FROM 'THE COUNTRY DOCTOR'
THE NAPOLEON OF THE PEOPLE
"Let us go to my barn," said the doctor, taking Genestas by the arm, after saying good-night to the curate and his other guests. "And there, Captain Bluteau, you will hear about Napoleon. We shall find a few old cronies who will set Goguelat, the postman, to declaiming about the people's god. Nicolle, my stable-man, was to put a ladder by which we can get into the hay-loft through a window, and find a place where we can see and hear all that goes on. A veillée is worth the trouble, believe me. Come, it isn't the first time I've hidden in the hay to hear the tale of a soldier or some peasant yarn. But we must hide; if these poor people see a stranger they are constrained at once, and are no longer their natural selves."
"Eh! my dear host," said Genestas, "haven't I often pretended to sleep, that I might listen to my troopers round a bivouac? I never laughed more heartily in the Paris theatres than I did at an account of the retreat from Moscow, told in fun, by an old sergeant to a lot of recruits who were afraid of war. He declared the French army slept in sheets, and drank its wine well-iced; that the dead stood still in the roads; Russia was white, they curried the horses with their teeth; those who liked to skate had lots of fun, and those who fancied frozen puddings ate their fill; the women were usually cold, and the only thing that was really disagreeable was the want of hot water to shave with: in short, he recounted such absurdities that an old quarter-master, who had had his nose frozen off and was known by the name Nez-restant, laughed himself."
"Hush," said Benassis, "here we are: I'll go first; follow me."
The pair mounted the ladder and crouched in the hay, without being seen or heard by the people below, and placed themselves at ease, so that they could see and hear all that went on. The women were sitting in groups round the three or four candles that stood on the tables. Some were sewing, some knitting; several sat idle, their necks stretched out and their heads and eyes turned to an old peasant who was telling a story. Most of the men were standing, or lying on bales of hay. These groups, all perfectly silent, were scarcely visible in the flickering glimmer of the tallow-candles encircled by glass bowls full of water, which concentrated the light in rays upon the women at work about the tables. The size of the barn, whose roof was dark and sombre, still further obscured the rays of light, which touched the heads with unequal color, and brought out picturesque effects of light and shade. Here, the brown forehead and the clear eyes of an eager little peasant-girl shone forth; there, the rough brows of a few old men were sharply defined by a luminous band, which made fantastic shapes of their worn and discolored garments. These various listeners, so diverse in their attitudes, all expressed on their motionless features the absolute abandonment of their intelligence to the narrator. It was a curious picture, illustrating the enormous influence exercised over every class of mind by poetry. In exacting from a story-teller the marvelous that must still be simple, or the impossible that is almost believable, the peasant proves himself to be a true lover of the purest poetry.
"Come, Monsieur Goguelat," said the game-keeper, "tell us about the Emperor."
"The evening is half over," said the postman, "and I don't like to shorten the victories."
"Never mind; go on! You've told them so many times we know them all by heart; but it is always a pleasure to hear them again."
"Yes! tell us about the Emperor," cried many voices together.
"Since you wish it," replied Goguelat. "But you'll see it isn't worth much when I have to tell it on the double-quick, charge! I'd rather tell about a battle. Shall I tell about Champ-Aubert, where we used up all the cartridges and spitted the enemy on our bayonets?"
"No! no! the Emperor! the Emperor!"
The veteran rose from his bale of hay and cast upon the assemblage that black look laden with miseries, emergencies, and sufferings, which distinguishes the faces of old soldiers. He seized his jacket by the two front flaps, raised them as if about to pack the knapsack which formerly held his clothes, his shoes, and all his fortune; then he threw the weight of his body on his left leg, advanced the right, and yielded with a good grace to the demands of the company. After pushing his gray hair to one side to show his forehead, he raised his head towards heaven that he might, as it were, put himself on the level of the gigantic history he was about to relate.
"You see, my friends, Napoleon was born in Corsica, a French island, warmed by the sun of Italy, where it is like a furnace, and where the people kill each other, from father to son, all about nothing: that's a way they have. To begin with the marvel of the thing,--his mother, who was the handsomest woman of her time, and a knowing one, bethought herself of dedicating him to God, so that he might escape the dangers of his childhood and future life; for she had dreamed that the world was set on fire the day he was born. And indeed it was a prophecy! So she asked God to protect him, on condition that Napoleon should restore His holy religion, which was then cast to the ground. Well, that was agreed upon, and we shall see what came of it.
"Follow me closely, and tell me if what you hear is in the nature of man.
"Sure and certain it is that none but a man who conceived the idea of making a compact with God could have passed unhurt through the enemy's lines, through cannon-balls, and discharges of grape-shot that swept the rest of us off like flies, and always respected his head. I had a proof of that--I myself--at Eylau. I see him now, as he rode up a height, took his field glass, looked at the battle, and said, 'A11 goes well.' One of those plumed busy-bodies, who plagued him considerably and followed him everywhere, even to his meals, so they said, thought to play the wag, and took the Emperor's place as he rode away. Ho! in a twinkling, head and plume were off! You must understand that Napoleon had promised to keep the secret of his compact all to himself. That's why all those who followed him, even his nearest friends, fell like nuts,--Duroc, Bessières, Lannes,--all strong as steel bars, though he could bend them as he pleased. Besides,--to prove he was the child of God, and made to be the father of soldiers,--was he ever known to be lieutenant or captain? no, no; commander-in-chief from the start. He didn't look to be more than twenty-four years of age when he was an old general at the taking of Toulon, where he first began to show the others that they knew nothing about manoeuvring cannon.
"After that, down came our slip of a general to command the grand army of Italy, which hadn't bread nor munitions, nor shoes, nor coats,--a poor army, as naked as a worm. 'My friends,' said he, 'here we are together. Get it into your pates that fifteen days from now you will be conquerors,--new clothes, good gaiters, famous shoes, and every man with a great-coat; but, my children, to get these things you must march to Milan where they are.' And we marched. France, crushed as flat as a bedbug, straightened up. We were thirty thousand barefeet against eighty thousand Austrian bullies, all fine men, well set up. I see 'em now! But Napoleon--he was then only Bonaparte--he knew how to put the courage into us! We marched by night, and we marched by day; we slapped their faces at Montenotte, we thrashed 'em at Rivoli, Lodi, Arcole, Millesimo, and we never let 'em up. A soldier gets the taste of conquest. So Napoleon whirled round those Austrian generals, who didn't know where to poke themselves to get out of his way, and he pelted 'em well,--nipped off ten thousand men at a blow sometimes, by getting round them with fifteen hundred Frenchmen, and then he gleaned as he pleased. He took their cannon, their supplies, their money, their munitions, in short, all they had that was good to take. He fought them and beat them on the mountains, he drove them into the rivers and seas, he bit 'em in the air, he devoured 'em on the ground, and he lashed 'em everywhere. Hey! the grand army feathered itself well; for, d'ye see, the Emperor, who was also a wit, called up the inhabitants and told them he was there to deliver them. So after that the natives lodged and cherished us; the women too, and very judicious they were. Now here's the end of it. In Ventose, '96,--in those times that was the month of March of to-day,--we lay cuddled in a corner of Savoy with the marmots; and yet, before that campaign was over, we were masters of Italy, just as Napoleon had predicted; and by the following March--in a single year and two campaigns--he had brought us within sight of Vienna. 'Twas a clean sweep. We devoured their armies, one after the other, and made an end of four Austrian generals. One old fellow, with white hair, was roasted like a rat in the straw at Mantua. Kings begged for mercy on their knees! Peace was won.
"Could a man have done that? No; God helped him, to a certainty!
"He divided himself up like the loaves in the Gospel, commanded the battle by day, planned it by night; going and coming, for the sentinels saw him,--never eating, never sleeping. So, seeing these prodigies, the soldiers adopted him for their father. Forward, march! Then those others, the rulers in Paris, seeing this, said to themselves:--'Here's a bold one that seems to get his orders from the skies; he's likely to put his paw on France. We must let him loose on Asia; we will send him to America, perhaps that will satisfy him.' But 'twas written above for him, as it was for Jesus Christ. The command went forth that he should go to Egypt. See again his resemblance to the Son of God. But that's not all. He called together his best veterans, his fire-eaters, the ones he had particularly put the devil into, and he said to them like this:--'My friends, they have given us Egypt to chew up, just to keep us busy, but we'll swallow it whole in a couple of campaigns, as we did Italy. The common soldiers shall be princes and have the land for their own. Forward, march!' 'Forward, march!' cried the sergeants, and there we were at Toulon, road to Egypt. At that time the English had all their ships in the sea; but when we embarked Napoleon said, 'They won't see us. It is just as well that you should know from this time forth that your general has got his star in the sky, which guides and protects us.' What was said was done. Passing over the sea, we took Malta like an orange, just to quench his thirst for victory; for he was a man who couldn't live and do nothing.
"So here we are in Egypt. Good. Once here, other orders. The Egyptians, d'ye see, are men who, ever since the earth was, have had giants for sovereigns, and armies as numerous as ants; for, you must understand, that's the land of genii and crocodiles, where they've built pyramids as big as our mountains, and buried their kings under them to keep them fresh,--an idea that pleased 'em mightily. So then, after we disembarked, the Little Corporal said to us, 'My children, the country you are going to conquer has a lot of gods that you must respect; because Frenchmen ought to be friends with everybody, and fight the nations without vexing the inhabitants. Get it into your skulls that you are not to touch anything at first, for it is all going to be yours soon. Forward, march!' So far, so good. But all those people of Africa, to whom Napoleon was foretold under the name of Kébir-Bonaberdis,--a word of their lingo that means 'the sultan fires,'--were afraid as the devil of him. So the Grand Turk, and Asia, and Africa, had recourse to magic. They sent us a demon, named the Mahdi, supposed to have descended from heaven on a white horse, which, like its master, was bullet-proof; and both of them lived on air, without food to support them. There are some that say they saw them; but I can't give you any reasons to make you certain about that. The rulers of Arabia and the Mamelukes tried to make their troopers believe that the Mahdi could keep them from perishing in battle; and they pretended he was an angel sent from heaven to fight Napoleon and get back Solomon's seal. Solomon's seal was part of their paraphernalia which they vowed our General had stolen. You must understand that we'd given 'em a good many wry faces, in spite of what he had said to us.
"Now, tell me how they knew that Napoleon had a pact with God? Was that natural, d'ye think?
"They held to it in their minds that Napoleon commanded the genii, and could pass hither and thither in the twinkling of an eye, like a bird. The fact is, he was everywhere. At last, it came to his carrying off a queen, beautiful as the dawn, for whom he had offered all his treasure, and diamonds as big as pigeons' eggs,--a bargain which the Mameluke to whom she particularly belonged positively refused, although he had several others. Such matters, when they come to that pass, can't be settled without a great many battles; and, indeed, there was no scarcity of battles; there was fighting enough to please everybody. We were in line at Alexandria, at Gizeh, and before the Pyramids; we marched in the sun and through the sand, where some, who had the dazzles, saw water that they couldn't drink, and shade where their flesh was roasted. But we made short work of the Mamelukes; and everybody else yielded at the voice of Napoleon, who took possession of Upper and Lower Egypt, Arabia, and even the capitals of kingdoms that were no more, where there were thousand of statues and all the plagues of Egypt, more particularly lizards,--a mammoth of a country where everybody could take his acres of land for as little as he pleased. Well, while Napoleon was busy with his affairs inland,--where he had it in his head to do fine things,--the English burned his fleet at Aboukir; for they were always looking about them to annoy us. But Napoleon, who had the respect of the East and of the West, whom the Pope called his son, and the cousin of Mohammed called 'his dear father,' resolved to punish England, and get hold of India in exchange for his fleet. He was just about to take us across the Red Sea into Asia, a country where there are diamonds and gold to pay the soldiers and palaces for bivouacs, when the Mahdi made a treaty with the Plague, and sent it down to hinder our victories. Halt! The army to a man defiled at that parade; and few there were who came back on their feet. Dying soldiers couldn't take Saint-Jean d'Acre, though they rushed at it three times with generous and martial obstinacy. The Plague was the strongest. No saying to that enemy, 'My good friend.' Every soldier lay ill. Napoleon alone was fresh as a rose, and the whole army saw him drinking in pestilence without its doing him a bit of harm.
"Ha! my friends! will you tell me that that's in the nature of a mere man?
"The Mamelukes knowing we were all in the ambulances, thought they could stop the way; but that sort of joke wouldn't do with Napoleon. So he said to his demons, his veterans, those that had the toughest hide, 'Go, clear me the way.' Junot, a sabre of the first cut, and his particular friend, took a thousand men, no more, and ripped up the army of the pacha who had had the presumption to put himself in the way. After that, we came back to headquarters at Cairo. Now, here's another side of the story. Napoleon absent, France was letting herself be ruined by the rulers in Paris, who kept back the pay of the soldiers of the other armies, and their clothing, and their rations; left them to die of hunger, and expected them to lay down the law to the universe without taking any trouble to help them. Idiots! who amused themselves by chattering, instead of putting their own hands in the dough. Well, that's how it happened that our armies were beaten, and the frontiers of France were encroached upon: THE MAN was not there. Now observe, I say man because that's what they called him; but 'twas nonsense, for he had a star and all its belongings; it was we who were only men. He taught history to France after his famous battle of Aboukir, where, without losing more than three hundred men, and with a single division, he vanquished the grand army of the Turk, seventy-five thousand strong, and hustled more than half of it into the sea, r-r-rah!
"That was his last thunder-clap in Egypt. He said to himself, seeing the way things were going in Paris, 'I am the savior of France. I know it, and I must go.' But, understand me, the army didn't know he was going, or they'd have kept him by force and made him Emperor of the East. So now we were sad; for He was gone who was all our joy. He left the command to Kléber, a big mastiff, who came off duty at Cairo, assassinated by an Egyptian, whom they put to death by impaling him on a bayonet; that's the way they guillotine people down there. But it makes 'em suffer so much that a soldier had pity on the criminal and gave him his canteen; and then, as soon as the Egyptian had drunk his fill, he gave up the ghost with all the pleasure in life. But that's a trifle we couldn't laugh at then. Napoleon embarked in a cockleshell, a little skiff that was nothing at all, though 'twas called 'Fortune'; and in a twinkling, under the nose of England, who was blockading him with ships of the line, frigates, and anything that could hoist a sail, he crossed over, and there he was in France. For he always had the power, mind you, of crossing the seas at one straddle.
"Was that a human man? Bah!
"So, one minute he is at Fréjus, the next in Paris. There, they all adore him; but he summons the government. 'What have you done with my children, the soldiers?' he says to the lawyers. 'You're a mob of rascally scribblers; you are making France a mess of pottage, and snapping your fingers at what people think of you. It won't do; and I speak the opinion of everybody.' So, on that, they wanted to battle with him and kill him--click! he had 'em locked up in barracks, or flying out of windows, or drafted among his followers, where they were as mute as fishes, and as pliable as a quid of tobacco. After that stroke--consul! And then, as it was not for him to doubt the Supreme Being, he fulfilled his promise to the good God, who, you see, had kept His word to him. He gave Him back his churches, and re-established His religion; the bells rang for God and for him: and lo! everybody was pleased: primo, the priests, whom he saved from being harassed; secundo, the bourgeois, who thought only of their trade, and no longer had to fear the rapiamus of the law, which had got to be unjust; tertio, the nobles, for he forbade they should be killed, as, unfortunately, the people had got the habit of doing.
"But he still had the Enemy to wipe out; and he wasn't the man to go to sleep at a mess-table, because, d'ye see, his eye looked over the whole earth as if it were no bigger than a man's head. So then he appeared in Italy, like as though he had stuck his head through the window. One glance was enough. The Austrians were swallowed up at Marengo like so many gudgeons by a whale! Ouf! The French eagles sang their paeans so loud that all the world heard them--and it sufficed! 'We won't play that game any more,' said the German. 'Enough, enough!' said all the rest.
"To sum up: Europe backed down, England knocked under. General peace; and the kings and the people made believe kiss each other. That's the time when the Emperor invented the Legion of Honor--and a fine thing, too. 'In France'--this is what he said at Boulogne before the whole army--'every man is brave. So the citizen who does a fine action shall be sister to the soldier, and the soldier shall be his brother, and the two shall be one under the flag of honor.'
"We, who were down in Egypt, now came home. All was changed! He left us general, and hey! in a twinkling we found him EMPEROR. France gave herself to him, like a fine girl to a lancer. When it was done--to the satisfaction of all, as you may say--a sacred ceremony took place, the like of which was never seen under the canopy of the skies. The Pope and the cardinals, in their red and gold vestments, crossed the Alps expressly to crown him before the army and the people, who clapped their hands. There is one thing that I should do very wrong not to tell you. In Egypt, in the desert close to Syria, the RED MAN came to him on the Mount of Moses, and said, 'All is well.' Then, at Marengo, the night before the victory, the same Red Man appeared before him for the second time, standing erect and saying, 'Thou shalt see the world at thy feet; thou shalt be Emperor of France, King of Italy, master of Holland, sovereign of Spain, Portugal, and the Illyrian provinces, protector of Germany, savior of Poland, first eagle of the Legion of Honor--all.' This Red Man, you understand, was his genius, his spirit,--a sort of satellite who served him, as some say, to communicate with his star. I never really believed that. But the Red Man himself is a true fact. Napoleon spoke of him, and said he came to him in troubled moments, and lived in the palace of the Tuileries under the roof. So, on the day of the coronation, Napoleon saw him for the third time; and they were in consultation over many things.
"After that, Napoleon went to Milan to be crowned king of Italy, and there the grand triumph of the soldier began. Every man who could write was made an officer. Down came pensions; it rained duchies; treasures poured in for the staff which didn't cost France a penny; and the Legion of Honor provided incomes for the private soldiers,--of which I receive mine to this day. So here were the armies maintained as never before on this earth. But besides that, the Emperor, knowing that he was to be the emperor of the whole world, bethought him of the bourgeois, and to please them he built fairy monuments, after their own ideas, in places where you'd never think to find any. For instance, suppose you were coming back from Spain and going to Berlin--well, you'd find triumphal arches along the way, with common soldiers sculptured on the stone, every bit the same as generals. In two or three years, and without imposing taxes on any of you, Napoleon filled his vaults with gold, built palaces, made bridges, roads, scholars, fêtes, laws, vessels, harbors, and spent millions upon millions,--such enormous sums that he could, so they tell me, have paved France from end to end with five-franc pieces, if he had had a mind to.
"Now, when he sat at ease on his throne, and was master of all, so that Europe waited his permission to do his bidding, he remembered his four brothers and his three sisters, and he said to us, as it might be in conversation, in an order of the day, 'My children, is it right that the blood relations of your Emperor should be begging their bread? No. I wish to see them in splendor like myself. It becomes, therefore, absolutely necessary to conquer a kingdom for each of them,--to the end that Frenchmen may be masters over all lands, that the soldiers of the Guard shall make the whole earth tremble, that France may spit where she likes, and that all the nations shall say to her, as it is written on my copper coins, 'God protects you!' 'Agreed,' cried the army. 'We'll go fish for thy kingdoms with our bayonets.' Ha! there was no backing down, don't you see! If he had taken it into his head to conquer the moon, we should have made ready, packed knapsacks, and clambered up; happily, he didn't think of it. The kings of the countries, who liked their comfortable thrones, were naturally loathe to budge, and had to have their ears pulled; so then--Forward, march! We did march; we got there; and the earth once more trembled to its centre. Hey! the men and the shoes he used up in those days! The enemy dealt us such blows that none but the grand army could have stood the fatigue of it. But you are not ignorant that a Frenchman is born a philosopher, and knows that a little sooner, or a little later, he has got to die. So we were ready to die without a word, for we liked to see the Emperor doing that on the geographies."
Here the narrator nimbly described a circle with his foot on the floor of the barn.
"And Napoleon said, 'There, that's to be a kingdom.' And a kingdom it was. Ha! the good times! The colonels were generals; the generals, marshals; and the marshals, kings. There's one of 'em still on his throne, to prove it to Europe; but he's a Gascon and a traitor to France for keeping that crown; and he doesn't blush for shame as he ought to do, because crowns, don't you see, are made of gold. I who am speaking to you, I have seen, in Paris, eleven kings and a mob of princes surrounding Napoleon like the rays of the sun. You understand, of course, that every soldier had the chance to mount a throne, provided always he had the merit; so a corporal of the Guard was a sight to be looked at as he walked along, for each man had his share in the victory, and 'twas plainly set forth in the bulletin. What victories they were! Austerlitz, where the army manoeuvred as if on parade; Eylau, where we drowned the Russians in a lake, as though Napoleon had blown them into it with the breath of his mouth; Wagram, where the army fought for three days without grumbling. We won as many battles as there are saints in the calendar. It was proved then beyond a doubt, that Napoleon had the sword of God in his scabbard. The soldiers were his friends; he made them his children; he looked after us; he saw that we had shoes, and shirts, and great-coats, and bread, and cartridges; but he always kept up his majesty; for, don't you see, 'twas his business to reign. No matter for that, however; a sergeant, and even a common soldier could say to him, 'My Emperor,' just as you say to me sometimes, 'My good friend.' He gave us an answer if we appealed to him; he slept in the snow like the rest of us; and indeed, he had almost the air of a human man. I who speak to you, I have seen him with his feet among the grapeshot, and no more uneasy than you are now,--standing steady, looking through his field glass, and minding his business. 'Twas that kept the rest of us quiet. I don't know how he did it, but when he spoke he made our hearts burn within us; and to show him we were his children, incapable of balking, didn't we rush at the mouths of the rascally cannon, that belched and vomited shot and shell without so much as saying, 'Look out!' Why! the dying must needs raise their heads to salute him and cry, 'LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR!'
"I ask you, was that natural? would they have done that for a human man?
"Well, after he had settled the world, the Empress Josephine, his wife, a good woman all the same, managed matters so that she did not bear him any children, and he was obliged to give her up, though he loved her considerably. But, you see, he had to have little ones for reasons of state. Hearing of this, all the sovereigns of Europe quarreled as to which of them should give him a wife. And he married, so they told us, an Austrian archduchess, daughter of Caesar, an ancient man about whom people talk a good deal, and not in France only,--where any one will tell you what he did,--but in Europe. It is all true, for I myself who address you at this moment, I have been on the Danube, and have seen the remains of a bridge built by that man, who, it seems, was a relation of Napoleon in Rome, and that's how the Emperor got the inheritance of that city for his son. So after the marriage, which was a fête for the whole world, and in honor of which he released the people of ten years' taxes,--which they had to pay all the same, however, because the assessors didn't take account of what he said,--his wife had a little one, who was King of Rome. Now, there's a thing that had never been seen on this earth; never before was a child born a king with his father living. On that day a balloon went up in Paris to tell the news to Rome, and that balloon made the journey in one day!
"Now, is there any man among you who will stand up and declare to me that all that was human? No; it was written above; and may the scurvy seize them who deny that he was sent by God himself for the triumph of France!
"Well, here's the Emperor of Russia, that used to be his friend, he gets angry because Napoleon didn't marry a Russian; so he joins with the English, our enemies,--to whom our Emperor always wanted to say a couple of words in their burrows, only he was prevented. Napoleon gets angry too; an end had to be put to such doings; so he says to us:--'Soldiers! you have been masters of every capital in Europe, except Moscow, which is now the ally of England. To conquer England, and India which belongs to the English, it becomes our peremptory duty to go to Moscow.' Then he assembled the greatest army that ever trailed its gaiters over the globe; and so marvelously in hand it was that he reviewed a million of men in one day. 'Hourra! cried the Russians. Down came all Russia and those animals of Cossacks in a flock. 'Twas nation against nation, a general hurly-burly, and beware who could; 'Asia against Europe,' as the Red Man had foretold to Napoleon. 'Enough,' cried the Emperor, 'I'll be ready.'
"So now, sure enough, came all the kings, as the Red Man had said, to lick Napoleon's hand! Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Poland, Italy, every one of them were with us, flattering us; ah, it was fine! The eagles never cawed so loud as at those parades, perched high above the banners of all Europe. The Poles were bursting with joy, because Napoleon was going to release them; and that's why France and Poland are brothers to this day. 'Russia is ours,' cried the army. We plunged into it well supplied; we marched and we marched,--no Russians. At last we found the brutes entrenched on the banks of the Moskova. That's where I won my cross, and I've got the right to say it was a damnable battle. This was how it came about. The Emperor was anxious. He had seen the Red Man, who said to him, 'My son, you are going too fast for your feet; you will lack men; friends will betray you.' So the Emperor offered peace. But before signing, 'Let us drub those Russians!' he said to us. 'Done!' cried the army. 'Forward, march!' said the sergeants. My clothes were in rags, my shoes worn out, from trudging along those roads, which are very uncomfortable ones; but no matter! I said to myself, 'As it's the last of our earthquakings, I'll go into it, tooth and nail!' We were drawn up in line before the great ravine,--front seats, as 'twere. Signal given; and seven hundred pieces of artillery began a conversation that would bring the blood from your ears. Then--must do justice to one's enemies--the Russians let themselves be killed like Frenchmen; they wouldn't give way; we couldn't advance. 'Forward,' some one cried, 'here comes the Emperor!' True enough; he passed at a gallop, waving his hand to let us know we must take the redoubt. He inspired us; on we ran, I was the first in the ravine. Ha! my God! how the lieutenants fell, and the colonels, and the soldiers! No matter! all the more shoes for those that had none, and epaulets for the clever ones who knew how to read. 'Victory!' cried the whole line; 'Victory!'--and, would you believe it? a thing never seen before, there lay twenty-five thousand Frenchmen on the ground. 'Twas like mowing down a wheat-field; only in place of the ears of wheat put the heads of men! We were sobered by this time,--those who were left alive. The MAN rode up; we made a circle round him. Ha! he knew how to cajole his children; he could be amiable when he liked, and feed 'em with words when their stomachs were ravenous with the hunger of wolves. Flatterer! he distributed the crosses himself, he uncovered to the dead, and then he cried to us, 'On! to Moscow!' 'To Moscow!' answered the army.
"We took Moscow. Would you believe it? the Russians burned their own city! 'Twas a haystack six miles square, and it blazed for two days. The buildings crashed like slates, and showers of melted iron and lead rained down upon us, which was naturally horrible. I may say to you plainly, it was like a flash of lightning on our disasters. The Emperor said, 'We have done enough; my soldiers shall rest here.' So we rested awhile, just to get the breath into our bodies and the flesh on our bones, for we were really tired. We took possession of the golden cross that was on the Kremlin; and every soldier brought away with him a small fortune. But out there the winter sets in a month earlier,--a thing those fools of science didn't properly explain. So, coming back, the cold nipped us. No longer an army--do you hear me?--no longer any generals, no longer any sergeants even. 'Twas the reign of wretchedness and hunger,--a reign of equality at last. No one thought of anything but to see France once more; no one stooped to pick up his gun or his money if he dropped them; each man followed his nose, and went as he pleased without caring for glory. The weather was so bad the Emperor couldn't see his star; there was something between him and the skies. Poor man! it made him ill to see his eagles flying away from victory. Ah! 'twas a mortal blow, you may believe me.
"Well, we got to the Beresina. My friends, I can affirm to you by all that is most sacred, by my honor, that since mankind came into the world, never, never, was there seen such a fricassee of an army--guns, carriages, artillery wagons--in the midst of such snows, under such relentless skies! The muzzles of the muskets burned our hands if we touched them, the iron was so cold. It was there that the army was saved by the pontoniers, who were firm at their post; and there that Gondrin--sole survivor of the men who were bold enough to go into the water and build the bridges by which the army crossed--that Gondrin, here present, admirably conducted himself, and saved us from the Russians, who, I must tell you, still respected the grand army, remembering its victories. And," he added, pointing to Gondrin, who was gazing at him with the peculiar attention of a deaf man, "Gondrin is a finished soldier, a soldier who is honor itself, and he merits your highest esteem."
"I saw the Emperor," he resumed, "standing by the bridge, motionless, not feeling the cold--was that human? He looked at the destruction of his treasure, his friends, his old Egyptians. Bah! all that passed him, women, army wagons, artillery, all were shattered, destroyed, ruined. The bravest carried the eagles; for the eagles, d'ye see, were France, the nation, all of you! they were the civil and the military honor that must be kept pure; could their heads be lowered because of the cold? It was only near the Emperor that we warmed ourselves, because when he was in danger we ran, frozen as we were--we, who wouldn't have stretched a hand to save a friend. They told us he wept at night over his poor family of soldiers. Ah! none but he and Frenchmen could have got themselves out of that business.
"We did get out, but with losses, great losses, as I tell you. The Allies captured our provisions. Men began to betray him, as the Red Man predicted. Those chatterers in Paris, who had held their tongues after the Imperial Guard was formed, now thought he was dead; so they hoodwinked the prefect of police, and hatched a conspiracy to overthrow the empire. He heard of it; it worried him. He left us, saying: 'Adieu, my children; guard the outposts; I shall return to you.' Bah! without him nothing went right; the generals lost their heads; the marshals talked nonsense and committed follies; but that was not surprising, for Napoleon, who was kind, had fed 'em on gold; they had got as fat as lard, and wouldn't stir; some stayed in camp when they ought to have been warming the backs of the enemy who was between us and France.
"But the Emperor came back, and he brought recruits, famous recruits; he changed their backbone and made 'em dogs of war, fit to set their teeth into anything; and he brought a guard of honor, a fine body indeed!--all bourgeois, who melted away like butter on a gridiron.
"Well, spite of our stern bearing, here's everything going against us; and yet the army did prodigies of valor. Then came battles on the mountains, nations against nations,--Dresden, Lutzen, Bautzen. Remember these days, all of you, for 'twas then that Frenchmen were so particularly heroic that a good grenadier only lasted six months. We triumphed always; yet there were those English, in our rear, rousing revolts against us with their lies! No matter, we cut our way home through the whole pack of the nations. Wherever the Emperor showed himself we followed him; for if, by sea or land, he gave us the word 'Go!' we went. At last, we were in France; and many a poor foot-soldier felt the air of his own country restore his soul to satisfaction, spite of the wintry weather. I can say for myself that it refreshed my life. Well, next, our business was to defend France, our country, our beautiful France, against all Europe, which resented our having laid down the law to the Russians, and pushed them back into their dens, so that they couldn't eat us up alive, as northern nations, who are dainty and like southern flesh, have a habit of doing,--at least, so I've heard some generals say. Then the Emperor saw his own father-in-law, his friends whom he had made kings, and the scoundrels to whom he had given back their thrones, all against him. Even Frenchmen, and allies in our own ranks, turned against us under secret orders, as at the battle of Leipsic. Would common soldiers have been capable of such wickedness? Three times a day men were false to their word,--and they called themselves princes!
"So, then, France was invaded. Wherever the Emperor showed his lion face, the enemy retreated; and he did more prodigies in defending France than ever he had done in conquering Italy, the East, Spain, Europe, and Russia. He meant to bury every invader under the sod, and teach 'em to respect the soil of France. So he let them get to Paris, that he might swallow them at a mouthful, and rise to the height of his genius in a battle greater than all the rest,--a mother-battle, as 'twere. But there, there! the Parisians were afraid for their twopenny skins, and their trumpery shops; they opened the gates. Then the Ragusades began, and happiness ended. The Empress was fooled, and the white banner flaunted from the windows. The generals whom he had made his nearest friends abandoned him for the Bourbons,--a set of people no one had heard tell of. The Emperor bade us farewell at Fontainebleau:--'Soldiers!'--I can hear him now; we wept like children; the flags and the eagles were lowered as if for a funeral: it was, I may well say it to you, it was the funeral of the Empire; her dapper armies were nothing now but skeletons. So he said to us, standing there on the portico of his palace:--'My soldiers! we are vanquished by treachery; but we shall meet in heaven, the country of the brave. Defend my child, whom I commit to you. Long live Napoleon II!' He meant to die, that no man should look upon Napoleon vanquished; he took poison, enough to have killed a regiment, because, like Jesus Christ before his Passion, he thought himself abandoned of God and his talisman. But the poison did not hurt him.
"See again! he found he was immortal.
"Sure of himself, knowing he must ever be THE EMPEROR, he went for a while to an island to study out the nature of these others, who, you may be sure, committed follies without end. Whilst he bided his time down there, the Chinese, and the wild men on the coast of Africa, and the Barbary States, and others who are not at all accommodating, knew so well he was more than man that they respected his tent, saying to touch it would be to offend God. Thus, d'ye see, when these others turned him from the doors of his own France, he still reigned over the whole world. Before long he embarked in the same little cockleshell of a boat he had had in Egypt, sailed round the beard of the English, set foot in France, and France acclaimed him. The sacred cuckoo flew from spire to spire; all France cried out with one voice, 'LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR!' In this region, here, the enthusiasm for that wonder of the ages was, I may say, solid. Dauphiné behaved well; and I am particularly pleased to know that her people wept when they saw, once more, the gray overcoat. March first it was, when Napoleon landed with two hundred men to conquer that kingdom of France and of Navarre, which on the twentieth of the same month was again the French Empire. On that day our MAN was in Paris; he had made a clean sweep, recovered his dear France, and gathered his veterans together by saying no more than three words, 'I am here.'
"'Twas the greatest miracle God had yet done! Before him, did ever man recover an empire by showing his hat? And these others, who thought they had subdued France! Not they! At sight of the eagles, a national army sprang up, and we marched to Waterloo. There, the Guard died at one blow. Napoleon, in despair, threw himself three times before the cannon of the enemy without obtaining death. We saw that. The battle was lost. That night the Emperor called his old soldiers to him; on the field soaked with our blood he burned his banner and his eagles,--his poor eagles, ever victorious, who cried 'Forward' in the battles, and had flown the length and breadth of Europe, they were saved the infamy of belonging to the enemy: all the treasures of England couldn't get her a tail-feather of them. No more eagles!--the rest is well known. The Red Man went over to the Bourbons, like the scoundrel that he is. France is crushed; the soldier is nothing; they deprive him of his dues; they discharge him to make room for broken-down nobles--ah, 'tis pitiable! They seized Napoleon by treachery; the English nailed him on a desert island in mid-ocean on a rock raised ten thousand feet above the earth; and there he is, and will be, till the Red Man gives him back his power for the happiness of France. These others say he's dead. Ha, dead! 'Tis easy to see they don't know Him. They tell that fib to catch the people, and feel safe in their hovel of a government. Listen! the truth at the bottom of it all is that his friends have left him alone on the desert island to fulfil a prophecy, for I forgot to say that his name, Napoleon, means 'lion of the desert.' Now this that I tell you is true as the Gospel. All other tales that you hear about the Emperor are follies without common-sense; because, d'ye see, God never gave to child of woman born the right to stamp his name in red as he did, on the earth, which forever shall remember him! Long live Napoleon, the father of his people and of the soldier!"
"Long live General Eblé!" cried the pontonier.
"How happened it you were not killed in the ravine at Moskova?" asked a peasant woman.
"How do I know? We went in a regiment, we came out a hundred foot-soldiers; none but the lines were capable of taking that redoubt: the infantry, d'ye see, that's the real army."
"And the cavalry! what of that?" cried Genastas, letting himself roll from the top of the hay, and appearing to us with a suddenness which made the bravest utter a cry of terror. "Eh! my old veteran, you forget the red lancers of Poniatowski, the cuirassiers, the dragoons! they that shook the earth when Napoleon, impatient that the victory was delayed, said to Murat, 'Sire, cut them in two.' Ha, we were off! first at a trot, then at a gallop, 'one, two,' and the enemy's line was cut in halves like an apple with a knife. A charge of cavalry, my old hero! why, 'tis a column of cannon balls!"
"How about the pontoniers?" cried Gondrin.
"My children," said Genastas, becoming suddenly quite ashamed of his sortie when he saw himself in the midst of a silent and bewildered group, "there are no spies here,--see, take this and drink to the Little Corporal."
"LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR!" cried all the people present, with one voice.
"Hush, my children!" said the officer, struggling to control his emotion. "Hush! he is dead. He died saying, 'Glory, France, and battle.' My friends, he had to die, he! but his memory--never!"
Goguelat made a gesture of disbelief; then he said in a low voice to those nearest, "The officer is still in the service, and he's told to tell the people the Emperor is dead. We mustn't be angry with him, because, d'ye see, a soldier has to obey orders."
As Genestas left the barn he heard the Fosseuse say, "That officer is a friend of the Emperor and of Monsieur Benassis." On that, all the people rushed to the door to get another sight of him, and by the light of the moon they saw the doctor take his arm.
"I committed a great folly," said Genestas. "Let us get home quickly. Those eagles--the cannon--the campaigns! I no longer knew where I was."
"What do you think of my Goguelat?" asked Benassis.
"Monsieur, so long as such tales are told, France will carry in her entrails the fourteen armies of the Republic, and may at any time renew the conversation of cannon with all Europe. That's my opinion."
GEORGE BANCROFT
(1800-1891)
BY AUSTIN SCOTT
he life of George Bancroft was nearly conterminous with the nineteenth century. He was born at Worcester, Mass., October 3d, 1800, and died at Washington, D.C., January 17th, 1891. But it was not merely the stretch of his years that identified him with this century. In some respects he represented his time as no other of its men. He came into touch with many widely differing elements which made up its life and character. He spent most of his life in cities, but never lost the sense for country sights and sounds which central Massachusetts gave him in Worcester, his birthplace, and in Northampton, where he taught school. The home into which he was born offered him from his infancy a rich possession. His father was a Unitarian clergyman who wrote a 'Life of Washington' that was received with favor; thus things concerning God and country were his patrimony. Not without significance was a word of his mother which he recalled in his latest years, "My son, I do not wish you to become a rich man, but I would have you be an affluent man: ad fluo, always a little more coming in than going out."
To the advantages of his boyhood home and of Harvard College, to which he went as a lad of thirteen, the eager young student added the opportunity, then uncommon, of a systematic course of study in German, and won the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Göttingen in 1820. He had in a marked degree the characteristics of his countrymen, versatility and adaptability. Giving up an early purpose of fitting himself for the pulpit, he taught in Harvard, and helped to found a school of an advanced type at Northampton. Meantime he published a volume of verse, and found out that the passionate love of poetry which lasted through his life was not creative. At Northampton he published in 1828 a translation in two volumes of Heeren's 'History of the Political System of Europe,' and also edited two editions of a Latin Reader; but the duties of a schoolmaster's life were early thrown aside, and he could not be persuaded to resume them later when the headship of an important educational institution was offered to him. Together with the one great pursuit of his life, to which he remained true for sixty years, he delighted in the activities of a politician, the duties of a statesman, and the occupations of a man of affairs and of the world.
Bancroft received a large but insufficient vote as the Democratic candidate for the Governorship of Massachusetts, and for a time he held the office of Collector of the port of Boston. As Secretary of the Navy in the Cabinet of Polk, he rendered to his country two distinct services of great value: he founded the Naval School at Annapolis, and by his prompt orders to the American commander in the Pacific waters he secured the acquisition of California for the United States. The special abilities he displayed in the Cabinet were such, so Polk thought, as to lead to his appointment as Minister to England in 1846. He was a diplomat of no mean order. President Johnson appointed him Minister to Germany in 1867, and Grant retained him at that post until 1874, as long as Bancroft desired it. During his stay there he concluded just naturalization treaties with Germany, and in a masterly way won from the Emperor, William I., as arbitrator, judgment in favor of the United States's claim over that of Great Britain in the Northwestern boundary dispute.
Always holding fast his one cherished object,--that of worthily writing the history of the United States,--Bancroft did not deny himself the pleasure of roaming in other fields. He wrote frequently on current topics, on literary, historical, and political subjects. His eulogies of Jackson and of Lincoln, pronounced before Congress, entitle him to the rank of an orator. He was very fond of studies in metaphysics, and Trendelenburg, the eminent German philosopher, said of him, "Bancroft knows Kant through and through."
His home--whether in Boston, or in New York where he spent the middle portion of his life, or in Washington his abode for the last sixteen years, or during his residence abroad--was the scene of the occupations and delights which the highest culture craves. He was gladly welcomed to the inner circle of the finest minds of Germany, and the tribute of the German men of learning was unfeigned and universal when he quitted the country in 1874. Many of the best men of England and of France were among his warm friends. At his table were gathered from time to time some of the world's greatest thinkers,--men of science, soldiers, statesmen and men of affairs. Fond as he was of social joys, it was his daily pleasure to mount his horse and alone, or with a single companion, to ride where nature in her shy or in her exuberant mood inspired. One day, after he was eighty years old, he rode on his young, blooded Kentucky horse along the Virginia bank of the Potomac for more than thirty-six miles. He could be seen every day among the perfect roses of his garden at "Roseclyffe," his Newport summer-home, often full of thought, at other times in wellnigh boisterous glee, always giving unstinted care and expense to the queen of flowers. The books in which he kept the record of the rose garden were almost as elaborate as those in which were entered the facts and fancies out of which his History grew. His home life was charming. By a careful use of opportunities and of his means he became an "affluent" man. He was twice married: both times a new source of refined domestic happiness long blessed his home, and new means for enlarged comfort and hospitality were added to his own. Two sons, children of his first wife, survived him.
Some of Bancroft's characteristics were not unlike those of Jefferson. A constant tendency to idealize called up in him at times a feeling verging on impatience with the facts or the men that stood in the way of a theory or the accomplishment of a personal desire. He had a keen perception of an underlying or a final truth and professed warm love for it, whether in the large range of history or in the nexus of current politics: any one taking a different point of view at times was led to think that his facts, as he stated them, lay crosswise, and might therefore find the perspective out of drawing, but could not rightly impugn his good faith.
Although a genuine lover of his race and a believer in Democracy, he was not always ready to put implicit trust in the individual as being capable of exercising a wise judgment and the power of true self-direction. For man he avowed a perfect respect; among men his bearing showed now and then a trace of condescension. In controversies over disputed points of history--and he had many such--he meant to be fair and to anticipate the final verdict of truth, but overwhelming evidence was necessary to convince him that his judgment, formed after painstaking research, could be wrong. His ample love of justice, however, is proved by his passionate appreciation of the character of Washington, by his unswerving devotion to the conception of our national unity, both in its historical development and at the moment when it was imperiled by civil war, and by his hatred of slavery and of false financial policies. He took pleasure in giving generously, but always judiciously and without ostentation. On one occasion he, with a few of his friends, paid off the debt from the house of an eminent scholar; on another, he helped to rebuild for a great thinker the home which had been burned. At Harvard, more than fifty years after his graduation, he founded a traveling scholarship and named it in honor of the president of his college days.
As to the manner of his work, Bancroft laid large plans and gave to the details of their execution unwearied zeal. The scope of the 'History of the United States' as he planned it was admirable. In carrying it out he was persistent in acquiring materials, sparing no pains in his research at home and abroad, and no cost in securing original papers or exact copies and transcripts from the archives of England and France, Spain and Holland and Germany, from public libraries and from individuals; he fished in all waters and drew fish of all sorts into his net. He took great pains, and the secretaries whom he employed to aid him in his work were instructed likewise to take great pains, not only to enter facts in the reference books in their chronological order, but to make all possible cross-references to related facts. The books of his library, which was large and rich in treasures, he used as tools, and many of them were filled with cross references. In the fly-leaves of the books he read he made note with a word and the cited page of what the printed pages contained of interest to him or of value in his work.
His mind was one of quick perceptions within a wide range, and always alert to grasp an idea in its manifold relations. It is remarkable, therefore, that he was very laborious in his method of work. He often struggled long with a thought for intellectual mastery. In giving it expression, his habit was to dictate rapidly and with enthusiasm and at great length, but he usually selected the final form after repeated efforts. His first draft of a chapter was revised again and again and condensed. One of his early volumes in its first manuscript form was eight times as long as when finally published. He had another striking habit, that of writing by topics rather than in strict chronological order, so that a chapter which was to find its place late in the volume was often completed before one which was to precede it. Partly by nature and perhaps partly by this practice, he had the power to carry on simultaneously several trains of thought. When preparing one of his public orations, it was remarked by one of his household that after an evening spent over a trifling game of bezique, the next morning found him well advanced beyond the point where the work had been seemingly laid down. He had the faculty of buoying a thought, knowing just where to take it up after an interruption and deftly splicing it in continuous line, sometimes after a long interval. When about to begin the preparation of the argument which was to sustain triumphantly the claim of the United States in the boundary question, he wrote from Berlin for copies of documents filed in the office of the Navy Department, which he remembered were there five-and-twenty years before.
The 'History of the United States from the Discovery of America to the Inauguration of Washington' is treated by Bancroft in three parts. The first, Colonial History from 1492 to 1748, occupies more than one fourth of his pages. The second part, the American Revolution, 1748 to 1782, claims more than one half of the entire work, and is divided into four epochs:--the first, 1748-1763, is entitled 'The Overthrow of the European Colonial System'; the second, 1763-1774, 'How Great Britain Estranged America'; the third, 1774-1776, 'America Declares Itself Independent'; the fourth, 1776-1782, 'The Independence of America is Acknowledged.' The last part, 'The History of the Formation of the Constitution,' 1782-1789, though published as a separate work, is essentially a continuation of the History proper, of which it forms in bulk rather more than one tenth.
If his services as a historian are to be judged by any one portion of his work rather than by another, the history of the formation of the Constitution affords the best test. In that the preceding work comes to fruition; the time of its writing, after the Civil War and the consequent settling of the one vexing question by the abolition of sectionalism, and when he was in the fullness of the experience of his own ripe years, was most opportune. Bancroft was equal to his opportunity. He does not teach us that the Constitution is the result of superhuman wisdom, nor on the other hand does he admit, as John Adams asserted, that however excellent, the Constitution was wrung "from the grinding necessity of a reluctant people." He does not fail to point out the critical nature of the four years prior to the meeting of the Federal Convention; but he discerns that whatever occasions, whether transitory or for the time of "steady and commanding influence," may help or hinder the formation of the now perfect union, its true cause was "an indwelling necessity" in the people to "form above the States a common constitution for the whole."
Recognizing the fact that the primary cause for the true union was remote in origin and deep and persistent, Bancroft gives a retrospect of the steps toward union from the founding of the colonies to the close of the war for independence. Thenceforward, suggestions as to method or form of amending the Articles of Confederation, whether made by individuals, or State Legislatures, or by Congress, were in his view helps indeed to promote the movement; but they were first of all so many proofs that despite all the contrary wayward surface indications, the strong current was flowing independently toward the just and perfect union. Having acknowledged this fundamental fact of the critical years between Yorktown and the Constitution, the historian is free to give just and discriminating praise to all who shared at that time in redeeming the political hope of mankind, to give due but not exclusive honor to Washington and Thomas Paine, to Madison and Hamilton and their co-worthies.
The many attempts, isolated or systematic, during the period from 1781-1786, to reform the Articles of Confederation, were happily futile; but they were essential in the training of the people in the consciousness of the nature of the work for which they are responsible. The balances must come slowly to a poise. Not merely union strong and for a time effective, was needed, but union of a certain and unprecedented sort: one in which the true pledge of permanency for a continental republic was to be found in the federative principle, by which the highest activities of nation and of State were conditioned each by the welfare of the other. The people rightly felt, too, that a Congress of one house would be inadequate and dangerous. They waited in the midst of risks for the proper hour, and then, not reluctantly but resolutely, adopted the Constitution as a promising experiment in government.
Bancroft's treatment of the evolution of the second great organic act of this time--the Northwestern ordinance--is no less just and true to the facts. For two generations men had snatched at the laurels due to the creator of that matchless piece of legislation; to award them now to Jefferson, now to Nathan Dane, now to Rufus King, now to Manasseh Cutler. Bancroft calmly and clearly shows how the great law grew with the kindly aid and watchful care of these men and of others.
The deliberations of the Federal Constitution are adequately recorded; and he gives fair relative recognition to the work and words of individuals, and the actions of State delegations in making the great adjustments between nation and States, between large and small and slave and free States. From his account we infer that the New Jersey plan was intended by its authors only for temporary use in securing equality for the States in one essential part of the government, while the men from Connecticut receive credit for the compromise which reconciled nationality with true State rights. Further to be noticed are the results of the exhaustive study which Bancroft gave to the matter of paper money, and to the meaning of the clause prohibiting the States from impairing the obligation of contracts. He devotes nearly one hundred pages to 'The People of the States in Judgment on the Constitution,' and rightly; for it is the final act of the separate States, and by it their individual wills are merged in the will of the people, which is one, though still politically distributed and active within State lines. His summary of the main principles of the Constitution is excellent; and he concludes with a worthy sketch of the organization of the first Congress under the Constitution, and of the inauguration of Washington as President.
In this last portion of the 'History,' while all of his merits as a historian are not conspicuous, neither are some of his chief defects. Here the tendency to philosophize, to marshal stately sentences, and to be discursive, is not so marked.
The first volume of Bancroft's 'History of the United States' was published in 1834, when the democratic spirit was finding its first full expression under Jackson, and when John Marshall was finishing his mighty task of revealing to the people of the United States the strength that lay in their organic law. As he put forth volume after volume at irregular intervals for fifty years, he in a measure continued this work of bringing to the exultant consciousness of the people the value of their possession of a continent of liberty and the realization of their responsibility. In the course of another generation, portions of this 'History of the United States' may begin to grow antiquated, though the most brilliant of contemporary journalists quite recently placed it among the ten books indispensable to every American; but time cannot take away Bancroft's good part in producing influences, which, however they may vary in form and force, will last throughout the nation's life.
