Napoleon I on his life, himself
From his thoughts, memoirs
Of the secondary circumstances which served his elevation (Memorial of Saint-Helena)
The conversation led the Emperor to say that he had often stopped and reflected many times on the singular role of secondary circumstances which had brought about his prodigious career.
“1) If my father,” he said, “who died before the age of forty, had lived, he would have been named deputy of the nobility of Corsica to the constituent assembly. He held strongly to the nobility and the aristocracy; on the other hand he was very inclined to generous and liberal ideas; he would therefore have been either entirely on the right side, or at least in the minority of the nobility. In any case, whatever my personal opinions had been, I would have followed in his footsteps, and there my career would have been entirely disrupted and lost.”
“2) If I had been older at the time of the revolution, I would perhaps have been appointed deputy myself. Ardent and heated, I would have marked infallibly, whatever opinion I had followed; but in any case, I would have closed the military path to myself, and then again my career would be lost.”
“3) Even if my family had been better known, if we had been richer, more prominent, my quality as a noble, even following the path of the revolution, would have struck me of nullity or proscription. I would never have obtained confidence; I would never have commanded an army; or if I had commanded it, I would never have dared all that I have done. Even supposing all my successes, I would not have been able to follow the inclination of my liberal ideas with regard to priests and nobles; and I would never have reached the head of the government.”
“4) Even the great number of my brothers and sisters have been of great use to me, by multiplying my relationships and my means of influence.”
“5) The circumstance of my marriage with Madame de Beauharnais put me in contact with a whole party which I needed for my system of fusion, one of the greatest principles of my administration, and which will especially characterize it. Without my wife, I could have never had with that party any natural rapport.”
“6) Even my foreign origin, against which they have tried to cry out in France, which has been very precious to me. It allowed me to be seen as a compatriot by all Italians; it greatly facilitated my successes in Italy. These successes, once obtained, have caused the circumstances of our family, long since fallen into obscurity, to be sought everywhere. It has found itself, known to all Italians, to have played a great role among them for a long time. It has become, in their eyes and in their feelings, an Italian family; so much so that when the question arose of the marriage of my sister Pauline with Prince Borghese, there was but one voice in Rome and in Tuscany, in this family and all its allies: ‘it is good,’ they all said, ‘it is between us, it is one of our families.’ Later, when the question arose of the coronation by the Pope in Paris, this act, of the highest importance, as events proved, encountered great difficulties; the Austrian party in the conclave was violently opposed to it; the Italian party carried the day. Adding to political considerations this small consideration of national self-esteem: ‘After all, it is an Italian family that we impose on the barbarians to govern them; we will be avenged on the Gauls.’”
If Napoleon had followed Robespierre the Younger
Napoleon related that some time before 9th Thermidor, Robespierre the Younger, who he had known in the Army of Italy, absolutely wished to take him to Paris.
“If I had followed him,” said Napoleon, “what could have been the difference of my destiny? After all, what makes a career? They surely wished to employ me; I could therefore have been destined, from that moment, to try a kind of vendémiaire. But I was still very young, I did not have my ideas fixed then as I have had them since; I believe that I would not have accepted. But in the contrary case, and even a victorious one, what result could I have hoped for? In Vendémiaire, the fever of revolution was completely collapsed; in Thermidor it still remained in all its strength, in the rage of its ascension and its excesses.”
On his conduct in Italy
The Emperor was reminded that at the time of the conquest of Italy he excited all the enthusiasm in the country; that there was no beauty that did not aspire to please and touch him, but it was in vain. “My soul was too strong,” he said, “to fall into the trap; under the flowers I saw the precipice. Commanding old generals, my position was most delicate; jealous glances attached themselves to all my movements: my circumspection was extreme. My fortune was in my wisdom; I could have forgotten myself for an hour, and how many of my victories have not been won by more time than that.”
On his disinterestedness
“I came back from the campaign of Italy,” he told us one day, “with not even three hundred thousand francs to myself. I could have easily brought back ten or twelve millions, they would have been mine. I never gave an account, I was never asked for one. I expected, upon my return, some great national reward: there was talk in the public of endowing me with Chambord; I would have been very eager for this kind of fortune; but the Directory had the thing ruled out. However, I had sent at least fifty million to France for the service of the State. This was the first time in modern history that an army provided for the needs of the fatherland, instead of being a burden to it.”
The Emperor dwelt with a certain complacency on these details of disinterestedness; concluding nevertheless that he had been wrong, and had lacked foresight, whether he had wanted to think of making himself the leader of a party and of stirring up men, or whether he had only wanted to remain a simple individual in the crowd; for upon his return, he said, he had been left almost in misery, when the last of his generals or his administrators brought back large fortunes…
“Having arrived at the head of affairs as consul,” he said, “my own disinterestedness and all my severity alone were able to change the morals of the administration, and prevent the frightful spectacle of directorial dilapidations. I had great difficulty in overcoming the inclinations of the leading persons of the State, who have since been seen, near me, strict and without reproach. I had to frighten them often. How many times have I had to repeat, in my councils, that if I found my own brother at fault, I would not hesitate to chase him away.”
What was his ambition in 1796 (Letter to the Directory, 25 Florial An IV — May 14th 1796)
To serve the Fatherland, to merit from posterity a page of our history, to give to the government proof of my attachment and devotion, that is all my ambition.
When did ambition come by him (Memorial of Saint-Helena)
“Vendémiaire and even Montenotte,” said the Emperor, “did not yet lead me to believe myself a superior man. It was only after Lodi that the idea came to me that I might well become, after all, a decisive actor on our political scene. Then was born the first spark of high ambition.”
Napoleon at the Institute
When Bonaparte, on his return from the army of Italy, appeared in his class at the Institute, composed of about fifty members, he could consider himself, he said, as the tenth. Lagrange, Laplace, Monge, were at the head of it.
“It was quite a remarkable spectacle,” he added, “and one which greatly occupied circles, to see the young general of the army of Italy in the ranks of the Institute, discussing in public, with his colleagues, very profound and very metaphysical subjects. He was then called the geometer of battles, the mechanic of victory, etc.”
Napoleon at the Council of State1
Napoleon assiduously presided over the sessions of the Council of State for the drafting of the Civil Code.
“Tronchet was its soul,” he said, and he, Napoleon, “the demonstrator. Tronchet had an eminently profound and just mind; but he skipped over developments, spoke very badly, and did not know how to defend himself.”
“The whole council,” said the emperor, “was at first against his statements;” but he Napoleon, with his lively mind and his great facility for grasping and creating luminous and new relationships, took the floor; and, “with no other knowledge of the subject than the just bases provided by Tronchet, developed the ideas, dismissed the objections and brought everyone back.”
On the little care he took for his own preservation
“All those who know me know the little care I took for my preservation. Accustomed from the age of eighteen to the cannonballs of battles, and knowing the futility of trying to protect myself from them, I abandoned myself to my destiny. Since then, when I arrived at the head of affairs, I must have believed myself still in the midst of battles, of which conspiracies were the cannonballs; I continued to abandon myself to my star, leaving all the care of precautions to the police.”
On the difficulties there was in taking his life (Desmarets, Témoignages Historiques)
It is not so easy to take my life. I do not have fixed habits, no regulated hours. All my exercises are interrupted, my outings unscheduled.
Napoleon's policy demanded forgetting the past (Memorial of Saint-Helena)
M. de Châteaubriand, in his reception speech at the French Academy, where he had succeeded Chénier, in 1811, had attacked the Revolution. Napoleon was very displeased with the conduct of M. de Châteaubriand; and as one of his courtiers, a member of the Academy, wanted to justify the illustrious writer:
“And since when, sir,” the emperor said to him with severity, “does the Institute allow itself to become a political assembly? Let him make verses, let him censure language mistakes; but let him not go out of the domain of the Muses, or I will know how to make him enter it. Is it you, sir, who wanted to authorize such a diatribe? That Mr. de Châteaubriand has insanity or malice, there is for him small houses or punishment. Then, perhaps yet, this is his opinion, and he must not owe it the sacrifice of my policy, which he does not know, as you do, who knows it so well: he can have his excuse; you could not have yours, you who live by my side, who know what I do, what I want. Sir, I hold you guilty, criminal: you do not tend to anything less than bringing back disorder, confusion, anarchy, massacres… Are we then bandits, and am I only a usurper? I have dethroned no one, sir; I found, I raised the crown in the gutter, and the people put it on my head; let their actions be respected!…”
“To analyze in public, to question, to discuss such recent facts, in the circumstances where we we find ourselves, it is to seek new convulsions, it is to be the enemy of public peace. The restoration of the monarchy is and must remain a mystery. And then, what is this new alleged proscription of the conventionnals and the regicides? How dare to reawaken such delicate points? Let us leave it to God to pronounce on what it is no longer permitted to men to judge! Would you then be more difficult than the empress? She has many interests as dear as yours, perhaps, and much more direct; imitate rather her moderation, her magnanimity; she did not want to learn anything, nor know anything.”
“What! Would the object of all my care, the fruit of all my efforts be lost? That is to say, if I were to fail you tomorrow, you would still be slaughtering each other even more?”
“Ah! poor France! how long you still need a tutor!”
“I have done everything in the world to reconcile all parties, I have brought you together in the same apartments, made you eat at the same tables, drink from the same cups; your union has been the constant object of my care: I have the right to demand that I be seconded…”
“Since I have been at the head of the government, have you ever heard me ask what we were, what we had been, what we had said, done, written?… Let them imitate me!”
“I have never been known to ask anything but one question, one goal: do you want to be a good Frenchman with me? And if you answered yes, I pushed everyone into a parade of granite with no exit to the right or left, forced to march towards the other extremity, where I showed by my hand honor, glory, the splendor of the Fatherland.”
On the popularity of Napoleon during the time of the empire
As a law concerning the organization of the National Guard was being discussed in the Council of State, Napoleon noticed that a large number of his advisers seemed to fear that he would one day want to employ the National Guard in the service of the regular troops. He complained vigorously of the distrust shown towards him, and added:
“If I needed people, I would boldly ask the Senate, which would grant them to me, and if I did not obtain them from them, I would address myself to the people themselves, whom you would see marching with me. I am perhaps surprising you, because you sometimes seem unaware of the true state of things. Know that my popularity is immense, incalculable; for, whatever one may say, everywhere the people love me and esteem me; their common sense prevails over all the malevolence of salons and the metaphysics of fools.”
“They would follow me in opposition to all of you. This still astonishes you, and yet it would be so. It is because they know only me; it is through me that they enjoy without fear all that they have acquired; it is through me that they see their brothers, their sons, indiscriminately advanced, decorated, enriched; It is through me that they see their arms easily and always employed, their sweats accompanied by some pleasures. THey always find me without injustice, without preference. Now, they see, touch, they understand all that and nothing more, especially nothing of metaphysics.”
“Not that I reject the true, the great principles, heaven preserve me from that! I am seen practicing them as much as our extraordinary circumstances allow me, but I mean that the people do not understand them yet, instead they understand me entirely, and trust me. Do believe that they will always do what we will stipulate for their own good.”
On the situation of Napoleon in 1815
“What were my tribulations, to find myself alone to judge of the imminence of the danger, and to provide for it; to see myself placed between the allies, who threatened our existence, and the spirit of the interior, which, in its blindness, seemed to make common cause with them; between our enemies, who were preparing to stifle me, and the harassment of all my people, even my ministers, who were pushing me to throw myself into the arms of these same enemies!…”
“And I was forced to put on a good face in such an awkward posture, to respond proudly to some, and to harshly rebuff others, who were creating difficulties for me in the rear, maintaining the bad slope of opinion instead of enlightening it, and allowing the public cry to ask me for peace, when they should have convinced everyone that the only way to obtain it was to push me ostentatiously to war. Besides, my mind was made up; I awaited events, determined not to lend myself to concessions or treaties which would have represented only a temporary patch-up and of truly disastrous consequences.”
“Any middle course was fatal to me; there was no salvation except in victory which would continue my power, or in catastrophe which would give me allies, etc., etc. This situation was not my choice, it was not of my fault; it was entirely in the nature and force of circumstances, in the struggle of two opposing orders of things. Those who accused me, if they were in good faith, would they have preferred to go back before Brumaire, when internal dissolution was complete, the invasion of foreigners certain, the destruction of France inevitable.”
“From the day when, adopting unity, the concentration of power, which alone could save us; from the moment when, coordinating our doctrines, our resources, our forces, which created for us an immense nation, the destinies of France rested solely on the character, the measures and the conscience of the one whom it had clothed with this accidental dictatorship; from that day, the public thing, the State was me! This word, which I had pronounced for those who could understand me, was strongly censured by narrow-minded people and people of bad faith.”
“The enemy had sensed this well; so he initially focused on killing only me. Our circumstances were extraordinary and completely new: we must not seek a parallel to them. I was, myself, the key to a completely new edifice which had such flimsy foundations! Its duration depended on each of my battles! If I had been defeated at Marengo, you would have had from that time all of 1814 and 1815, minus the prodigies of glory which followed and remain immortal. It would have been the same at Austerlitz, at Jena again, at Eylau and elsewhere. The vulgar have not failed to accuse my ambition of all these wars; but were they then of my choice? Were they not always in the nature and strength of things, always in this struggle of the past and the future. Always in this constant and permanent coalition of our enemies, which put us in the obligation to put down, under threat of being put down, etc.”
On his return to Paris at the end of the French campaign
The emperor regretted very much, during his position in Saint-Dizier and Doulevant, of having yielded to the various considerations which surrounded him, numerous suggestions with which he was assailed, which brought him back to Paris against his will.
“I lacked character,” he said; “I had to continue imperturbably all my thinking, to continue towards the Rhine, reinforcing myself with all my garrisons, surrounding myself of all the insurgent populations; I would soon have had a huge army: Murat would have come back to me immediately. And he and the viceroy would have given me Vienna, if the allies would have dared to take Paris from me. But no, the enemies would have shuddered much more at the peril in which they found themselves engaged, and the allied sovereigns would have received as a mercy, that I would have granted them their retreat; and there the volcano of the foreigners against us would have been completely extinguished.”
“Peace would have been concluded, and one would have observed it sincerely. Everyone was so tired! We had so many wounds to heal!… We would no longer have been occupied with anything else outside; as for inside, such an outcome would have forever destroyed all the illusions, all the malevolence, and fused together all opinions forever, all the views, all interests. I would have sat back triumphant, surrounded by my invincible bands. The heroic and faithful populations would have served as a tuning fork for those who had wavered. Those who had shown the need for rest would have gone to have it; a new generation of leaders would have rekindled our existence. We would have only occupied ourselves with domestic happiness; we would have still had happy days!!! etc.”
On Napoleon's generosity on his return from the island of Elba (Memoirs of Napoleon)
History will note with admiration the generosity of the victor in this circumstance. The Baron of Vitrolles, who had been exempted by the decree of Lyon from the general amnesty, the Duke of Angoulême whose sentence was pronounced by the law of retaliation, were both saved by his clemency. “I want,” said Napoleon, “to be able to boast of having reconquered my throne without a drop of blood having been shed either on the battlefield or on the scaffold.”
Feelings that animated Napoleon on his return from the island of Elba (Memoir on the Hundred Days)
I went to the Tuileries a few days after March 20, says Benjamin Constant, in his Memoirs of the Hundred Days, I found Bonaparte alone. He began the conversation first: it was long, I will only give an analysis of it, because I do not propose to put an unhappy man on the scene. I will not amuse the reader at the expense of the fallen power, I will not deliver to malicious curiosity the one I served for any reason, and I will only transcribe from his speeches what is indispensable; but, in what I transcribe, I will report his own words. He did not try to deceive me either about his views or about the state of things. He did not present himself as corrected by the lessons of adversity; he did not want to give himself the merit of returning to freedom by inclination; he examined coldly in his interest, with an impartiality too close to indifference, what was possible and what was preferable.
“The nation,” he told me, “has rested for twelve years from all political agitation, and for a year it has rested from war; this double rest has given it a need for activity. She wants or thinks she wants a tribune and assemblies; she has not always wanted them. She threw herself at my feet when I arrived to the government; you must remember that, you who tried to oppose it. Where was your support then, your strength? Nowhere. I took less authority that I was invited to take… Today everything is changed. A weak government, contrary to national interests, has given these interests the habit of being on the defensive and challenging authority. The taste for constitutions, debates, harangues, seems to be coming back…”
“However it is only the minority who wants it, make no mistake. The people, or if you like it better, the multitude only wants me. Have you not seen this multitude pressing on my steps, rushing from the top of the mountains, calling me, looking for me, greeting me? When I returned from Cannes here, I did not conquer, I administered… I am not only, as has been said, the emperor of soldiers, I am that of the peasants, of the plebeians, of France... Also, despite all the past, you see the people come back to me: there is sympathy between us.”
“It's not like with the privileged; the nobility served me, she threw herself in crowds into my antichambers; there are no positions they have not accepted, requested, solicited. I had the likes of Montmorency, Noailles, Rohans, Beauveau, Mortemart. But there never was analogy. The horse bowed; he was well trained; but I felt it trembling. With the people, it's something else: the popular fiber responds to mine; I came out of the ranks of the people, my voice acts upon them. See these conscripts, these peasants’ sons; I did not flatter them, I treated them harshly: they surrounded me no less, they shouted no less long live the emperor!”
“It is that because between them and me there is the same nature; they look to me as their support, their savior against the nobles… I have only to make a sign, or rather to look away, the nobles will be massacred in all the provinces. They have maneuvered so well for six months!… But I do not want to be the king of a peasant revolt. If there are ways to govern by a constitution, well and good… I wanted the empire of the world; and, to assure myself of it, a power without limits was necessary for me. To govern France alone, it is possible that a constitution would be better… I wanted the empire of the world, and who would not have wanted it in my place?”
“The world invited me to rule it; sovereigns and subjects rushed eagerly under my scepter. I rarely found resistance in France; but I nevertheless encountered more in some obscure and disarmed Frenchmen than in all those kings, so proud today of no longer having a popular man as an equal… See what seems possible to you. Bring me your ideas. Free elections? Public discussions? Responsible ministers? Liberty? I want all that… Freedom of the press above all, to stifle it is absurd; I am convinced on this point… I am the man of the people; if the people really want liberty, I owe it to them; I have recognized their sovereignty, I must listen to their wishes, even to their whims. I have never wanted to oppress them for my own pleasure; I had great designs; fate has decided, I am no longer a conqueror; I can no longer be. I know what is possible and what is not; I have only one mission: to raise up France and give it a government that suits it…”
“I do not hate liberty; I pushed it aside when it obstructed my path; but I understand it; I was nourished in its thoughts… Just as well, the work of fifteen years is destroyed; it cannot be started again. It would take twenty years and two million men to sacrifice… Besides, I desire peace, and I will obtain it only by dint of victories. I do not want to give you false hopes; I let it be said that there are negotiations, there are none. I foresee a difficult struggle, a long war. To sustain it the nation must support me; but in reward it will demand liberty: it will have some… The situation is new. I ask nothing better than to be enlightened. I am growing old; one is no longer at forty-five what one was at thirty. The repose of a constitutional king may suit me… It will surely suit my son even more so.”
On Napoleon's activities during the Hundred Days (Memoirs of Napoleon)
The author of the so-called Manuscript of Saint Helena, recounting, under the name of the fallen emperor, the period of the Hundred Days, attributed these words to him: “My peaceful attitude put the nation to sleep… I was mistaken in believing that one could defend Thermopylae by loading one's weapons twelve times.” — Napoleon, commenting on these apocryphal memoirs, expressed himself thus:
Napoleon, who constantly worked fifteen to sixteen hours a day during these three months, cannot say that he was asleep. Never, in any period of history, was more accomplished in three months. He rearmed, provisioned a hundred strongholds, repressed the civil war in Marseilles, Bordeaux and the Vendée; he recruited the army, had weapons manufactured, clothes made, horses raised… Never, at any time, was France less asleep; never did she show more enthusiasm in defending her independence. It is not by sleeping that a nation puts one fiftieth of its population under arms in a month. What would it do then awake…
Neither Carthage, indignant at having been deceived by Scipio, nor Rome, wishing to ward off the danger of Cannes, nor the legislature raised by the manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick, nor the Montagne, in 1793, showed more activity and energy than Napoleon in these three months. Let the author of the Manuscript of Saint Helena cite three months of ancient or modern history better employed: a month and a half to raise the throne of the Empire, and a month and a half to raise, dress, arm, organize 400,000 men: is that amusing oneself, loading arms in twelve times! Activity, order, economy, that is what distinguished the administration of the Hundred Days; but time is a necessary element: when Archimedes proposed to raise the earth with a lever and a fulcrum, he asked for time! God took seven days to create the universe!!!
Napoleon in 1815 (Memorial of Saint-Helena)
It is certain that in these circumstances I no longer had within me the feeling of definitive success; it was no longer my first confidence: either the age at which fortune is usually favorable was beginning to escape, or that in my own eyes, in my own imagination, the wonder of my career was at stake, it is still certain that I felt within myself that something was lacking. It was no longer this fortune attached to my steps which took pleasure in filling me, it was the severe destiny from which I still tore, as if by force, some favors, but on which it immediately took revenge; for it is remarkable that I did not then have an advantage, that it was not immediately followed by a reverse.
I crossed France, I was carried to the cathedral by the enthusiasm of the citizens and in the midst of universal acclamations; but I had hardly entered Paris when, as if by a kind of magic, and without any legitimate reason, people suddenly retreated, they became cold around me. I had managed to arrange plausible reasons for myself, to obtain a sincere rapprochement with Austria; I had sent her more or less acknowledged agents. But Murat found himself there with his fatal raising of shields: there was no doubt in Vienna that it was by my orders; and measuring me on their scale, they saw in all this complication only cunning on my part, and they no longer occupied themselves from then on with anything but counter-intrigue against me.
My entry into the campaign had been most skillful and successful; I was supposed to surprise the enemy in detail; but here a defector comes out of the ranks of our generals to go and warn him in time. I brilliantly win the battle of Ligny; but my lieutenant deprives me of its fruits.
Finally I triumph at Waterloo itself, and at the same moment fall into the abyss! And all these blows, I must say, struck me much more than they surprised me. I had within me the instinct of an unfortunate outcome. Not that this influenced in any way my determinations and my measures, certainly, but nevertheless I carried the feeling of it within me.
Could Napoleon, returning from Waterloo, have saved France without the Legislative corps?
The question was being discussed before the Emperor as to whether, upon his return from Waterloo, he could have dismissed the legislative body and saved France without it. M. de Las Cases maintained that Napoleon would almost infallibly have succumbed in the attempt:
“Well! that is also partly my opinion,” the Emperor replied; “but is it certain that the French people will be just towards me? Will they not accuse me of having abandoned them? History will decide: I am far from fearing it, I invoke it!”
“And I myself, I have sometimes asked myself, have I done for this unfortunate people all that they had the right to expect? They have done so much for me! Will they ever know, this people, all that the night that preceded my last decision cost me; that night of uncertainties and anguish!”
“Two great parties were left to me; that of trying to save the fatherland by violence, or that of yielding myself to the general impulse. I had to take the one that I followed; friends and enemies, well-intentioned and wicked, all were against me. I remained alone, I had to yield; and once done, it was done: I am not in favor of half measures; and then sovereignty cannot be given up, nor taken up again in this way, as one would with a coat.”
“The other party demanded a strange vigor. There would have been great criminals, great punishments would have been necessary: blood could flow, and then who knows where we were led? What scenes could be repeated? As for me, was I not going to soak myself there, drown my memory with my own hands, in this cesspool of blood, of crimes, of abominations of every kind, that hatred, pamphlets, libels, have accumulated on me? That day I seemed to justify everything that they had pleased to invent. I became for posterity and history the Nero, the Tiberius of our times. If only, at that price, I had saved the fatherland!… I felt myself having the energy!… But was it really certain that I would have succeeded? All our dangers did not come from outside, were not our disagreements within superior to them? Did we not see a crowd of fools persisting in arguing over nuances, before having ensured the triumph of color? Who among them would have been persuaded that I was not working for myself alone, for my personal advantages? Who among them would have been convinced that I was disinterested? That I was fighting only to save the fatherland? Who would have been made to believe all the dangers, all the misfortunes from which I sought to shield it? They were visible to me; but as for the vulgar, they will always be ignorant of them, if they have not weighed on them.”
“What would have been answered to the one who had cried out: Here he is again the despot, the tyrant! The very next day of his oaths, he violates them at once! And who knows, in all these movements and this inextricable complication, I would not have perished by a French hand, even, in the conflict of citizens? And then, what would become of the nation in the eyes of the whole universe and in the esteem of the most remote generations! For its glory must be admitted to me! I could not have done so many things for its honor and its luster, without it, in spite of it: it would have made me too great!… I repeat, history will decide!…”
After this outing, he returned to the measures and details of the campaign, and dwelt with complacency on its glorious beginning, with anguish on the terrible disaster which had ended it.
“However,” he concluded, “nothing seemed to me yet hopeless, if I had found the support I should have expected. Our only resources were in the chambers: I rushed to Paris to convince them of this; but they immediately rebelled against me, under some pretext that I had come to dissolve them. What absurdity! From that moment all was lost.”
“It is not,” added the emperor, “that one should perhaps accuse the mass of these chambers; but such is the inevitable march of these numerous bodies, they perish for want of unity; they need leaders as well as armies: they are appointed to the latter; but the great talents, the eminently superior geniuses, seize the assemblies and govern them. Now, we lacked all that; also in spite of the good spirit with which the great number could be animated, everything was found, in that moment, confusion, vertigo, tumult; perfidy, corruption came to establish themselves at the doors of the legislative body; incapacity, disorder, fault of mind, reigned in its midst, and France became the prey of the foreigner.”
“At one point I wanted to resist,” he continued, “I was on the edge of declaring myself permanently at the Tuileries, in the midst of the ministers and the Council of State; of calling around me the six thousand men of the guard that I had in Paris; of swelling them with the well-intentioned part of the National Guard, which was numerous, and with all the federates of the suburbs; of adjourning the legislative body to Tours or Blois; of reorganizing under Paris the remains of the army and of working alone thus, and by form of dictatorship, for the salvation of the fatherland. But would the legislative body have obeyed? I could well have forced it to do so by force; but then what a scandal and what a new complication! Would the people make common cause with me? Would the army itself obey me constantly? In the ever-recurring crises, would they not separate from me? Would they not try to make arrangements at my expense? Would not the idea that so many efforts and dangers had only me as their object be a plausible pretext? Would not the facilities that everyone had found the previous year with the Bourbons be today, for many people, decisive inductions?”
“Yes, I hesitated for a long time,” said the emperor, “weighed the pros and cons; and, since I go quickly and far, as I think strongly, I have concluded that I could not resist the coalition from the outside, the royalists from within, the crowd of sects that the violation of the legislative body would have created, that part of the multitude that must be made to march by force; finally, that moral condemnation that is attributed to you, when you are unfortunate, all the evils that present themselves. So I had absolutely no choice but to abdicate: she lost everything, I saw it, I said it; but I had no other choice.”
“The allies had always followed the same system against us; they had begun it in Prague, continued it in Frankfurt, Châtillon, Paris and Fontainebleau. They behaved with great wit! The French were able to be fooled by it in 1814; but posterity will find it difficult to conceive that they were fooled in 1815; it will forever condemn those who let themselves be taken in by it. I had told them their story when I left for the army. Let us not be like the Greeks of the Late Empire, who amused themselves by arguing among themselves when the battering ram struck the walls of their city. I told it to them again when they forced me to abdicate. The enemies want to separate me from the army; when they have succeeded, they will separate the army from you; you will then be nothing more than a vile herd, the prey of ferocious beasts.”
The emperor thought that with the help of the legislative body he would probably have saved the country. He would have taken charge of it with confidence, he would have believed he could answer for it.
“In less than fifteen days,” he said, “that is to say, before the masses of the enemy could present themselves before Paris, I would have completed its fortifications; I would have gathered under these walls, from the remains of the army, more than eighty thousand men of good troops, and three hundred harnessed pieces. At the end of a few days of fire, the national guard, the federates, the inhabitants of Paris, would have sufficed for the defense of the entrenchments; I would therefore have had eighty thousand men available, at hand.”
“And they knew,” he continued, “all the advantage I was capable of deriving from it. The memories of 1814 were still fresh: Champeaubert, Montmirail, Croane, Montereau, still lived in the imagination of those who had to fight us. The same places would have made present to them the wonders of the previous year; they had then nicknamed me, it is said, the hundred thousand men: the speed, the force of our blows, had wrung this word from them. The fact is that we had shown ourselves admirable: never did a handful of brave men accomplish more wonders. If these great deeds have never been well known in public, by the circumstances of our disasters, they were worthily judged by our enemies, who counted them by our blows. We were truly then the Briarées of the Fable!…”
“Paris,” he continued, “would have become in a few days an impregnable place. The call to the nation, the imminence of the danger, the inflammation of the minds, the grandeur of the spectacle, would have directed multitudes from all sides on the capital. I would have undoubtedly agglomerated more than four hundred thousand men, and I do not estimate that the allies exceeded five hundred thousand. The affair was then reduced to a single combat which would have caused as much fear to the enemy as to us; he would have hesitated, and the confidence of the great number would have returned to me.”
“However, I would have surrounded myself with a national consultative body or junta, drawn by me from the legislative body, all formed of national names, worthy of the everyone’s trust; I would thus have fortified my military dictatorship with all the force of civil opinion; I would have had my tribune; it would have breathed the talisman of principles over all of Europe; the sovereigns would have shuddered to see the contagion gain the peoples; they would have trembled, treated or succumbed!…”
“But that's just too much on a subject that always hurts! I repeat it again, history will decide!”
On the abandonment by the chambers on the return from Waterloo (Memorial on the Hundred Days)
I arrived to combine our last resources: I am abandoned… I am abandoned with the same ease with which I was received!… Well! Let this double stain of weakness and frivolity be erased, if possible! Let it be covered at least with some struggle, some glory! Let us do for the fatherland what we no longer want to do for me!… I do not hope so. Today those who surrender Bonaparte say that it is to save France: tomorrow, by surrendering France, they will prove that they only wanted to save their own heads.
Why would Napoleon have feared staying in France after Waterloo?
What have I to fear in remaining? What sovereign could persecute me without harming himself? I have restored half of his dominions to one; how often has another shaken my hand, calling me a great man! And can the third find pleasure or honour in the humiliations of his son-in-law? Will they, before the face of the earth, proclaim that they acted only out of fear?
Why he couldn't be allowed to go to England
If they don't want me in France, where do they want me to go? To England? My stay there will be ridiculous or worrying. If I were at peace there, no one would believe it. Every fog would be suspected of bringing me to the coast. At the first sight of a green coat disembarking from a boat, some would flee from France, others would outlaw France. I would compromise everyone, and, by the excess of saying, “Here he comes,” they would tempt me to arrive…
The provisional government should not have rushed to remove Napoleon (The Consulate and the Empire)
On July 1, 1815, hearing the cries of "Long live the Emperor", as he was crossing Niort, Napoleon said to those who accompanied him:
The government does not know the spirit of France well; it has been in too much of a hurry to remove me from Paris. If it had accepted my last proposal, affairs would certainly have turned around. I could still exercise, in the name of the nation, a great influence in political affairs, by supporting the government's negotiations with an army for which my name would have served as a rallying point.
On the convention of August 2, 1815 (Memorial of Saint-Helena)
The first article of the convention of August 2 was worded as follows:
"Napoleon Bonaparte is considered by the powers that signed the treaty of March 20th, as their prisoner.”
Speaking of the decision taken by the allied sovereigns with regard to him, the emperor said:
“It is difficult to explain them. Franz! He is religious, and I am his son. Alexander! We loved each other! The King of Prussia! I have done him a lot of harm no doubt; but I could have done him much more; and then is there not glory, a real joy in expanding oneself through the heart!”
“For England, it is to the animosity of its ministers that I am indebted for everything; but even so, it would be up to the Prince Regent to notice it, to interfere, under penalty of being noted as lazy or of protecting a common wickedness.”
“What is certain is that all these sovereigns compromise themselves, degrade themselves, lose themselves in me.”
The Emperor spoke to the Governor to protest against the treaty of August 2nd, in which the Allies declared him proscribed and a prisoner. He asked what was the right of these sovereigns to dispose of him without his participation, he who was their equal, and had sometimes been their master.
“If he had wanted to retire to Russia,” he said, “Alexander, who had called himself his friend, who had had only political quarrels with him, if he had not kept him king, would at least have treated him as such.”
“If he had wanted,” he continued, “to take refuge in Austria, the Emperor Franz under penalty of stigma and immorality, could not forbid him not only his empire, but even his house, his family, of which he, Napoleon, was a member.”
“Finally, if, counting my personal interests as something,” he added, “I had persisted in defending them in France with arms in hand, there is no doubt that the allies would have granted me by treaty a host of advantages, perhaps even territory.”
The governor, who had remained on the scene for a long time, positively agreed that he would have easily held some large sovereign establishment.
“I did not want it,” the Emperor continued, “I decided to leave affairs, indignant to see the leaders of France betray her, or grossly misunderstand her dearest interests; indignant to see that the mass of representatives could, rather than perish, compromise with this sacred independence, which, no less than honor, is also a steep and shoreless island. In this state of things, what did I decide on? What side did I take? I went to seek asylum in a country that was believed to have all-powerful laws, among a people of whom for twenty years I had been the greatest enemy. You others, what have you done?… Your acts will not honor you in history! And yet there is a vengeful providence; sooner or later you will bear the penalty! A long time will not pass before your prosperity, your laws, atone for your attack!… Your ministers, by their instructions, have sufficiently proved that they wanted to get rid of me! Why did the kings who proscribed me not dare to openly order my death! One would have been as legal as the other! A prompt end would have shown more energy on their part than the slow death to which I am condemned.”
“The Calabrese have been much more humane, more generous than the sovereigns or your ministers. I will not kill myself; I think that would be cowardly: it is noble and courageous to overcome misfortune, and everyone here below must fulfill his destiny; but if they intend to keep me here, you owe it to me as a benefit; for my dwelling here is a daily death! The island is too small for me, who every day rode ten, fifteen, twenty leagues on horseback; the climate is not ours, it is neither our sun nor our seasons. Everything here breathes a deadly boredom. The position is unpleasant, unhealthy; there is no water, this corner of the island is deserted, it has pushed back its inhabitants!”
Did Napoleon have much to complain about the men in 1815?
“You don't know men,” said the Emperor to his companions in exile, who expressed themselves with severity on the defectors of 1815; “they are difficult to grasp when one wants to be fair. Do they know themselves, do they explain themselves? Most of those who abandoned me, if I had continued to be happy, would perhaps never have suspected their own defection. There are vices and virtues of circumstances. Our last tests were above all human strengths! And then, I was abandoned rather than betrayed, there was more weakness around me than perfidy: it is the denial of Saint Peter, repentance and tears can be the door. Besides that, who, in history, had more supporters and friends? Who was more popular and more loved? Who ever left more ardent and more regrets alive?… See France; from here on my rock, wouldn’t we be tempted to say that I still reign there? The kings and the princes my allies have been faithful to me until extinction, they were taken away by the peoples en masse; and those of mine who were around me found themselves wrapped up, all dizzy, in an irresistible whirlwind… No, human nature could have shown itself uglier and myself more to be pitied!”
If Napoleon could have reached America!
“What misfortune,” said the Emperor, “that I could not reach America! Even from the other hemisphere I would have protected France against the reactors! The fear of my appearance would have held in check their violence and their madness; my name would have been enough to chain the excesses and strike with terror!”
Napoleon in France in 1816
“In fact,” said the emperor, “what would we have to fear? That I should go to war? I am too old. That I should run again after glory? I gorged myself on it, I had made a litter; and to say it in passing, it was a thing that I had now made all at once very common and very difficult. That I start conquests again? I didn't do them out of mania, they were the result of a great plan; I would say even more, of necessity: they were reasonable in their time, today they would be impossible; they were executable then, it would be foolish to intend to do so now. And then, the upheavals and misfortunes of poor France have now given birth to enough difficulties; there would be glory enough in clearing it away, so as not to have to look for another one.”
His projects and the fatalities of his career
I have had vast and numerous projects, all of them certainly in the interest of reason and the well-being of the human species. I was feared as much as lightning; I was accused of having an iron hand; but as soon as it had struck the target, everything would have softened and for all. How many millions of beings would have blessed me then and in posterity! But it must be admitted: what fatalities have piled up against me at the end of my career! My unhappy marriage, the perfidies that followed it, this canker of Spain, on which there was no going back; this disastrous war in Russia, which happened to me by misunderstanding; this frightful rigor of the elements, which devoured an entire army… And then the entire universe against me!… Is it not still a marvel that I was able to resist it for so long, and that I was more than once on the verge of overcoming everything and emerging from this chaos more powerful than ever… O destiny of men!… O wisdom! O human foresight!…
On Napoleon's conduct in Germany
“Who could compare,” said the Emperor, “my successes in Germany with those of the Allies in France? Enlightened, thoughtful people, history will not do so.”
“The allies came dragging all of Europe against almost nothing at all. They presented six hundred thousand men in line, they had an equal reserve. If they were beaten, they ran no risk; they retreated. I, on the contrary, in Germany, five hundred leagues away, was barely equal in force, surrounded by powers and peoples held back only by fear, and who, at any moment, at the first check, could declare themselves. I triumphed in the midst of perils that were always recurring, and against which I had no less need of skill than of force. What a strange character I needed in all these enterprises, a strange glance, a strange confidence in my combinations, disapproved, perhaps, by all those around me!”
“What actions will the allies oppose to such actions? If I had not won at Austerlitz, I would have had all of Prussia on my hands. If I had not triumphed at Jena, Austria and Spain would have declared themselves on my rear. If I had not beaten the enemy at Wagram, which was not such a decisive victory, I had to fear that Russia would abandon me, that Prussia would rise up, and the English were already before Antwerp.”
“But what were my conditions after the victory?”
“At Austerlitz, I gave Alexander his freedom, so that I could take him prisoner.”
“After Jena, I left the throne to the House of Prussia, which I had overthrown.”
“After Wagram, I neglected to break up the Austrian monarchy.”
“Will all this be attributed to simple magnanimity? Strong and profound people would have the right to blame me for it. So without rejecting this feeling, which is not foreign to me, I aspired to even higher thoughts. I wanted to prepare the fusion of the great European interests, as I had brought about that of the parties among us. I aspired to arbitrate one day the great cause of the peoples and kings; I therefore had to create titles for myself with the kings, to make myself popular among them. It is true that this could not be without losing with the peoples, I felt it well; but I was all-powerful and not very timid; I worried little about the passing murmurs of peoples, well assured that the result would inevitably bring them back to me.”
On his exile
An English officer who was returning to Europe came to take orders from the Emperor, who charged him with a note for his government as follows:
The Emperor desires by the return of the next ship to have news of his wife and son, and to know if the latter is still alive. He takes advantage of this occasion to reiterate and forward to the British government the protests he has already made against the strange measures adopted against him.
The government declared him a prisoner of war. The emperor is not a prisoner of war: his letter to the regent, written and communicated to Captain Maitland, before going on board the Bellerophon, sufficiently proves to the whole world the dispositions and confidence which led him freely under the English flag. The Emperor could have left France only by stipulations which would have pronounced on what was relative to his person; but he disdained to mix personal interests with the great interests which constantly occupied his mind. He could have placed himself at the disposal of the Emperor Alexander, who had been his friend, or of the Emperor Francis, who was his father-in-law; but in the confidence he had in the English nation, he wanted no other protection than the laws; and, renouncing public affairs, he sought no other countries than the places which were governed by fixed laws, independent of particular wills.
If the Emperor had been a prisoner of war, the rights of civilized nations over a prisoner of war are limited by the law of nations, and moreover end with the war itself.
The English government considering the Emperor, even arbitrarily, as a prisoner of war, its right was therefore limited by public law; or it could, as there was no agreement between the two nations in the current war, adopt towards him the principles of the savages who kill their prisoners. This right would have been more humane, more in conformity with justice, than that of carrying him to this dreadful rock: the death which would have been given to him on board the Bellerophon, in the harbor at Plymouth, would have been a blessing in comparison. We have travelled through the most unfortunate regions of Europe, none of which can be compared to this arid rock: deprived of everything that can make life bearable, it is apt to renew at every moment the anguish of death. The first principles of Christian morality, and this great duty imposed on man to follow his destiny, whatever it may be, can alone prevent him from putting an end to such a horrible existence himself; the Emperor takes glory in remaining above it. But if the British government should persist in its injustices and violence towards him, he considers it a blessing that it should cause him to die.
“What vile treatment they reserved for us!” Napoleon once said to his companions in exile, after having summarized all the indignities that he was made to suffer… “These are the anguishes of death! To injustice, to violence, they add outrage, prolonged torture! If I were so harmful to them, why would they not get rid of me? A few bullets in the heart or in the head would have been enough; there would have been at least some energy in this crime! If it were not for you others, and especially your women, I would only want to receive here the ration of a simple soldier. How can the sovereigns of Europe allow this sacred character of sovereignty to be polluted in me! Do they not see that they are killing themselves with their own hands at Saint Helena! I entered their capitals victorious; if I had brought the same sentiments there, what would have become of them? They all called me their brother, and I had become one by the choice of the people, the sanction of victory, the character of religion, the alliances of politics and blood. Do they then believe the good sense of the people to be insensitive to their morality, and what do they expect from it?… However, make your complaints, gentlemen; let Europe know them and be indignant! Mine are beneath my dignity and my character: I order or I remain silent.”
“No doubt there are many individuals in an even worse physical condition; but that does not take away our right to judge our own, nor the odious treatment we are subjected to. The bad practices of the English government have not been limited to sending us here; they extended themselves to the choice of individuals to whom our persons and our needs have been entrusted. For my part, I would suffer less if I were sure that one day someone would divulge it to the universe, in such a way as to taint with infamy those who are guilty of it.”
Advantages of the exile
“Our situation may have benefits! The universe contemplates us!… We remain the martyrs of an immortal cause!… Millions of men mourn us, the fatherland sighs, and glory is in mourning!… We fight here against the oppression of the gods, and the wishes of the nations are for us!… If I considered only myself, perhaps I would have reason to rejoice!… Misfortunes also have their heroism and their glory!… Adversity was lacking in my career!… If I had died on the throne, in the midst of the clouds of my omnipotence, I would have remained a problem for many people; today, thanks to misfortune, I will be able to be judged naked!”
On his character
“I am of a very singular character, no doubt; but one would not be extraordinary if one were not of a different stamp: I am a piece of rock thrown into space!”
“I believe that nature had calculated me for the great setbacks; they found in me a soul of marble. Lightning could not bite it, it had to slip.”
The Emperor said that he himself was astonished at the little effect that the great events of which he had recently been the object had produced on him: it was like lead sliding on marble. He could not imagine anyone in the world who had bent more than he under irremediable necessity; “and that,” he said, “was the true empire in reason, the true triumph of the soul.”
There was talk before the Emperor of one of his aides-de-camp who, at the time he was leaving for the army of Italy, had abandoned him for the Directory.
“Nevertheless,” said the Emperor, “once I was on the throne, he could still have had much power over me, if he had known how to go about it: he had the right of the first years, which is never lost. I certainly would not have resisted a surprise at a hunting rendez-vous, for example, or any other half-hour of conversation about times gone by; I would have forgotten what he had done to me. Those who had the key to my character knew this well; they knew that with me, in whatever disposition I was against them, it was like a game of bars, the game was won as soon as one could touch the target. So I had no other means, if I wanted to resist, than to refuse to see them.”
On his intellectual organization
The Emperor explained the clarity of his ideas and the faculty of being able, without tiring himself, to prolong his occupations to the extreme, by saying that the various objects and the various affairs were stored in his head as they might have been in a cupboard. “When I want to interrupt one business,” he said, “I close its drawer, and I open that of another. They do not mix with each other, and never bother me or tire me…. If I want to sleep, I close all the drawers, and there I am asleep.”
On the feelings he inspired
“Everyone,” said the Emperor, “has loved me and hated me; each has taken me, left me, and taken me again; there is not a Frenchman whom I have not moved… Everyone has loved me; only it has not been at the same time, but at different times. I was the sun that travels the ecliptic while crossing the equator. As I arrived in each person's climate, all hopes opened up, I was blessed, I was adored; but as soon as I left it, when I was no longer understood, then came the contrary feelings, etc.”
On his reputation
Paris is so large, and contains so many people of all kinds and some so bizarre, that I suppose there are some who have never seen me, and that there may be others to whom my name has never even reached.
How Napoleon was to respond to slander
Napoleon never wanted to allow, during his time of power, anyone to respond to the slander spread about him. “The care that would be taken,” he said, “would only give more weight to the accusations that one would wish to combat. One would not fail to say that everything that would be written in my defense would have been ordered and paid for. Already the clumsy praises of those around me had sometimes been more harmful to me than all these insults. It was only with facts that I could respond to them: a beautiful monument, a good law moreover, a new triumph were to destroy thousands of these lies: declamations pass, actions remain!”
“It is nevertheless to your ministers,” Napoleon said to an Englishman, “that I owe all these kindnesses: they have flooded Europe with pamphlets and libels against me. Perhaps they would have to say as an excuse that they were only responding to what they received from France itself; and here, it must be fair, those among us who have been seen dancing on the ruins of their country did not fail to do so, and kept them abundantly provided.”
“However, I was often tormented, at the time of my power, to have these schemes fought; I always refused, what would have been the use of being defended? It would have been said that I had paid, and that would only have discredited myself a little more. A victory, one more monument; that is the best, the true answer, I constantly said. Wise people, posterity especially, judge only on facts. So what happened? Already the cloud is dissipating, the light is breaking through; I am winning every day; soon there will be nothing more piquant in Europe than to render me justice. Those who succeeded me hold the archives of my administration, the archives of the police, the court records; they have at their disposal, their pay, those who would have been the executors, the accomplices of my atrocities and my crimes; well! What have they published? What have they made known?”
“Also, the first fury having passed, people of intelligence and judgment will return to me; I will no longer have for enemies anything but the wicked or the foolish. I can remain calm, I have only to let things be; and the sequence of events, the debates of the opposing parties, their adverse productions will make shine each day the surest, most glorious materials of my history. And to what have resulted, after all, the immense sums spent in libels against me? Soon there will be no more traces of them; while my monuments and my institutions will recommend me to the most remote posterity.”
“If it were to enter into someone's head today,” said Napoleon on Saint Helena, “to print that I have grown hair and that I walk on all fours, there are people who would believe it, and say that it is God who has punished me like Nebuchadnezzar. And what could I do? There is no remedy for that.”
Was Napoleon a coward? (Memoirs of Rapp)
“Have you read Chateaubriand's pamphlet, which does not even grant me courage on the battlefield? Have you not sometimes seen me in the fire? Am I a coward?”
Why Napoleon slept during battles (Memorial of Saint-Helena)
It was said in front of Napoleon that he had been seen sleeping not only on the eve of the battle, but during the battle itself.
“It was necessary,” said the Emperor, “when I gave battles that lasted three days, nature also had to have its rights; I took advantage of the smallest moment; I slept where and when I could. Besides, independently of the obligation to obey nature, these sleeps offer the leader of a very large army the precious advantage of being able to hear the reports of all his divisions, instead of letting himself be carried away perhaps by the only object on which he would fix his gaze.”
One of his principles of conduct
The actions of the emperor, however impassioned they may have seemed, were always accompanied by calculation. “When one of my ministers,” he said, “or some other great personage had committed a serious fault, that there was really reason to be angry with me, that I really ought to be angry, to be furious, then I always took care to admit a third party to this scene: my rule was that, when I decided to strike, the blow should fall on many at once. The one who received it held no more or less grudge against me; and the one who witnessed it, whose face and embarrassment should have been seen, discreetly went to transmit far and wide what he had seen and heard. A salutary terror circulated from vein to vein in the social body; things went better; I punished better, and I reaped infinitely without having done much harm.”
On a popular tradition relating to Napoleon
The Emperor leafed through the Dictionary of Sieges and Battles, and on each page found his name mixed with anecdotes that were completely false or distorted; which led him to cry out against the mob of petty writers and the unworthy abuses of the pen… “For example,” he said, “I am made, at Arcola, during the night, to take the post of a sleeping sentry. This idea is doubtless that of a bourgeois, a lawyer, but it is not that of a soldier. The author, who surely speaks well of me, cannot imagine anything in the world more beautiful than what he makes me do: but he did not know that I was hardly capable of such an act; I was too tired for that; you best believe that I had fallen asleep before the soldier of whom he speaks.”
Of his happiness in battles
The Emperor said that the rare happiness which had kept him invulnerable in the midst of so many battles had been generally admired and praised. “And they were mistaken,” he added; “only I have always kept all my dangers a secret. What confusion, what disorder would not have resulted from the slightest noise, from the slightest doubt concerning my existence! To my life were attached the fate of a great empire, all the politics and destinies of Europe.”
On Napoleon's taste for foundation
Everyone has their own relative ideas: I had a taste for foundation, not for property. My property was in glory and celebrity: the Simplon, for the people, the Louvre, for foreigners, were more a property to me than private domains. I bought diamonds from the crown; I repaired the palaces of the sovereign, I cluttered them with furniture; and I sometimes surprised myself by finding that the expenses of Josephine, in her greenhouses or her gallery, were a real disservice to my Jardin des Plantes or my museum in Paris, etc.
On his love of war
“They never cease to speak of my love for war,” said the Emperor; “but have I not been constantly occupied in defending myself? Have I won a single great victory without immediately proposing peace?”
“The truth is that I have never been master of my movements; I have never really been completely myself.”
“I may have had many plans; but I was never at liberty to carry out any of them. I had held the helm in vain, however strong my hand was, the sudden and numerous waves were much stronger still, and I had the wisdom to yield to them rather than to founder by trying to resist them obstinately. I have therefore never really been my own master; but I have always been governed by circumstances, so much so that at the beginning of my elevation, under the consulate, true friends, my warm partisans, sometimes asked me, with the best intentions, and for their information, where I intended to arrive, and I always answered that I knew nothing. They remained struck by it, perhaps dissatisfied, and yet I told them the truth. Later, under the empire, where there was fewer familiarity, many figures seemed to make the same request to me again. In fact I was not the master of my actions, because I did not have the madness to want to twist events to my system; but on the contrary I bent my system to the unforeseen context of events, and this is what often gave me the appearance of mobility, of inconsistency, and brought accusations upon myself sometimes, but was that fair?”
One of his philanthropic dreams
Abuses are inherent in every human society, and there exists a kind of wide area network on the lowered places, which envelops the small multitude: A stitch has to break for something in it to come back up to the higher areas. Also one of my dreams, our great events of war accomplished and settled, back inside, resting and breathing, would have been to look for half a dozen or a dozen true good philanthropists. Of these brave people living only for good, existing only to practice it. I would have scattered them throughout the empire, they would have traveled in secret to realize to give me accounts themselves: they would have been the spies of virtue! They would have come to find me directly; they would have been my confessors, my spiritual directors; and my decisions with them would have been my secret good works. My great occupation, during my complete rest, would have been, from the height of my power, to occupy myself in depth to improve the condition of the whole society; I would have attempted to descend right down to individual joys; and if my nature had not been enough to bring me there, calculation would still have decided me. Because after so much acquired glory, what other way was left for me to acquire more?
On the morality of Napoleon's policy (Memoirs of Napoleon)
Napoleon never committed any crimes. What crime would have been more profitable for him than the assassination of the Count of Lille and the Count of Artois? The proposal was made to him several times, notably by *** and ***. It would not have cost two million. The Emperor rejected it with contempt and indignation. No attempt was made during his reign against the lives of these princes.
When the Spains were in arms in the name of Ferdinand, this prince and his brother Don Carlos, sole heirs to the throne of Spain, were at Valencey, in the depths of Berry; their death would have put an end to the affairs of Spain; it was useful, even necessary. It was advised to him by ****; but it was unjust and criminal. Did Ferdinand and Don Carlos die in France
We could cite ten other examples: these two alone are sufficient, because they are the most striking. Hands accustomed to winning battles with the sword have never been soiled by crime, even under the vain pretext of public utility: a dreadful maxim which, at all times, has been that of weak governments, and which religion, honor and European civilization disavow.
Napoleon reached the summit of human greatness, by direct means, without ever having committed an action that morality disavows. In this his elevation is unique in history.
(Memorial of Saint-Helena)
“I ascended the throne, free from all the crimes of my position. Are there many heads of dynasties who could say as much?”
“I have not usurped the crown, I have raised it from the gutter; the people have placed it on my head: let their acts be respected!”
On the principles which had guided him in his government
The Emperor said that there was a kind of chance and fatality which, ordinarily, in the maze of revolutions, led upright and honest hearts; that also, nothing was more necessary than indulgence to recompose society, after long troubles; and that it was these dispositions and these principles which had made him the man most suited to the circumstances of Brumaire. He had on this point neither distrust, nor prejudices, nor passions; he had constantly employed men of all classes, of all parties, without ever looking behind them, without asking them what they had done, what they had said, what they had thought, demanding only that they march henceforth and in good faith towards the common goal: the good and glory of all; that they show themselves to be true and good Frenchmen. Above all, he had never addressed himself to the leaders to win over the parties. On the contrary, he had attacked the mass of parties in order to be able to disdain their leaders.
Did Napoleon have to repent of his system of domestic policy?
“It is without reason,” said the Emperor, “that I have been reproached for having employed nobles and emigrés... It was not the nobles and the emigrés who brought restoration, but rather the restoration which resurrected the nobles and the emigrés. They have no more particularly contributed to our loss than others. The real culprits are the schemers of all colors and all doctrines.”
“Fouché was not a nobleman, Talleyrand was not an émigré. Augereau and Marmont were neither. I could multiply the quotes. It is still without reason,” he continued, “that I have been reproached for having disdained certain influential people; I was too powerful to not to despise with impunity intrigues and immorality recognized by most of them. Also it is none of this which overthrew me; but only unforeseen, unheard of disasters; forced circumstances: five hundred thousand men at the gates of the capital; a revolution still fresh, a crisis too strong for French heads, and especially a dynasty not old enough. I would have gotten up from the foot of the Pyrenees itself, if only I had been my grandson.”
“And yet what is the magic of the past! Certainly I was the chosen one of the French, their new cult was their work. Well! as soon as the old ones reappeared, see with what ease they returned to idols!…”
“And how could any other policy, after all, have prevented what has ruined me? I was betrayed by Marmont, whom I could call my son, my child, my work, to whom I entrusted my destiny, by sending him to Paris at the very moment when he was consummating his betrayal and my ruin. I was betrayed by Murat, a soldier that I had made a king, who was my sister's husband. I was betrayed by Berthier, a real goose that I had made a kind of eagle. I was betrayed in the Senate, precisely by those of the national party who owe me everything. All this was therefore in no way due to my system of domestic policy. No doubt one could accuse me with advantage of having too easily employed old enemies or nobles and émigrés, if a Macdonald, a Valence, a Montesquiou had betrayed me; but they were faithful to me. That if one objected to me the stupidity of Murat and Berthier, I would respond with the spirit of Marmont… I therefore have no reason to repent of my system of domestic policy, etc., etc.”
Why he was not a Washington
Having come to power, one would have liked me to have been a Washington: words cost nothing, and certainly those who said it with such ease did so without knowledge of times, places, men and things. If I had been in America, I would have willingly been a Washington, and I would have had little merit there, because I do not see how it would have been reasonably possible to do otherwise. But if he had found himself in France, under the dissolution from within and under the invasion from outside, I would have defied him to be himself, or if he had wanted to be, he would have been only a fool, and would have only continued great misfortunes. For me, I could only be a crowned Washington. It was only in a congress of kings, in the midst of convinced or mastered kings, that I could become one. Then, and only there could I fruitfully show his moderation, his selflessness, his wisdom; I couldn't reasonably achieve that except through universal dictatorship: I claimed it. Would they make it a crime? Would they think that it was beyond human strength to resign it? Sylla, full of crimes, did indeed dare to abdicate, pursued by public execration. What motive could have stopped me, I who would have had only blessings to be collected!… I had to prevail in Moscow! How many will regret my disasters and my fall! But to ask of me what was not of season at the time, was vulgar stupidity; to announce it, to promise it, would have been taken for verbiage, charlatanism; that was not my type.
I repeat, I had to be victorious in Moscow!
Napoleon poorly supported by his brothers
“It is certain,” said the Emperor, “that I have been poorly seconded by my own and that they have done much harm to me and to the great cause. The strength of my character has often been praised; I have been nothing but a wimp, especially to my own; and they knew it well: once the first shove was over, their perseverance, their obstinacy always prevailed; and, tired of the war, they have done with me what they wanted. I have made great mistakes there. If instead of that each of them had given a common impulse to the various masses that I had entrusted to them, we would have marched to the poles; everything would have fallen before us; we would have changed the face of the world, Europe would enjoy a new system, we would be blessed! I did not have the happiness of Genghis Khan with his four sons, who knew no other rivalry than that of serving him well.”
“Myself, I named a king, he immediately believed himself to be one by the grace of God, so contagious is the word. He was no longer a lieutenant on whom I had to rely, he was one more enemy whom I had to take care of. His efforts were not to second me, but to make himself independent. They immediately had the mania of believing themselves adored, preferred to me. It was I now who was hindering them, who was putting them in danger. Legitimate ones would not have acted otherwise; they would not have believed themselves more anchored. Poor people! Who, when I had succumbed, were able to convince themselves that they did not even have the honor of seeing their dismissal demanded or mentioned by the enemy; and even today, if one hinders their person, if one torments them, it can only be, on the part of the victorious, the need to make power weigh, or the baseness of exercising vengeance.”
“If mine inspire a great interest in the people, it is because they hold on to me, to the common cause; but that none of them can cause a movement, assuredly one can be very calm; and yet despite the philosophy of several of them (for were there not some who, in order to rule, had said they were forced in the manner of the chamberlains of the Faubourg Saint-Germain), their fall must have been very sensitive to them; they had quickly become accustomed to the sweetness of the post: they have all been truly kings. All, sheltered from my labors, have enjoyed royalty; I alone have known only its burden. All the time I carried the world on my shoulders, and this job, after all, does not leave one without its fatigue, etc.”
“It may be said to me, why persist in creating States, kingdoms? But the customs and the situation of Europe required it so. Each new union with France increased the alarms of all; it caused loud cries to grow and pushed back peace. But then, it will be continued, why have the vanity of placing each of my own on a throne? For the vulgar ones only saw that in it. Why not stop rather at simple individuals who are more capable? To this I reply that it is not with hereditary thrones as with a simple prefecture. Capacity, means, are today so common in the multitude, that we must be very careful not to arouse the idea of competition. In the agitation in which we find ourselves plunged, and with our modern customs, it was much better to think of hereditary stability and centralization; otherwise, what battles, what factions, what misfortunes!!!”
“In the harmony that I meditated for universal rest and well-being, if there was a defect in my person and in my elevation, it was to have suddenly emerged from the crowd. I felt my isolation, so I threw anchors of salvation on all sides to the bottom of the sea. What more natural support for me than my relatives? Could I expect better from foreigners? And if my own were mad enough to fail in these sacred ties, the morality of the people, superior to their blindness, fulfilled part of my object. With them, they believed themselves more at rest, more in family.”
“In short, such great acts were neither whims nor jokes; they were due to considerations of the highest order; they were connected with the rest of the human race and the possibility of improving its condition. That if, despite the combinations made in the best of faith, we have still found ourselves having done nothing worthwhile, it is because we must return to a great truth, namely, that it is very difficult to govern, when we want to do it conscientiously, etc., etc.”
How history will judge him
The Emperor, at St. Helena, indicated the acts with which history could reproach him and the motives which could be alleged for his justification.
“He would not have to excuse himself,” he said, “for any fault committed on others, having never followed anything but his own decision; he would have to complain at most of false information, but not of bad advice. He had surrounded himself with as much enlightenment as possible, but had always stuck to his own judgment… However, to be fair on the faults produced by the sole personal decision of the Emperor, it would be necessary to weigh up the great actions of which he would have been deprived, and the other faults which he would have been made to commit by the advice to which he is accused of not having abandoned himself, etc.”
Summary of his career. His history and his apology
“After all,” said the Emperor, “however much they may cut, suppress, mutilate, it will be very difficult for them to make me disappear completely. A French historian will nevertheless be forced to approach the empire; and, if he has any heart, he will have to restore something to me, to give me my share, and his task will be easy, because the facts speak, they shine like the sun.”
“I closed the anarchic chasm and untangled the chaos. I cleaned up the revolution, ennobled the people and strengthened kings. I excited all emulations, rewarded all merits, and pushed back the limits of glory! All this is quite something! And then, what could I be attacked on that a historian could not defend me? Could it be my intentions? But he will have depths to absolve me. My despotism? But he will demonstrate that the dictatorship was of all necessity. Will it be said that I hindered freedom? But he will prove that license, anarchy, great disorders were still at the gate. Will they accuse me of having loved war too much? But he will show that I have always been attacked. For having wanted the universal monarchy? But he will show that it was only the fortuitous work of circumstances, that it was our enemies themselves who led me there step by step. Finally will it be my ambition? Ah! no doubt he will find me some, and much of it; but of the greatest and highest that perhaps ever was! That of establishing, of finally consecrating the empire of reason, and the full exercise, the full enjoyment of all human faculties! And here the historian may find himself reduced to regretting that such an ambition was not fulfilled, satisfied!… In very few words, that is however my whole story.”
On Napoleon II, King of Rome, Duke of Reichstadt — Possible destiny of the King of Rome
“The King of Rome,” said the Emperor, “would be the man of the people, he would be that of Italy; also Austrian policy will kill him, perhaps not under his grandfather, who is an honest man, but who will not live forever. Or else, if the morals of our days do not admit such an attack, then they will try to stupefy his faculties, they will stupefy him. And if finally he escaped physical and moral assassination; if his mother and nature came to save him from all these dangers, then!… then!…” he repeated several times as if searching; “then!… As then!… For who can assign the destinies of anyone here below?”
On the oft repeated idea that Napoleon’s role in the Council of State and the drafting of the Civil Code was vastly exaggerated, I leave readers with Councilor Thibaudeau’s testimony in Le Consulat et l’Empire:
When Bonaparte was raised to the first magistracy of the Republic, people were astonished, despite his great reputation, at the ease with which he held the helm of state, even in areas that had been unfamiliar to him. People were much more surprised when they saw him deal with matters that had been completely foreign to him, such as the Civil Code. The First Consul presided over most of the sessions of the Council of State where the draft code was discussed, and took an active part in its discussion.
He provoked it, supported it, directed it, and revived it. Like some of the orators of his council, he did not seek to shine by the roundness of his phrases, the choice of his expressions, and the care of his delivery. He spoke without affectation, without embarrassment, without pretension, with the freedom and tone of a conversation that naturally became animated, according to what the subject matter required, the conflict of opinions, and the point of maturity at which the discussion had reached.
He was never inferior to any member of the council; he sometimes equaled the most able among them, by his facility in grasping the crux of the questions, by the accuracy of his ideas and the force of his reasoning; he often surpassed them by the turn of his phrases and the originality of his expressions. Nothing is advanced here that is not proven by the minutes of the discussions which were printed and which we did witness.
“In France and in Europe, many people have affected to believe, and others have believed in good faith that, careful of the glory of the First Consul, flattery had arranged his speeches after the fact, and that Locré, secretary-general of the Council of State, editor of its minutes, was, under the inspection of the consul Cambacérès, the dyer of the First Consul.”
“This was an error: Locré wrote the minutes of the sessions and sent his draft printed halfway to the members of the council, so that they could rectify it, if necessary. The secretary-general did not allow himself any other license than that of putting in a state to bear printing a few sentences which sometimes had the negligence of conversation. This was doubtless what he also did for the opinions of the First Consul. By his writing, Locré gave to all the speeches a measured, serious, cold, uniform style, such as perhaps the subject matter required. But, far from having flattered the First Consul by making him speak like all the others, his speeches, by this writing, have on the contrary, in large part, lost the freedom and boldness of thought, the originality and force of its expression.”
“Moreover, if he wanted the greatest attention to be paid to the drafting of the opinions of the jurists whose name was authoritative, he did not have the same pretensions for himself, and he did not want, he said, to be considered worth more than he was.”