These brief biographies are sufficient to illustrate what kind of men the Marshals and their master were. With only a few exceptions they were all traitors, from Napoleon, plotting against the constitution he had sworn to uphold, to Ney, deserting his King. They were greedy, they were unscrupulous, they were selfish. Many of them were men of second-rate talent. Two attributes they had in common—extreme personal bravery and enormous experience in war. Soult is the only Marshal about whom we find any hints of cowardice (and there seems to be no foundation for these hints), while Suchet, Mortier and Brune were the only ones who had not served in the pre-Revolutionary army. None of the Marshals was a heaven-sent genius, and only one, Davout, combined loyalty and honesty with both military and administrative ability.
There is, of course, another side to the picture. If treachery can be excused at all, then there were good excuses for the treachery of every one of the guilty ones; if their talents appear mediocre to us now, it cannot be denied that they were nevertheless highly successful for a long period; if they were self-seeking, they were always ready, despite their riches and titles, to risk their lives in action at the head of their men.
The extravagant praise often meted out collectively to Napoleon’s subordinates is undeserved, but somehow one can hardly avoid coming to the conclusion that a nation might well consider itself fortunate could it muster a similar array of men in high places.
AUGEREAU DUC DE CASTIGLIONE
CHAPTER X
BROTHERS
NAPOLEON was one of a large family, children of a shiftless father and a wonderful mother. Much the same might be said of a large number of other successful men—Moltke and Lincoln, for instance. But it is doubtful whether any importance from a eugenic point of view can be attached to this circumstance, for although some of the other Bonapartes showed undoubted talent in various directions, not one of them has ever displayed greatness comparable to the Emperor’s. Biologically, Napoleon might be said to be a “sport,” a “mutation,” as de Vries would say. Yet even this theory is open to controversy, for mutations usually breed true, and none of Napoleon’s children ever showed, as far as can be ascertained, any really striking amount of talent. Napoleon may thus be considered to be an isolated incident in his family history, one of the many immovable facts which are so gingerly skirted round by eugenists and other theorists.
What achievements can be ascribed to the brothers of the man who achieved so much? A few impracticable suggestions, a few novels (diluted St. Pierre, most of them), a few lost battles, a few lost kingdoms; beyond that—nothing. Louis was the father of Napoleon III., a clever man with many natural disadvantages mingled with his advantages. Lucien saved one unpleasant situation when president of the Council of Five Hundred in 1799. Jerome’s grandson was a fairly eminent lawyer of the United States. The other Bonapartes were like their fathers and grandfathers before them, dilettanti, wobblers, unstable and irresponsible.
But useless as were Napoleon’s brothers to him, he nevertheless bore with them patiently for years. A clannish clinging together is to be noticed in all their dealings, both while they were obscure and while they were powerful. An early Corsican environment may perhaps account for this, or perhaps it is to be ascribed to the intense pride in himself which Napoleon felt, and which perhaps was extended to all of his own blood.
Napoleon, the second son, and Joseph, the eldest, were separated from the other brothers and sisters by a gap of some seven years; the intervening children had died in infancy. When Charles Bonaparte, the father, died, therefore, it was upon these two that the headship of the family and the attendant responsibility fell. Joseph had already shown signs of his general uselessness. His mathematics and education generally had been too weak for him to have much chance of success in the army; he flinched from the Church, and therefore returned to Corsica to farm the few acres the Bonapartes possessed, and to carry on somehow, Micawber-like, until something turned up.