Napoleon and his court

by C. S. Forester

IT is much more than a hundred years since Napoleon lived; since his time we have witnessed cataclysms more vast than were the Napoleonic wars; the Europe of that period seems to us as unfamiliar and as profitless a study as Siam or primitive Australia. Perhaps this is so. Perhaps the lessons to be drawn from the Napoleonic era are now exhausted. Perhaps the epoch ushered in by Marengo is slight and unimportant compared to that which follows the Marne. Perhaps Englishmen will forget the men who stood firm in the squares at Waterloo, and will only remember those who stood firm at Ypres and the Second Marne. Perhaps the Congress of Vienna will lapse into insignificance when compared with the Congress of Versailles. But this is inconceivable. Previously, perhaps, too much importance has been attached to the Napoleonic era, but that is because it had no parallel; it was unique. Similarly the period pivoting about the Great War of 1914-18 might be said to be unique, but it is not so. The two epochs are very closely related, very closely indeed. Much may be gained from the study of either, but this is nothing to be compared with the gain resulting from the study and comparison of the two together. In this way the Napoleonic era becomes more significant even than it was before the great war, and this without considering how much of the great war was directly due to arrangements made as a consequence of Napoleon’s career.

But apart from all such considerations, the study of the period is one from which a great deal of purely personal pleasure can be derived. Even nowadays one cannot help a thrill of excitement when reading of the advance of the British infantry at Albuera; one cannot help feeling a surge of emotion on reading how Alvarez at the siege of Gerona moaned “No surrender! No surrender!” although he was dying of fever and half the populace lay dead in the streets, while the other half still fought on against all the might of Reille and St. Cyr. Even the best novel compares unfavourably with Ségur’s account of the Russian campaign; and although there is no French biographer quite as good as Boswell, yet there are scores of memoirs and biographies of the period which rank very nearly as high, and which are pleasant to read at all times. Marbot may be untruthful, but he is delightful reading; Madame Junot gives a picture of her times and of the people whom she met which is honestly worthy of comparison with Dickens and Thackeray; while to track down in their memoirs Fouché’s and Talleyrand’s carefully concealed mistakes is as interesting a pastime as ever was the attempt to guess the dénouement in a modern detective novel.

The literature of the time is full of happy anecdotes, some of which have attained the supreme honour of being taken out bodily, furnished with modern trimmings, and published in twentieth century magazines, without acknowledgment, as modern humour. But many have escaped this fate, partly because they are untranslatable, and partly because they bear the definite imprint of the period. Thus there is the story of the fat and pursy King of Würtemberg, who once kept waiting a committee of the Congress of Vienna. At last he arrived, and as his portly majesty came bustling through the door, Talleyrand remarked, “Here comes the King of Würtemberg, ventre à terre.” In a grimmer vein is the story of the reception held on the night after Ney was shot. The company were mournfully discussing the tragedy, when a certain M. Lemaréchal was announced. As this gentleman had a son of mature years, the announcement was worded “M. Lemaréchal ainé”—which the panic-stricken assembly heard as “M. le Maréchal Ney.”

Some of the heroes of that time have had the bad luck to be misrepresented not only in literature but even in portraits and in sculpture. Napoleon had at one time the plan of placing statues of all his generals in the Louvre, but he abdicated before the work was anywhere near completion, and left its continuation to his successors. Louis and Charles did nothing towards it, and the parsimonious Louis Philippe, when he came to the throne, decided as a measure of economy only to represent the most famous. But some of the statues of junior officers were already finished. Louis Philippe saw his chance of still greater economy. For Lasalle’s head was substituted Lannes’; for Colbert’s, Mortier’s; while the entire statue of St. Hilaire was simply labelled Masséna and set up without further alteration. These statues are still in the Louvre; no subsequent correction has ever been made.

But the anecdotes are responsible for only a very small part of the interest of Napoleonic literature. Many of the subsequent histories are very nearly models of everything a book ought to be. Napier’s “Peninsular War,” despite its bias and its frequent inaccuracies, has already become a classic; Sir Charles Oman’s work on the same subject is much more striking and makes a far greater appeal. His descriptions of the siege of Gerona and of the cavalry pursuit at Tudela are more moving in their cold eloquence than ever was Napier at his fieriest. One English author whose books have attracted far less attention than they should have done is Mr. F. Loraine Petre; his accurate and impartial histories of the successive Napoleonic campaigns are dramatic enough to hold the interest of the ordinary reader as well as that of the military student. In matters other than military, the writer whose reputation overtops all others is M. Frédéric Masson. His celebrity is such that it would be almost impertinence to cavil at his writings. For painstaking and careful accumulation of evidence he stands far and away above all his contemporaries. He examines and brings to notice every single detail. A catalogue of an Empress’s chemises interests him as deeply as a list of a Council of State. The trouble is that his catalogue of chemises is merely a catalogue of chemises—as interesting as a laundress’s bill. M. Masson’s books are exceedingly important and invaluable to the student: but that they are important and invaluable is all one can say about them.

The ultimate source of much information is, of course, the endless collection of volumes of Napoleon’s correspondence. Even merely to glance at one of these is a lesson in industry far more thorough than anything achieved by the worthy Dr. Samuel Smiles and his like. Examination of a single day’s correspondence is sufficient to show the complexity of Napoleon’s interests, the extent of his knowledge of each subject, and the nature of the driving power which built up the First Empire. Close study of the Correspondence is necessary to enable one to follow the twists and turns of Napoleon’s policy; the main difficulty is that the bundle of hay is so large that the finding of needles in it is a painfully tedious business. However, the casual reader will find that this spadework has been done for him by a large number of painstaking writers. Even during the present century several English authors have published books upon particular events and persons of the Napoleonic era. Mr. Hilliard Atteridge is an example of those who have done the best work in this direction. But the greater number of these books seem to be struck with the same blight—they are ineffably tedious. Generally they are most correct as to facts; their impartiality is admirable; the knowledge displayed is wide; but they are most terribly boring to read. They are useful to familiarize the reader with the various persons described so that their place in the whole period is better understood, for the Napoleonic era is a tangled skein of threads, each of them a different personality, wound round and completely dependent upon the central core, which is Napoleon.

Of biographies and general histories it is impossible to speak definitely. Napoleon can boast hundreds more lives than any cat in fact or fancy. The percentage of lies contained in books on Napoleon varies between ten and ninety—and what is more aggravating is that the picturesque and readable lives are usually those which contain the most inexactitudes. It is perfectly safe to say that no Life of Napoleon has ever been written which combines complete accuracy with genuine readableness. This is of small account, however, for one has only to read enough of the readable and inexact lives to form a fairly correct opinion on most matters of importance at the same time as one enjoys both the reading and the forming of the opinion. The contemporary memoirs are very useful, and are mainly interesting. Bourrienne’s biography is rather overrated usually, for he is unreliable in personal matters, and a great deal of his book is undeniably heavy. One of his most illuminating pictures shows Napoleon driving with him over the countryside, and ignoring the beauty of the scenery in favour of the military features of the landscape. This anecdote receives an additional interest when it is recalled that an exactly similar story is told of von Schlieffen, the German Chief of Staff of the ’nineties, who planned the advance through Belgium which had such vast consequences in 1914. One certainly cannot help thinking that if Napoleon had been at the head of the German army at that date he, too, would have advanced through Belgium, and this tiny parallel offers curious corroboration. Such a move would have been in complete accordance with Napoleon’s character—compare Bernadotte’s march through Anspach in 1805. The way in which Napoleon took enormous risks, such as this, and his method of securing the friendship of other Powers by storming and bluster instead of by finesse, is the most curious trait of his whole curious character. Bourrienne offers several examples; so do Talleyrand, Fouché, Pasquier and Molé.

For some decades after Napoleon’s death an immense amount of spurious or heavily revised reminiscent literature appeared. Constant (the valet), Josephine, and various others, are credited with volumes of ingeniously written memoirs. They are well worth reading, but they contain little worth remembering. In many matters they are demonstrably incorrect, and they are generally prejudiced and misleading. For personal and intimate details one of the best contemporary writers is de Bausset, who certainly wrote the book which bears his name, and who equally certainly was in a position to perceive what he described, for he was a palace official for many years under the Empire.

In military matters the Marshals’ memoirs are peculiarly enlightening, not so much in matters of detail (in fact they are frequently incorrect there) but in exhibiting the characters of the writers themselves. Davout’s book is just what one would expect of him, cold and unrelenting and yet sound and brilliant. Suchet’s is cynical and clever and subtle, and, if necessary, untrue. St. Cyr’s displays his jealousy, suspicion and general unpleasantness along with undoubted proof of talent. Macdonald’s is bluff and honest. There is a whole host of smaller fry, from Marbot downwards, who wrote fascinating little books about the Army and their own personal experiences. Some of them, such as the Reminiscences of Colonel de Gonneville, have appeared in English. They are all obtainable in French. The last authority, of course, on military matters is the Correspondence. There are only one or two doubtful letters in the whole collection, and these are either printed with reserve or bear the proofs of their spuriousness on the face of them.

But no matter how much is written, or published, or read, no two men will ever form quite the same estimate of Napoleon. It is as easy to argue that he only rose through sheer good luck as it is to argue that he only fell through sheer bad luck. He can be compared to Iscariot or to St. Paul, to Alexander or to Wilhelm II. At times he seems a body without a soul; at others, a soul without a body. All this seems to indicate that he was a man of contradictions, but on the other hand he was, admittedly, thoroughly consistent in all his actions. The most one can hope for is to form one’s own conclusions about him; one cannot hope to form other people’s.