Napoleon's Addresses/Introduction
INTRODUCTION.
The flash of Napoleon Bonaparte's sword so blinded men in his lifetime, and, indeed, long after, that they were unable to distinguish a second weapon in his hand.
The clearer vision which time and study bring have shown that he used words almost as effectively as the sword, and that throughout his career the address ably supported the military manœuvre.
The first complete demonstration of the elaborate use made by Napoleon of the address was the publication of the gigantic work known as the "Correspondance de Napoleon." Though the thirty-two ponderous volumes which form this magnus opus appeared nearly forty years ago, it is little known to general readers, its size and cost confining it to special libraries, and its documentary character repelling all but special students.
Yet it is only in these volumes that Napoleon's official life can be traced in detail from Toulon to St. Helena. Every document which he wrote relating to public affairs is—if we may believe the editors—printed in the collection. The number is enormous. When the commission appointed to collect the material began its labors, it found itself obliged to go through ten thousand volumes pertaining to Napoleon's life. The archives of Paris yielded forty thousand different documents of which he was the author, and the rulers of Austria, Bavaria, Hesse, Russia, Sardinia, and Wurtemberg sent contributions from their royal records.
Across the pages of the great tomes file the mighty procession of soldiers and generals, priests and cardinals, kings and peoples who, in the twenty years in which Napoleon was the preëminent figure of Europe, fell captive to his charms or his power. Here are the words by which he fired starving armies to battle, bullied obstinate powers to follow his plans, put hope into despot-ridden people, told kings their duties.
In these addresses one traces Napoleon's daily thought, so far as he cared to reveal it to others, watches the development of his plans and follows the gradual enlargement of his power. Nowhere else is there so fine an opportunity to observe the steady unfolding of his ambition for world-mastery, to see how he aspired to rule France, then her neighbors, then Europe, the Orient, America, the Isles of the sea. An especially curious study in connection with that of the evolution of his ambition is that of the methods he followed to enlist men in his stupendous undertakings. Such a study is possible only in the addresses.
The spell he exercised over the army is explained here, partially, at least. It was the custom to post the addresses through-out the ranks where each soldier could see and read them. The men had been accustomed at home to seeing all official communications from the Government to the people placed on the bill-boards, and so read them from habit. But Napoleon's bulletins, if they were posted in a familiar way, had a new character. He addressed the soldiers as if they were comrades, explaining the general situation of the army to them, exhorting them to new efforts and promising them rich rewards.
After a battle he stated the results to them, thus giving them a tacit recognition of their importance. The explanation was one that all understood; it was clear and explicit, and bristled with figures. Your common man grasps numbers. They are the bullets of speech and sink in like lead. When Napoleon rattled a volley of numbers at them—"Soldiers, in fifteen days you have gained six victories, taken twenty-one stands of colors, fifty-five pieces of cannon, and several fortresses, and conquered the richest part of Piedmont. You have made fifteen hundred prisoners, and killed or wounded ten thousand men"—they understood, and glowed with pride.
The phrases with which he praised, condemned, exhorted them, were short, terse, and unforgetable. "You will return to your homes, and your countrymen will say as they point you out, 'He belonged to the Army of Italy.'" Not a man with a spark of pride but remembered those words and dreamed that he walked the village street and heard the whisper following him, "He belonged to the Army of Italy." "Soldiers, from the summit of these pyramids forty centuries look down upon you," he cried in Egypt. The splendid phrase voiced the awe of the army in the shadow of the mysterious monuments, and they charged their dark-faced foes as if in the presence of all the heroes of the past.
The perfect clearness and directness of the addresses is their most striking literary quality. The classic pose affected by writers in Napoleon's day he entirely ignored. He wished those whom he addressed to understand his meaning. If he spoke to the soldier it was to convince him that certain facts were true and to persuade him to adopt certain theories. To do this he put what he wished believed and repeated in so clear a fashion that it could not be mistaken. If both bombast and bathos sometimes characterized his addresses to the army, it was never at the expense of his meaning.
The same lucidity marked all his instructions to the Council of State when it was preparing the Code of Laws. He would not discuss the laws proposed, in technical and equivocal language, but insisted on translating them into the plainest, most evident terms. When it came to wording the laws, he still declared that they should be kept clear of all obscurities and ambiguities of meaning, so that the most illiterate of the people could comprehend them.
While all of Napoleon's addresses to the army and to the people are imbued with a spirit of comradeship, those to generals, ambassadors, counselors of State, even to the members of his family, are imperious and inflexible in tone. The first impression they produce is that the author knows his own mind and is convinced of his ability to carry out his own plans, that he has no superstitious regard for titles, formalities, even for ties of blood, that he is superior to traditions, and will recognize the authority of no man who does not prove himself the stronger. From the beginning of his career, the audacity of this presumption, this confidence in himself, checked and often stifled opposition. There was, in the high tone of his communications, something which compelled obedience, just as there was something in his bearing which silenced those who met him face to face. Augereau went in to his first interview with Napoleon sneering contemptuously at the idea of an untried commander being sent to the Army of Italy, but he backed out from his presence, pale with dismay. "His first glance crushed me," he cried. In a similar way a first address from Napoleon bewildered and silenced critics and opponents. They were baffled by his apparent candor, by the serious way in which he took himself, and by the complete mastery he had of all the elements in a situation. There seemed to be no fact which had escaped him, no contingency he had not considered. A reading of the addresses shows that much of the impression of strength they produce is due to the fact that the writer has full knowledge of the business in hand. One sees from the way in which he criticizes, asks questions, and advises that he understands his subject. Of course, it is in military matters that it is particularly conspicuous. Here he knows everything, the quality of cloth which ought to be used in a soldier's uniform, the way to make a cannon, the kind of food which the horses should receive. Not only did he know what should be done, but he knew if it was done. His communications to officers are bewildering to a lay reader, because of the intimate knowledge they show of each man's actions, and the attention they give to what seems unimportant details. It is not difficult to understand and to share, in reading them, the superstitious feeling that many of Napoleon's associates had that he was "not as other men," that he had superhuman insight and faculties, else how could he know all, foresee all, do all.
Napoleon's attitude towards his family was as imperious as that towards officers and statesmen. Unquestionably he had a warm affection for his mother and brothers and sisters, and even when a mere boy he always thought of them; yet when money and power came to him he would do nothing for them save on condition that they obey absolutely his will; when he became Emperor this determination was firmer than ever. His refusal to acknowledge Jerome Bonaparte's marriage with Miss Paterson is a familiar example of this. His letters to Louis, as King of Holland, to Joseph, as King of Spain, to Jerome, as King of Westphalia, are marked by an amazing absolutism. "All feelings of State yield to State reasons," he sent word to Joseph. "I recognize as relatives only those who serve me. My fortune is not attached to the name of Bonaparte, but to that of Napoleon." As a rule, however, his letters to his family are as conspicuous for their common sense as for their despotism.
When he reached the point in his career where first as consul and then as Emperor he must direct the framing of a new code of laws for France, must organize schools, beautify the capitol, revive industries, his addresses to the councils and officials charged with the duties, show the same knowledge of the principles involved and the same attention to details which distinguish his military writings.
All of the extraordinary stories of Napoleon's capacity for work, of his teeming brain, his incessant invention, which one finds in the memoirs of his secretaries and associates, are fully justified by his addresses. Take one of the days when he was at the height of his power and note the marvellous range over which his thoughts run. He gives direction for the mobilization of troops and the fortification of a town; inquires of Cambacérès or Portalis the meaning of a law they have under consideration for the new Code, asks them why such a law is necessary, if it existed under Louis XIV., why it should not be worded in this way instead of that; he remembers a general who is compromising himself in a love affair, and counsels him at least to be discreet; he scolds Josephine for extravagance; orders a monument to the last general killed on the field of battle; selects the names to be given to certain new streets and bridges of Paris.
To the end of his career his addresses show the same vigor and range. Even those sent to the inhabitants and authorities of Elbe are as fertile in schemes for improving the island as those addressed to the French people; they show, too, the same attention to detail. At Elbe he even dictated, with ceremonious regard for the forms which become the ruler of a kingdom, the kind of bread to be fed his hunting-dogs.
A study of these addresses shows that he never lost his exuberance of imagination. However tragic his losses, he rebounded at once, and on the very day that he dictated his last address to the French army, June 25, 1815, he wrote his librarian to send him all the books on the United States which were to be obtained. He wanted to study up the country which he had already chosen for his future home.
Even at St. Helena, sick and irritated as he was, his mind was never quiet. He dictated in the five and a half years he lived on the island most of the matter in the journals of O'Meara, Las Cases, and Montholon, his essays on Cæsar, Turenne, and Frederick, his commentaries and several less important works,—a respectable literary output, certainly, for five and a half years, and an excellent reply to the old charge that the fallen Emperor passed his imprisonment sulking.
It is because the addresses of Napoleon are so characteristic of the man, because they reveal so clearly his ambitions, his methods, his genius and his faults, that this selection from them is offered to the public. It is a sketch of Napoleon by himself; an incomplete sketch, to be sure, but one in which every bold, sharp line is by his own hand.