Tom Burke Of "Ours", Volume I

by Charles James Lever

Without heeding the reiterated professions of the little tailor of his desire for my patronage, I strolled out again, lost in reflection, and sick to the heart of a system based on such duplicity and deception.

At last in Mayence! What a change of life was this to me! A large fortress garrisoned by twelve thousand men, principally artillery, awaited here the orders of the Consul; but whither the destination before them, or what the hour when the word to march was to summon them, none could tell. Meanwhile the activity of the troops was studiously kept up; battering trains of field artillery were exercised day after day; the men were practised in all the movements of the field; while the foundries were unceasingly occupied in casting guns and the furnaces rolled forth their myriads of shell and shot. Staff-officers came and went; expresses arrived from Paris; and orderlies, travel-stained and tired, galloped in from the other fortified places near; but still no whisper came to say where the great game of war was to open, for what quarter of the globe the terrible carnage was destined. From daylight till dark no moment of our time was unoccupied; reports innumerable were to be furnished on every possible subject; and frequently it was far in the night ere I returned to rest.

To others this unbroken monotony may have been wearisome and uninteresting; to me each incident bore upon the great cause I gloried in,—the dull rumble of the caissons, the heavy clattering of the brass guns, were music to my ear, and I never wearied of the din and clamor that spoke of preparation. Such was indeed the preoccupation of my thoughts that I scarcely marked the course of events which were even then passing, or the mighty changes that already moved across the destinies of France. To my eyes the conqueror of Lodi needed no title; what sceptre could equal his own sword? France might desire in her pride to unite her destinies with such a name as his; but he, the general of Italy and Egypt, could not be exalted by any dignity. Such were my boyish fancies; and as I indulged them, again there grew up the hope within me that a brighter day was yet to beam on my own fortunes, when I should do that which even in his eyes might seem worthy. His very reproaches stirred my courage and nerved my heart. There was a combat, there was a battlefield, before me, in which my whole fame and honor lay; and could I but succeed in making him confess that he had wronged me, what pride was in the thought? “Yes,” said I, again and again, “a devotion to him such as I can offer must have success: one who, like me, has neither home nor friends nor country to share his heart, must have room in it for one passion; and that shall be glory. She whom alone I could have loved,—I dared not confess I did love her,—never could be mine. Life must have its object; and what so noble as that before me?” My very dreams caught up the infatuation of my waking thoughts, and images of battle, deadly contests, and terrific skirmishes were constantly passing before me; and I actually went my daily rounds of duty buried in these thoughts, and lost to everything save what ministered to my excited imagination.

We who lived far away on the distant frontier could but collect from the journals the state of excitement and enthusiasm into which every class of the capital was thrown by Napoleon's elevation to the Monarchy. Never perhaps in any country did the current of popular favor run in a stream so united. The army hailed him as their brother of the sword, and felt the proud distinction that the chief of the Empire was chosen from their ranks. The civilian saw the restoration of Monarchy as the pledge of that security which alone was wanting to consolidate national prosperity. The clergy, however they may have distrusted his sincerity, could not but acknowledge that to his influence was owing the return of the ancient faith; and, save the Vendeans, broken and discomfited, and the scattered remnants of the Jacobin party, discouraged by the fate of Moreau, none raised a voice against him. A few of the old Republicans, among whom was Camot, did, it is true, proclaim their dissent; but so moderately, and with so little of partisan spirit, as to call forth a eulogium on their honorable conduct from Napoleon himself.

The mighty change, which was to undo all the long and arduous struggles for liberty which took years in their accomplishments, was effected in one burst of national enthusiasm. Surrounded by nations on whose friendship they dared not reckon,—at war with their most powerful enemy, England,—France saw herself dependent on the genius of one great man; and beheld, too, the formidable conspiracy for his assassination, coupled with the schemes against her own independence. He became thus indissolubly linked with her fortunes; self-interest and gratitude pointed both in the same direction to secure his services; and the Imperial Crowa was indeed less the reward of the past than the price of the future. Even they who loved him least, felt that in his guidance there was safety, and that without him the prospect was dark and dreary and threatening.

Another element which greatly contributed to the same effect, was the social ruin caused by the Revolution; the destruction of all commerce, the forfeiture of property, had thrown every class into the service of the Government. Men gladly advocated a change by which the ancient forms of a Monarchy might be restored; and with them the long train of patronage and appointments, their inevitable attendants. Even the old families of the kingdom hailed the return of an order of things which might include them in the favors of the Crown; and the question now was, what rank or class should be foremost in tendering their allegiance to the new sovereign. We should hesitate ere we condemn the sudden impulse by which many were driven at this period. Confiscation and exile had done much to break the spirit of even the hardiest; and the very return to the institutions in which all their ancient prejudices were involved seemed a pledge against the tyranny of the mass.

As for Napoleon himself, each step in his proud career seemed to evoke the spirit necessary to direct it; the resources of his mighty intellect appeared, with every new drain on them, only the more inexhaustible. Animated through his whole life by the one great principle,—the aggrandizement of France,—his vast intelligence gathering strength with his own increase of power, enabled him to cultivate every element of national greatness, and mould their energies to his will; till at length the nation seemed but one vast body, of which he was the heart, the impulse, that sent the life-blood bounding through all its arteries, and with whose beating pulses every, even the most remote portion, throbbed in unison.

The same day that established the Empire, declared the rank and dignity accorded to each member of the royal family, with the titles to be borne by the ministers and other high officers of the Crown. The next step was the creation of a new order of nobility,—one which, without ancient lineage or vast possessions, could still command the respect and admiration of all,—the marshals of France. The names of Berthier, Murat, Augereau, Massena, Bernadotte, Ney, Soult, Lannes, Mortier, Davoust, Bessieres, were enough to throw a blaze of lustre on the order. And had it not been for the omission of Macdonald's name in this glorious list, public enthusiasm had been complete; but then he was the friend of Moreau, and Bonaparte “did not forgive.”

The restoration of the old titles so long in abeyance, the return to the pomp and state of Monarchy, seemed like a national fête, and Paris became the scene of a splendid festivity and a magnificence unknown for many years past. It was necessary for the new Court to make its impression on the world; and the endeavor was to eclipse, by luxury and splendor, the grandeur which in the days of the Bourbons was an heirloom of royalty. To this end functionaries and officers of the Palace were appointed in myriads; brilliant and costly uniforms adopted; courtly titles and ceremonial observances increased without end; and etiquette, carried to a pitch of strictness which no former reign had ever exhibited, now regulated every department of the state.

While, however, nothing was too minute or too trivial, provided that it bore, even in the remotest way, on the re-establishment of that throne he had so long and so ardently desired, Napoleon's great mind was eagerly bent upon the necessity of giving to the Empire one of those astounding evidences of his genius which marked him as above all other men. He wished to show to France that the Crown had devolved upon the rightful successor to Charlemagne, and to prove to the army that the purple mantle of royalty could not conceal the spur of the warrior; and thus, while all believed him occupied with the ordinary routine of the period, his ambitious thoughts were carrying him away across the Pyrenees or beyond the Danube, to battlefields of even greater glory than ever, and to conquests prouder than all his former ones.