In the name of this fraternal spirit, we see the great Napoleon surrounded by a hotbed of assassins demanding his life in the name of the Founder of our faith. He was the ruler, as I have said, of a vast Empire, sworn to protect its laws, its dignity, and its citizen rights by defending himself and his country against either treachery, plotters against his life, or open enemies, no matter from what quarter they came. The Duc d'Enghien violated the law, and was therefore as liable to suffer the consequences as any peasant or middle-class person would have been. But this did not meet with the approval of the international oligarchy, so they set up a screaming factory and blared this murderous deed into the minds of all the Western world. These fervent professors of the Christian faith were in no way particular as to the form or authenticity of their declamatory ebullitions.
But what of Nelson? He was a subject of his King, employed by the King's Government under certain plenary powers to fight the country's battles, defend its right, uphold its dignity, guard its honour, and commit no violence. That is, in plain English, he was to play the game. But he assumed an authority that no Government of England would have dared to have given him by revoking the word of honour of a distinguished officer who had pledged England's word that the lives of the beleaguered men would be spared. I think the writer of the gospel of "Let brotherly love continue," and the rhetoricians who claim that Britons have no competitors in the science of moral rectitude, will have a hard task to square the unworthy declamations against Napoleon's responsibility in the Duc d'Enghien affair with their silence on Nelson's in breaking the truce already referred to, and the awful consequences set forth in Mr. Fox's speech, which is reminiscent of the powerful disciplinary methods of that manly martinet Ivan the Terrible, who was responsible for the massacre of men by the thousand, flaying of prisoners alive, collecting pyramids of skulls, slaughtering of innocent men, and the free use of other ingenious forms of refined scientific torture which tires the spirit to relate. It is hard to forgive Nelson for having smirched his own and England's name with atrocities so terrible. But more humiliating still to British honour is the fact that his part in the breaking of the treaty was dictated to him from the quarter deck of the Foudroyant by a woman whom my vocabulary is unable to describe in fitting terms. I shall emphasize this masculine female's orders to Nelson by quoting them again. Were it not for the comic impertinence of the order, I think it would almost make me feel the bitterness of death. Nelson seems to have been the victim of her dominating spirit, though the evidence in support of him swallowing the whole dose of medicine is quite feeble. That he swallowed too much of it will always detract from his fame. "Haul down the flag of truce, Bronte. No truce with rebels." Nelson lost a great opportunity of adding romance to his naval glory by neglecting his imperative duty in not putting Sir William Hamilton's wife in irons or having her thrown into the sea. A story of this kind would have sounded better, and its effect would have electrified the world in subsequent days, and have given scope to the talents of actors and authors who are eager for dramatic copy.
I think Cardinal Ruffo would have been a supporter of imposing some form of disciplinary restraint on Emma Hamilton. He did strongly insist on the treaty being honourably adhered to, but his view was overruled, and he retired in consequence in bitter indignation.
So much for the vaunted fairness and impartiality of our treatment of Napoleon!
It is only when we come to study the life of this man that we realize how he towered above all his contemporaries in thought, word, and deed. Napoleon's authentic doings and sayings are wonderful in their vast comprehensiveness and sparkling vision, combined with flawless wisdom. When we speak or think of him, it is generally of his military genius and achievements and of what we term his "gigantic ambition"; and in this latter conclusion the platitudinarians, with an air of originality, languidly affirm that this was the cause of his ruin, the grandeur of which we do not understand. But never a word is said or thought of our own terrible tragedies, nor of the victories we were compelled to buy in order to secure his downfall. His great gifts as a lawgiver and statesman are little known or spoken of. Nelson's views of him were of a rigid, stereotyped character. He only varied in his wild manner of describing him as a loathsome despot, whose sole aim was to make war everywhere and to invade England and annihilate her people.
II
In the light of what is happening now in the world-war 1914-1917, and the world-wide views expressed about the German Kaiser, it may be interesting to write Pitt's opinion of Napoleon, though they are scarcely to be mentioned in the same breath. The former, who is the creator of the world-tragedy, is a mere shadow in comparison to the great genius of whom Muller, the Swiss historian, says: "Quite impartially and truly, as before God, I must say that the variety of his knowledge, the acuteness of his observations, the solidity of his understanding (not dazzling wit), his grand and comprehensive views, filled me with astonishment, and his manner of speaking to me with love for him. By his genius and his disinterested goodness, he has also conquered me." But I give another authority, Wieland, the German author, who was disillusioned when he had the honour of a conversation with Napoleon on the field of Jena. Amongst the many topics they spoke of was the restoration of public worship in France by Napoleon. In his reply to the German writer as to why religion was not more philosophical and in harmony with the spirit of the times, Napoleon replied, "My dear Wieland, religion is not meant for philosophers! They have no faith either in me or my priests. As to those who do believe, it would be difficult to give them, or leave them too much of the marvellous. If I had to frame a religion for philosophers, it would be just the reverse of that of the credulous part of mankind." Wieland's testimony of Napoleon is quite as appreciative as that of Muller, and coming from him to the great conqueror of his native land makes it an invaluable piece of impartial history which reverses the loose and vindictive libels that were insidiously circulated by a gang of paid scoundrels in order to prejudice public opinion against him. Wieland, among other eulogies of him, says: "I have never beheld any one more calm, more simple, more mild or less ostentatious in appearance; nothing about him indicated the feeling of power in a great monarch." He conversed with him for an hour and a half, "to the great surprise of the whole assembly."
Here we have a brief but very high testimony from two men of literary distinction, who had formed their impressions by personal contact. The present writer's belief is that had members of the British Government been guided by reason and sound judgment instead of blind, wicked prejudice; had they accepted overtures made to them from time to time by the head of the French nation during his rule, we should not have been engaged during the last five years in a world-war watering the earth with the blood of our race with reckless extravagance. The great soldier-statesman foretold what would happen. What irony that we should be in deadly conflict with the Power which, as an ally, helped to destroy him and is now engaged in frantic efforts to destroy us! Had Pitt and those who acted with him been endowed with human wisdom, he would not have written the following lines, but would have held out the olive-branch of peace and goodwill to men on earth:—
I see (says Pitt in a scrap of MS. found amongst his papers) various and opposite qualities—all the great and all the little passions unfavourable to public tranquillity united in the breast of one man, and of that man, unhappily, whose personal caprice can scarce fluctuate for an hour without affecting the destiny of Europe. I see the inward workings of fear struggling with pride in an ardent, enterprising, and tumultuous mind. I see all the captious jealousy of conscious usurpation, dreaded, detested, and obeyed, the giddiness and intoxication of splendid but unmerited success, the arrogance, the presumption, the selfwill of unlimited and idolized power, and more dreadful than all in the plenitude of authority, the restless and incessant activity of guilt, but unsated ambition.
This scrap of mere phrases indicates a mind that was far beneath the calibre of that of a real statesman. It was a terrible fate for Great Britain to have at the head of the Government a man whose public life was a perpetual danger to the state. Had Pitt been the genius his eloquence led his contemporaries to believe he was, he would have availed himself of the opportunities the Great Figure, who was making the world rock with his genius, afforded the British Government from time to time of making peace on equitable terms. But Pitt's vision of the large things that constituted human existence was feeble and narrowed down to the nightmare of the "tumultuous mind" whose sole aim was the conquest of the Continent of Europe and the invasion of these Islands. The "usurper" must be subdued by the force of arms, the squandering of British wealth, and the sanguinary sacrifice of human lives. That was the only diplomacy his mental organism could evolve. He used his power of expression, which was great, to such good purpose that his theories reflected on his supporters. Had Pitt been talented in matters of international diplomacy, as he was in the other affairs of Government, he would have seized the opportunity of making the Peace of Amiens universal and durable. It is futile to contend that Napoleon was irreconcilable. His great ambition was to form a concrete friendship with our Government, which he foresaw could be fashioned into a continental arrangement, intricate and entangled as all the elements were at the time. Napoleon never ceased to deplore the impossibility of coming to any reciprocal terms with England so long as Pitt's influence was in the ascendant, and he and a large public in France and in this country profoundly believed that Fox had not only the desire but the following, and all the diplomatic qualities to bring it about. Any close, impartial student of history, free from the popular prejudices which assailed Napoleon's origin and advent to power, cannot but concede the great possibilities of this view.