falling lower and lower \nwith the reprobation of every honest soul. \n\nMarie Louise, Successor of the Empress \nJosephine \xe2\x80\x94 It is most marvellous how the crimes, \ncruelties, sensualities, dishonesties, frauds, false- \nhoods, vile lying of Napoleon Bonaparte are condoned, \nnot only by French writers, from whom, as a rule \xe2\x80\x94 \nwith grand exceptions \xe2\x80\x94 little or nothing of reproof \ncould ht expected, but by English and Americans, \nwho \xe2\x80\x94 until nearly transformed by Latin immigrated \n[imported] ideas \xe2\x80\x94 were honest, humane, and home- \nrespecting in their sentiments. Above all, how Marie \nLouise, who succeeded to the bed of Josephine, has \nescaped with so slight animadversion is even more \nsurprising, except that the French can not bring \nthemselves to admit that the Austrian archduchess \ncould forget that she had been the wife of that arch- \ndevil, the very god of the French, the "tulelary- \ndeity," as Cardinal de Rohan said Napoleon was to \nhim, and was rewarded by a lien of 12,000 francs on \nthe theatre-fund - and that ought to have been so \nproud of being his illegal wife as to be inaccessible to \nfeeling for any other human being. However, some \nFrenchmen have told a portion of the truth, that she \nwas no better than the circle into which she was ad- \nmitted by her marriage, which according to the Papal \nChurch, was no marriage. In looking over *\' The \nLiberation of Italy, 1S15-1870," by the Countess \nEvelyn Martinego Cesaresco, Chas. Scribner\'s Sons, \niSgs, at pages 88 and 89 the following paragraph was \nencountered : \n\n"The bargain with Tuscany had been struck only \neight days when Marie Louise died, unlamented, \nsince the latter years of her reign formed a sad con- \ntrast to the earlier. Marie Louise had not a bad dis- \nposition, but she always let her husband of the hour \ngovern as he chose ; of the four or five of these hus- \nbands, the last two, and particularly the hated Count \nde Bombelles, undid all the good done by their more \nhumane predecessors. The Parmese petitioned their \nnew duke to send the man away, and to grant them \nsome measure of freedom The answer he gave was \nthe confirmation of Bombelles in all his honors, and \nthe conclusion of a treaty with Austria, securing the \nassistance of her arms. A military force had been \nsent to Parma to escort the body of the late duchess \nto Vienna ; but, on the principle that the living are of \nmore consequence than the dead, it remained there to \nprotect the new duke from his subjects. Marie Louise \nand her lovers, Cliarles Ludovico and his joclzey-min- \nisier, are instructive illustrations of the scandalous \npoint things had reached in the small states of Italy." \n\n\n\n42 \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nand often styled these two words abstrac- \ntions. It is that which rendered him so \nsuspicious and immoral, and politics were \nsimply craft and deceit. Sometimes, when \ncompelled to yield to circumstances, he \nsigned treaties as an adjournment of his ul- \nterior plans. * * * He did not speak \nany one [French] language well, [nor write \nit \xe2\x80\x94 it was written for him]. His maternal \nlanguage was Corsican, which is an Italian \njargon, and when he undertook to express \nhimself in French it was at once percepti- \nble that he was a foreigner [like Suworrow, \na similar character, like himself a savage, \nbut with the virtues oi a barbarian]. ["In \nVienna no one could fathom Suworrow, \n\' that unexampled mixture of genius and \nmadness, of penetration and grimace.\' " In \nmany respects the counterpart of Buona- \nparte, what a pity they did not meet (Vehse \nii, 345, (i)]. He preferred rather an auda- \ncious lie than the truth born of hesitation. \nHe affected agreat predilictionfor Regnauld \nde Saint Angely, who boldly answered every \nquestion and would not have been embarrass- \ned for a reply if Buonaparte had asked him \nhowmanymillions of flies were to be found in \nEurope in August. * * * Napoleon used up \nwithout compassion all the men who served \nhim, whether civil or military, and had no \nrespect for age, for infirmities, nor for fa- \ntigue, and never accorded sufficient time to \nprepare the labors he demanded. Nights \nwould be expended in his service, and it \nwas rare that he was ever satisfied, and \nmore rare that he exhibited the air of tak- \ning into account the fatigue undergone in \nhis service." \n\n" One day in council, he was aggravating \nChampagny, who had not been able to fur- \nnish some information which required long \nand patient examination of the archives. \nThe Minister observed that the Archivist \nwas ill. Thereupon Buonaparte replied \nroughl}^, turning towards Montavliet, who \nsuffered terribly from the gout, \'Well,\' \n\n\n\nwith a dirty oath, \' when clerks are sick \nthey should be sent to the hospital and \nothers substituted.\' He who was so impe- \nrious and so exacting in regard to his sub- \nordinates, nevertheless set not the slightest \nvalue upon their time. He would fix an \nhour and then make his ministers and coun- \ncillors wait two or three hours in his ante- \nchambers. [It was this total disregard of \nthe feelings that often overcame the obse- \nquious servility of even such a devoted \nslave as Duroc. On one occasion it is re- \nlated that after having been at work with \nNapoleon almost to the exhaustion of his \npatience, he had thrown off his trappings \nto take a little rest when his despot sent for \nhim again. Applying to Napoleon a very \nblackguard epithet, he resumed his official \ndress, with a remark equivalent to saying \nthat so it was, that Napoleon would never \ngive him a moment for relaxation. Here \ncomes in very appositely the comment of \nGeneral Jeron on remark made by Napoleon \nbeside Duroc\'s dying bed, making an ap- \npointment in a better world. \n\n* * * " In all circumstances he devel- \noped a great talent, but above all a great \nsubtility. He was never at a loss for mo- \ntives to endeavor to legitimate measures \nmost arbitrary and often the most atrocious. \nIt was in these effusions of confidence that \nit was possible to penetrate the crafty char- \nacter of Napoleon, the principles of his \npolitics and his opinion of men." \n\n" Napoleon possessed inflexibility of will \nwhich comprised the exaction of the imme- \ndiate execution of his orders without exam- \nination, without resistance and without ob- \nservation, and he exercised the same des- \npotism in the army as in the interior admin- \nistration. * He would not put up with the \n\n\n\n* " I had \xe2\x80\x94 was the false and cruel charge made by \nBuonaparte ?\xe2\x80\x94 in the hands of the banker Torlonia, at \nRome, bills of exchange to the amount of two or \nthree hundred thousand liveres, in bills of exchange, \nthe product of my revenues of the Island of Elba \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\n43 \n\n\n\nrefusal of any employment by any individ- \nual whom he named without ever consult- \ning him ; a refusal always entailed disagree \nupon the innocent victim. No one ever \nbecame aware of any nomination of himself \nto office. His most intimate friends only \nbecame cognizant of it through the public \npapers and the ministers. The ministers \nthemselves had very little to do with ap- \npointments. Buonaparte troubled himself \nvery little if the employees had the neces- \nsary abilities ; he appointed them withotit \nknowing them. [Marshal Castellane con- \nfirms this.] \n\n"To furnish an idea of the morals of \nFrance, Chaptal relates the following inci- \ndent. The citizens of Namur appeared \nbefore Buonaparte to complain of their \nbishop. They accused him of insulting \nwomen in the church, simply because their \ndress did not please him ; they charged that \nduring a procession at the entrance of the \nchurch, when the crowd retarded his ad- \n\n\n\nsince 1815. The Sieur de la PejTusse, although no \nlonger my treasurer, and not invested with any such \noffice, possessed himself of this sum He shall be \ncompelled to refund it." \n\n" Baron Peyrusse had been treasurer to Napoleon at \nElba. In 1829 General Bertrand, with the other exec- \nutors of this will, certified that Peyrusse had properly \naccounted for the funds in question, and that this \nparagraph had been dictated in ignorance of the facts \nof the case. " See Me7ieval, Vol. II, p. 95. Scribner\'s \nBourrienne, Vol. IV, page 433. \n\nConsult curious " Lettres Inedities du Baron \nGuillaume Peyrusse, Ecrites a son frere Andre pend- \nant les Campagnes de I\'Empire de 1809 a 1814, \nPuDliees d\'apres les manuscrits originaux, avec une \nNotice sur Peyrusse par Leon G. Pelissier," Paris, x\xc2\xab94. \n\nBaron Peyrusse, to whom Buonaparte is so shame- \nfully unjust in his Third Codicil \'i2, has presented \nsome remarkable pen-pictures of his master. He \nwrites (XXI) that Napoleon during the campaign was \nto the last like himself, hard and impassable, treating \nthose around him with the greatest contempt amid \nhis reverses ; then all at once foundering through \nthe catastrophe of the abdication. When the Empire \nis lost nothing remains to lose, said Napoleon, and in \nfact he did not take any measures to gather up the re- \nmains of his treasure and tried to poison himself. \nThen two sentiments manifested themselves in this \n\n\n\nvance, he ordered the cross-bearer to beat \n\nthose , using a blackguard expression, \n\nwith his cross. They added that he lived \npublicly with a girl whom he passed off as \nhis niece. Buonaparte talked the matter \nover in the evening with the bishop, who \nreplied that he had served in the army of \nthe Rhine and that he could not give up \nhis old habits." \n\n" As Buonaparte was naturally suspicious \nand mistrusting, he covered France with \nspies, and he believed their reports with the \nsame perfect faith that an old priest believes \nin the gospel. Every day brought in new \ndenunciations and every day revealed pre- \ntended conspiracies, and they saw him \nwithdraw his confidence from one set and \nthrow the others into dungeons without any \none being able to discover the motive. The \nlist of officials would serve as the roster of \nan army. Public administrators were de- \nprived of their functions, peaceable citizens \nincarcerated, etc., upon police reports. It \n\n\n\noverthrown soul, the desire for money, he wished to \nassure himself of such resources and tried to get pos- \nsession of the crown treasure, and the frenzy of hold- \ning on to life \xe2\x80\x94 hence his cowardice, like that of \nMazarin, little dissembled throughout the journey \nthrough Provence. The editor of these letters remarks \nthis total abandonment of dignity in the presence of \ndanger and to better assure personal preservation it is a \ntrait characteristic of the Italian spirit of the Renais- \nsance, which presents itself in the corroboration of the \ncelebrated theory of M. Paine. This allusion to Car- \ndinal Mazarin may not be understood. Never was a \ngreater bully than this Italian in prosperity, never a \ngreater poltroon in moments of personal peril." \n\nPerhaps there is no better proof of the littleness of \xe2\x96\xa0 \nBuonaparte than his bitter hatred towards Count \nWaldbourg-Truchsess, the Prussian commissioner who \nsaw him off to Elba, because it was that gentleman \nwho in detail represented Napoleon\'s unaccountable \ncowardice during the journey down along the Rhone. \n\nPerhaps it is not generally known that when the \nAustrian Commissioner, Baron Kohler, took his leave \nof Buonaparte the latter embraced him, weeping with \nevery demonstration of warm attachment. When, \nafterwards, Kohler was asked of what he was think- \ning thus enfolded in Buonaparte\'s arms, he replied : \n"Judas Iscariot." \n\n\n\n44 \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nwas a perfect reign of terror [without the \nguillotine]. To all the other police was \nadded that of the aids-de-camp and gener- \nals who comprised the Guard of Napoleon. \nThis police was the most dangerous of all \nfor the persons in the court and the \nprincipal officers in the administration, be- \ncause it was confided to men devoted to \nhim, who misrepresented everything and \nenvenomed everything, and presented as \ncriminals all those who were not cowardly \nadorers of their idol. All this police scaf- \nfolding did not yet even satisfy Napoleon \nand some women and courtiers considered \nmost respectable in society were his paid \nagents, and arrests were made and degra- \ndations effected without any possibility of \ndiscovering the cause. [It was said that \nevenjosephine wasin the pay of Foucheas a \nspy on her husband]. Thus, in the last \nyears of his reign, the degradations became \na title of glory to the sufferers, and nothing \nannounces more clearly how little esteem \nwas felt for the sovereign. Napoleon was \nvery fond of gossipings. Many of his inti- \nmate agents kept him posted as regards the \nscandalous anecdotes in Paris and the Court, \nand it was from these impure sources that \nhe derived the prejudices which influenced \nhim against certain persons. [This must \nremind a reader posted in history, of the \nbrutal littleness of Caligula, and there are \nstories of Buonaparte, divested of the \ncruelty and bloodshed, of the Roman Em- \nperor, which would be by no means un- \nworthy as regards the total want of delicacy \nof that successor to Tiberius ; which by the \nway goes far to explain why Buonaparte \nconsidered Tacitus was the worst historian \nof antiquity, because, perhaps, he had \nformed this opinion after the picture which \nthis author had made of Tiberius]." \n\nChancellor Pasquier says, iii, 162: "There \nis no doubt but that the whole time that \nBuonaparte was at Elba he was engaged in \nperfecting his plans to return to France, \n\n\n\nbut that his decrees, which were drawn up \nat Paris, were purposely antedated in order \nto give the impression that the government \nwas in his hands as soon as he stood upon \nthe soil of France. Others again, equally \ncapable of judging, feel assured that while \nlie was supposed to be writing his memoirs \nat Elba he was preparing his public papers \nto be issued after his seizure again of the \nreins. However, he was such a hypocrite \nand such a liar that the truth can never be \nascertained." [The famous assertion of \nhis regulating the Theatre Francaise from \nMoscow is not true. The French Archives \nreveal that Napoleon was in Poland when \nhe received the decree ready to be signed. \nOn the margin he wrote: "The decree \nshould be forwarded from that town," i. e. \nMoscow. What a charlatan ! confirming \nCastellane\'s record of his^trickery at Mos- \ncow i, 161.] \n\n" There seemed to be two minds in Buona- \nparte during \'the Hundred Days\' \xe2\x80\x94 one clear, \nthe other clouded. In many matters of the \ngreatest importance he was the victim of \nself-delusion. An adept in deceit, he ended \nin deceiving himself. Nevertheless, he had \nmoments of perfect recognition of the truth. \nWhen M. Mollien felicitated him upon the \nbrilliant reception which he had met with \nall the way from Cannes to Paris, he re- \nplied : \' No illusions, my dear sir, they \nhave allowed me to come back just as they \nlet the others go away.\' Fouche was a \nperfect prophet. Long before the event he \nsaid that Napoleon would come back and \nthat his adventure would not last four \nmonths. Caulincoiu\'t, perhaps his truest \nfriend, declared that the Emperor\'s enter- \nprise was madness. Our most determined \ngenerals were themselves frightened at the \noutlook. Buonaparte himself when he sat \ndown to reflect recognized that his throne \nwas set upon a treacherous foundation built \nover quicksands. And yet this mightiest \nof mighty intellects, as his admirers unite \n\n\n\nNapoleonk di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\n45 \n\n\n\nin chorus to declare, had learned nothing \nfrom the hardest experience and the illumi- \nnation of events. \' This man has received \ncorrect ideas in no direction, and returns \njust as much of a despot as when he was \ndriven out, just as desirous of making con- \nquests, just the same madman in fact as \nwhen he was driven out.\' The Rock of \nBronze was never of that metal except when \nfortune lured and bore him in her arms. In \nadversity he was rather lead than iron, im- \npressionable, ductile, often led by the nose \nby far inferior minds. Never has a man in \nsuch a public position been less understood, \nexcept by a very few analytical critics. He \nwas great only in crimes against his fellow- \nmen, and when a prisoner he displayed less \ndignity than the Zulu Cetewayo. Welling- \nton had a very penetrating judgment when \nhe said that Buonaparte was more afraid of \nhis Marshals than his Marshals were of \nhim. They often set him at defiance, and \nwhen in future years the glamor is dispelled \nit will found that throughout history there \nhave been far greater organizers, adminis- \ntrators, than Buonaparte, and withal unsel- \nfish, patriotic and honest without one tithe \nof his despotic power. Everything about \nhim was deception. * The son of one of his \nmost prominent servitors, de L,esseps, of \nSuez Canal fame, said to Senior (i, 128) : \n\' As a man of creative and administrative \ngenius, I put him [Mahomet Ali] very high ; \nindeed I am not sure that I do not put him \nhigher than Napoleon himself, if we take \ninto account their comparative advan- \ntages.\'" \n\nCharras, famous as a military critic and \nfor his history of the Waterloo Campaign \nand opening phases of the campaign of \n1813, considered that the "merits of the \nfirst part of the campaign of 1814, from the \nloth of February to the i8th of February, \n\n\n\n*I, 189, Napoleon\'s sarcophagus of sandstone, as \nugly as the rest of the tomb, which the Emperor Na- \npoleon III believes to be porphyry. (Senior ii, 21 ; \nii, 165). \n\n\n\nwere at least equalled by the blunders and \nirresolutions of the second part from the \n27th of February to the 31st of March." \n\nThe merits of the first part were due to \nBuonaparte\'s one-man authority, which \ngave him the power of recklessly squander- \ning all that gave force to his military ma- \nchine and the demerits of the second part \nthat his one-man authority had decreased \nin an even greater degree than the veteran \nleaven which had stimulated the ruthless \nconscriptions of 1813-1814. He himself \nsaid years before, "the bow was over- \nstrained" and the bow, whose defects he \nalready recognized, "turned aside," as the \nScripture says, "like a deceitful bow," \nwhich simply meant that when pulled to \nthe ear the string slipped off, because the \nbow itself had lost its elasticity or tension \nand, bent too far, allowing the string to slip \nout of the notches at either end. \n\nThe more the careful historical student \nexamines Thiers, and the greater attention \nhe devotes to the language used by that \nwriter, extraordinary in his brilliancy and \naudacity, the more clear it will become that \nthere are expressions and sentences and par- \nagraphs and judgments, that absolutely \nneutralize all the praise that he lavishes \nupon that bad man before whose idol, in \norder to flatter his own vain countrymen, \nhe, as a rule, burns so much mendacious \nincense. Prof. Jules Barni, in his "Napo- \nleon et Son Historien M. Thiers," Geneva, \n(Switzerland,) 1865, demonstrates magnifi- \ncently the perversions of "mendacious \nThiers." \nIn Thiers\' Book LII, referring to February, \n1814, appears the following sentence, which \nmarks (XVII, 144): "Undoubtedly the \nconquests that Napoleon had made from the \nRhine to Vistula, from the Alps to the \nStraits of Messina, froni the Pyrenees to \nGibraltar, were not worth the blood they \nhad cost, and, indeed, would not have been \nworth the life of one man." \n\nAgain, speaking of Buonaparte\'s letter to \n\n\n\n46 \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nSavory, " that Mameluke for all occasions," \ndated Reims, i4tli March, 1814, he remarks : \n" In this document -wejiiid only evidences of \n\na DREARY DESPOTISM." \n\nAgain, same month, when Buonaparte \nlays open the effects of that " dreary des- \npotism " to Sebastiani, a Corsican like him- \nself, " the General remained astounded, ad- \nmiring his coolness and profundity of \nthought, and asking himself, how genius so \nvast had not prevented the cotntnisston of \nerrors so flagranti \n\nSuch quotations might be multiplied, \nbut one allusion cannot be passed over \nwithout calling attention to it. Buona- \nparte is always talking about "Victory or \ndeath." In these articles the courage of \nthe professional soldier upon a field of bat- \ntle has never been denied to Buonaparte. \nIt was habit, which the sagacious Welling- \nton had emphasized as far stronger than \neven natural character, and his, Buona- \nparte\'s belief in his star, which is Mahome- \ndan fatalism, but when beyond the bril- \nliancy of the lime-lights of the drama, in \naction, no human being was more careful \nof his personal safety than Buonaparte and \nthe Buonapartes. Even his attempt at \nsuicide at Fontainebleauis deemed apochra- \nphal by different historians, (some say it \nwas epilepsy, others catalepsy), and while he \nwas continually urging cold-bloodedly, his \nmost devoted adherents into the abyss, he \ntook the best of care not to take the irretrie- \nvable step himself. The spirit of his ex- \nhortations breathed the idea, as in his pro- \nclamation before Waterloo, that NOW was \nthe time To do or die, but the moment \nthat adversity called for some such supreme \nself-sacrifice, he made his escape. As again \nand again before indicated, that which his \nadmirers styled the "Rock of Bronze," \nwas in reality a mass of far more impres- \nsionable and ductile metal. \n\nMacdonald, to whom has been conceded \nthe honor of the utmost loyalty to the last. \n\n\n\nin his "Memoires," makes some most dam- \naging revelations, and the falsity of the \nportraits, physical, mental and moral, of \nBuonaparte is on a par with the material of \nthe sarchophagus in which his remains \nwere placed under the Domeof thelnvalides. \n\nNapoleon III, who was a gentleman in . \nhis fidelity to his friends, and in that \nshowed he was no Buonaparte any more \nthan he had any blood of the race in his \nveins. He believed that he had obtained \nat an immense price, a sarchophagus of \nporphyry \xe2\x80\x94 for his presumed uncle \xe2\x80\x94 whereas \nmineralogy has revealed the fact \xe2\x80\x94 so Senior \nrecords \xe2\x80\x94 that it is simply a species of sand- \nstone. The receptacle is as much a deception \nas was the Buonaparte who lies within it. \nWas he not what the German writers de- \nclared him to be, a Popans. \n\nAlthough, according to popular opinion, \nThiers says nothing but what is eulogistic \nof Napoleon, people who flatter themselves \nthey read if they would only read closely \nand if they would only read carefully \nbetween the lines, it would soon appear \nthat even "mendacious Thiers" utters \nmany opinions which amount to the se- \nverest condemnation of Buonaparte. In \nthe English translation of his " History of \nthe Consulate and Empire," Vol. 17, Book \nLIII, conclusion, he says (449): "This \nman, at that time [1803] so admirable, was, \nby the very fact of possessing absolute \npower, on the brink of an abyss." "Alas, \nhe descended from this glorious eminence \nto listen to pamphleteers, and abandoned \nhimself to bursts of passion as violent as \nunworthy of him. " \n\nThis corroborates Chaptal as to his fren- \nzied bursts of passion (450) : "The prudent \nConsul had become suddenly a madman." \nThis refers, among other freaks of insanity, \nto his murder of the Duke d\'Enghien. \nThen Thiers goes on to enumerate his fatal \nmistakes (454). One was "making war \nwith England interminable;" (462), an- \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\n47 \n\n\n\nother the fatal Spanish war. (466), Then \nThiers notes a single example "of the pro- \ngress of meanness under despotic rule ;" \n(467), he imputes his misfortunes to his \n"frenzied will ;" (472 j, he cites as his first \ngreat fault his "insulting the Ambassador \nof Great Britain ;" as his second great fault \nhis pretensions to "obtaining universal \nempire," a madly acquisitive policy ; (474), \nthird the Russian Alliance in 1807, "a \npolicy must either be false or a crime against \nEurope ;" the fourth was his infamous con- \nduct towards and in Spain ; (475), his fifth \ngreat fault was his Invasion of Russia in \n1812 ; (476), his sixth and last great fault \n" was his refusing the conditions of Prague, \nin 1813." \n\nAs to the Waterloo campaign let Thiers \nand all his confreres vapor as they will in \nhis whole conduct during "The hundred \ndays, he was more insane than he ever \nhad been before, and so far from displaying \nany common sense, any true generalship, \nit was a series of more weaknesses {defail- \nlances touseMichelet\'s word) shortcomings, \nabsolute want of ordinary energetic saga- \ncity and more hideous wanton sacrifices of \nhetacombs of brave men, making dice, as \nByron styles it, of human bones, like the \ndesperate ventures of a reckless gambler, \nthan was ever displayed by any despotic \nmilitary chief in the same number of days. \nThat through physical influences he was no \nlonger fifty in the hundred of his former \nbrain powers, as Chaptal declares, is un- \ndoubtedly true, but that he possessed at \nany time the hundred Cliaptal is willing to \nconcede, justice and truth emphatically de- \nclare to be utterly erroneous. He was the \nmost overestimated specimen of a creature \nof accident or fate who ever was able to ac- \ncomplish so much evil that some good \xe2\x80\x94 \nnot his intention, far from it \xe2\x80\x94 might be \nevolved or enjoyed the same opportunities \nof benefitting humanity. He was an Ap- \npolyon and an Abaddon in the guise of man. \n\n\n\nOh, Ate ! Oh, Dice ! Oh, Nemesis ! Oh, \nye Eumenides (Erinnys) ! you never pur- \nsued any of your victinis with more im- \nplacable retribution than you poured it \nwith icy vehemence upon Napoleonedi Buo- \nnaparte. No porphyry sarcophagus \xe2\x80\x94 by \nthe way, it is said the porphyry is but a \nfraud \xe2\x80\x94 no Dome of the Invalides can \ncompensate for the tortures of the fall \nfrom such a throne as you filled, for the \nloss of such a sceptre as you wielded. \nYou will find your place with the Neros, \nthe Borgias, the Attilas, " the Scourges of \nGod,\'\' when the film falls from the eyes of \nhistoric judgment and you are weighed in \nthe scales of Belshazzar and Amenti. \n\nIn conclusion, listen to the words of \nErckmann-Chatrian : "Our unhappy coun- \ntry is cast down very low ! When Napo- \nleon took possession of France she was \nthe most grand, the most free, the most \npowerful of the nations ; all other peoples \nadmired us and envied us ! * * * To- \nday [after Waterloo] we are conquered, \nruined, bled to exhaustion ; the enemy \nholds our fortresses, he plants his foot upon \nour throat. * * * That which had never \nbefore been seen since France existed\xe2\x80\x94 the \nstranger master in our capital ! This we have \nwitnessed twice within two years ! [Under \nNapoleon III again in 1871]. Behold what \nit costs to place a nation\'s liberty, its for- \ntune, its honor, in the hands of an ambi- \ntious mortal." \n\nTo wind up there are two sentences preg- \nnant with truth and food for reflection. One \ncomprises the last words of Bondois in his \n" Napoleon and the Society of His Time," \n" \xc2\xab people [alluding particularly to the \nFrench servile submission to Buonaparte] \nhave sitnply the government which they \nmerit. The second is : \'\'\'\'There was nothing \nnatural about Buonaparte but his selfish- \nness.\'\'\'\' " No one can study," says Forsyth, \n"the character of Napoleon without being \nstruck by one prevailing feature \xe2\x80\x94 his intense \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nselfishness,\'\'\'\' and "another feature," which \nmust not be lost sight of, " /zw habitual dis- \nregard of tj\'iith. \' \' * \n\nThis ends for the present these revela- \ntions of the true character of Napoleon. \nNotes in regard to others have been col- \nlected, which, if developed and digested, \nwould fill a large volume. During the last \nfifteen months sorrows and sufferings have \naccumulated upon the writer, and during \nthe preparation and comparison of the \nproofs of the last article, which appeared \nin the March number of the COLLEGE Stu- \ndent, the writer was subjected to the \n\n* " He, Wellington, said he had several of the ad- \nvantages possessed by Bonaparte, in regard to his \nfreedom of action and power of risking, without being \nconstantly called to account. Bonaparte was quite \nfree from all inquiry, and that he himself was in fact \nvery much so. The other advantages which Bona- \nparte possessed, and of which he made so much use" \nLord Wellington said, " was his full latitude of i,y\\tsq, \nthat, if so disposed" he said, "he [Wellington] could \nnot do." Page 227, Larpent\'s Diary. \n\n\n\nmost violent pains that assail the male por- \ntion of humanity, and for about two months \nheld him captive to the debility and com- \nplications consequent on the difficulty itself, \nand the only remedies which brought tem- \nporary surcease of pain. The last article \nhas been finished in intervals of convales- \ncence, and if physical strength is not going \nto be restored literary labor must cease \nwith the 76th birthday. This is greatly to \nbe regretted, for it was the only real relief. \nMoreover, the connection with Franklin \nand Marshall College, its professors and \nstudents, for many years, through the COL- \nLEGE Student, has been a source of ex- \ntreme pleasure, and if it ceases with this \nnumber the writer can only conclude with \nhis best wishes for the prosperity of the in- \nstitution and the happiness of its students, \nin fact, of all with whom he has been so \npleasantly and profitably brought in con- \ntact. \n\n\n\nADDENDUM, \n\n\n\nThe following note, by some oversight, was omitted from the body of the pamphlet, \nand is here reproduced. \n\n\n\nPowder Magazine. \xe2\x80\x94 Such was already the reputa- \ntion of Chaptal as a chemist that in 1790 he was \nordered to Paris by Robespierre to organize the fa- \nmous Powder Magazine of Greuelle, as the majority of \nthe fourteen armies organized by Carnot was paralj\'zed \nby a want of powder. Chaptal was held accountable \nupon his personal responsibility that within a month \npowder should be forthcoming, so that the campaign \ncould open. It was a hard position wherein to be \nplaced. It was powder or his head. \n\nGreneUe was established with the ability to turn out \ndaily eight milliers (So cwt. ?) of powder. The area \nwithin the walls was based upon that calculation. The \nbuildings were located so far apart that if one caught \nfire, the nearest would not be endangered. The opera- \ntions of themselves inspired no apprehension, but \nwhen the estimated maximum was reached of 80 cwt. a \nda}\' the Committee of Public Safety, under the pressure \nof necessity, exacted an augmentation of double. \nChaptal did his best to explain that the establishment \nwas not calculated for that amount, but that everything \nwas based upon the idea of turning out 80 cwt., and \nthat in placing additional buildings between those that \nexisted there would no longer he sufficient interspaces \nnor any guarantee against a general explosion. His ob- \nservations were futile. He received his orders and had to \nobey. When he had reached the fabrication of 160 \ncwt. a day the committee ordered him to increase it to \n320 cwt. He urged a repetition of his warnings with- \nout receiving the slightest attention on the part of his \nsuperiors. Thenceforward chaos reigned. There was \nno longer any order ; there was insufficient supervi- \nsion ; accidents became inevitable. A thousand to \n1,200 mechanics of all trades were mingled with 2,500 \npowder-makers. Vehicles loaded with materials of \nevery kind circulated everywhere upon paved roads, \nupon which the workmen impelled wheelbarrows or \nrolled barrels full of powder. Every minute the me- \nchanics were caught smoking their pipes. All this \nportended an inevitable catastrophe, which did occur, \nand it seemed a miracle that eight months elapsed be- \nfore the cataclysm. \n\nThe explosion at Grenelle ignited 6,500 cwt. of pow- \nder in barrels in process of fabrication ; 550 men per- \nished and about an equal number died in the hospital. \nTwo military detachments, together 50 men, simply \ndisappeared ; 60 horses were consumed ; 100 mechanics. \nOf three large vehicles, each with five horses, one \nloaded with beams and two others with stones, not a \ntrace remained. A heavy iron axletree, twisted into a \n\n\n\nspiral, was found in the centre of the Champ-de-Mars, \nto which some fragments of the nave of the wheels were \nstill attached. Moreover, what was unsusceptible of \nexplication was the total disappearance of all the men \nand animals without leaving the slightest trace. Walk- \ning over the whole area an hour after the explosion \nChaptal could only find two or three human thighs or \narms and not a vestige of a horse ; 1,217 human beings \naltogether perished. Chaptal escaped the explosion \nbecause, for the first time in four months, he happened \nto be absent that day. He only saved Ais head because \nRobespierre opportunely lost kis head, since Chaptal \nwas accused of having been the cause of the catastro- \nphe which he had so often predicted and had striven to \navert. \n\nThe relative position of the Powder Magazine on the \nplain of Grenelle to the city of Paris and distance from \nthe thickly settled portion is now difficult to determine. \nThe locality known as Grenelle is now within the for- \ntifications to the southwest of the city of the XVIII \ncentury, about three miles from the Louvre. It may \nnot be generally known that when in 1814 the Allies \nhad entered Paris it was charged against Napoleon \nthat, in one of his frenzies of fury, he sent orders to \nthe officer in charge to blow up the enormous quanti- \nties of powder stored there, which would have occa- \nsioned great loss of life and immense destruction of \nproperty. Whether this accusation is true or false it \nhas been again and again asserted and denied, and the \ntruth of it can never be decided, if lies are set off \nagainst truths ; but such an act would not be inconsist- \nent with his character, considering that had it not been \nfor his marshals he would have led his army against \nParis and distinctly held out to his troops the plunder \nof the capital as the reward of their success. \n\nWhat follows seems incontrovertible proof that Buo- \nnaparte did send such an order : \n\n" The CAPITU1..AT10N OF Paris." \xe2\x80\x94 "The marshals \n[Marmont and Mortier] had already agreed to surren- \nder the capital, but the capitulation was not yet signed \nwhen Napoleon arrived at the village of Juvisy, at the \ndistance of ten miles from Paris. * * On returning \nfrom Vitry he became at length convinced of the true \ndirection of the Allies. * * At Dalancourt, on the \nAube, he received a report of the passage of the Allies \nat Meaux, and that Marmont and Mortier despaired of \nbeing able to make head against them. In this ex- \ntremity Napoleon had recourse to his father-in-law, \n[Francis I, Emperor of Austria, who was not with \nthe other sovereigns at Paris,] and sent him a let- \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\nter, the contents of which have never been made \npublic. At the same time he dispatched a General- \naide-de-camp to Paris, with an order to hold out till \nhis arrival, and with the lying assertion of his hav- \ning entered into negotiations with Austria, and of \nthe speedy conclusion of a separate peace with that \npower. Close after him he sent General Girardin to \nexcite the troops and the inhabitants to prolong the \ndefence, and verbally ordered the Powder Magazine , \non the plai7i of Grenelle, to be blown up. Had this \n\xe2\x96\xa0>nurderous order been carried into execution, the de- \nstruction of an incalculable number of the inhabitants \nmust have been the consequence; but the officer in \ncharge of the powder, Colonel Lescaor, demanded a \n\n\n\nwritten order, which General Girardin had not to give \nhim. At the present day, when the so-called \' Young \nLiterature \' is accustomed to lavish eulogy on Na- \npoleon, and to represent that scourge of humanity as \na model of goodness, his panegyrists affect to doubt \nthe truth of this fact ; yet at the time we are speaking \nof, IT WAS WELL KNOWN TO ALL PARIS, and the par- \nticulars were learned by many of us from Colonel \nLescaur himself, zvho was rewarded by the Emperor \nAlexander with the Diamond Cross of the Order of \nSt. Anne, of the second class." Pages 377-378, " His- \ntory of the Campaign in France in 1814," by General \nA. Mikhailofsky-Danilefsky, 8vo, London, 1839. \n\n\n\n\nAftei\' a Photograph, frc \n\n\n\nDavid\'s Portrait in the Gallery at Versailles ; \n[isiciered best likeness of \n\n\n\nNapoleone di Buonaparte. \n\n\n\n,^^r!l\'"-,\xc2\xab^-: B^^::::y^^w.^^^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\nU4U4i4 \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n:iWuVw,---iatijiMt--yt \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nssi^s:::\'?\'^^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\'^mW\' \n\n\n\ni^^:?^!^ \n\n\n\ny^^w\'-\'O\'^\' \n\n\n\n\n\n\n-^*>Ki \n\n\n\n*^::wvvu.^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\ns*\xc2\xab^:\'^^^a:;ii^^!^j^ \n\n\n\n,^VVv^^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nfiite^^ \n\n\n\nvw^yw^-vC\'c^J^>^^vv^y^ywv^\'^Wv3-^ !\xe2\x96\xa0- ^..\xe2\x96\xa0" J;6 \n\n^-\xe2\x96\xa0 .,::.\xc2\xab..\xe2\x80\x9e..>.,; .; \xe2\x96\xa0\xe2\x96\xa0:;::; .:,^:, \xe2\x96\xa0\':..: .; .y . .^u:<d^^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n-i:-^-"^y^^wv:^^^ \n\n\n\njVUC^C^"" \n\n\n\nM\'^s^:^\'^ \': ^.\' .^^^vw^^\'\'^ \' .r\' -\xe2\x96\xa0;.-\'- --\'^^y"^^\' \n\n\n\n\n\n\n^wwW^ \n\n\n\n^y^; r i I .UlL \n\n\n\n\':J^^v\xc2\xab>v>;^ \n\n\n\n^Wv;n^^v.V, ^^y^ggW^^Wfffff\' \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n^vw^^^^:^^\'^^\'\'\' \n\n\n\n\'m^^i^^^ijtmmm \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\'\'?y^rZf\'\'\'\'^\'^Sja**Hi, \n\n\n\n\'^\xe2\x96\xa0^PjM \n\n\n\nW^^^. \n\n\n\n\xe2\x96\xa0tj^i\'y:^:\'\' \n\n\n\nj\\;vw- \'v\'^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n.^w^^ ^ \xe2\x96\xa0 v; \n\n\n\n\n\n\n^Wi/W^** \n\n\n\n\'^ \xe2\x96\xa0 A VwV/- .,-\',J./-.,^,T;-\'\xe2\x80\xa2- \n\n\n\n,v\xe2\x96\xa0^^\'^ixO,4\'v^r vvv^^^v^ ^vU> \n\n\n\n/A\'\'^-\'^y^y^\'":^\'^wXC\'\'\',\'\'\'"\'^^^\'^\'^ \n\n\n\n. WyV^uv\xc2\xab\'te\'\'v^_ \n\n\n\n\'i^"-\'c^","."\xe2\x80\x9e^VW^ \n\n\n\n\\ iwj A AA\'n iw^l\'i fc\' \n\n\n\n\'WN^VVVV \n\n\n\nWc/^^^ \n\n\n\n^\xe2\x80\xa2w*fe^:::f^^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nw\'v^W \n\n\n\nm:;:^^ \n\n\n\n\'^^\xe2\x96\xa0^-<j^^^Z^Z^. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nv^V-^-^^^^^^v^^^^ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n.i\xc2\xab\xc2\xab^\xc2\xabf**SS\xc2\xbb*\xc2\xab^^ \n\n\n\n^\'^>^w:-^j.^W> \n\n\n\ni^^Wii^^Vw^ \n\n\n\nWUw\'vwv. \n\n\n\n^rSMIi^^^ \n\n\n\n\xc2\xa9vv^wy \n\n\n\n'