30th.—Whenever the Emperor took up a subject, if he was in the least animated, his language was fit to be printed. He has often, when an idea struck him forcibly, dictated in an off-hand way to any one of us who happened to be in his way, pages of the most polished diction. The other gentlemen of his suite must possess a great many of these dictations, which are all most valuable. Unfortunately for me, the weak state of my eyes, which prevented me from writing, most frequently deprived me of this advantage.
On one occasion, when the English ministerial newspapers adverted to the treasures which Napoleon must possess, and which he, no doubt, concealed, the Emperor dictated as follows:
“You wish to know the treasures of Napoleon? They are immense, it is true, but they are all exposed to light. They are: The noble harbours of Antwerp and Flushing, which are capable of containing the largest fleets, and of protecting them against the ice from the sea,—the hydraulic works at Dunkirk, Havre, and Nice,—the immense harbour of Cherbourg,—the maritime works at Venice,—the beautiful roads from Antwerp to Amsterdam; from Mentz to Metz; from Bordeaux to Bayonne;—the passes of the Simplon, of Mont Cenis, of Mont Genevre, of La Corniche, which open a communication through the Alps in four different directions; and which exceed in grandeur, in boldness, and in skill of execution, all the works of the Romans: in these alone you will find eight hundred millions;—the roads from the Pyrenees to the Alps, from Parma to Spezzia, from Savona to Piedmont,—the bridges of Jena, Austerlitz, the Arts, Sevres, Tours, Rouanne, Lyons, Turin, of the Isere, of the Durance, of Bordeaux, of Rouen, &c.—the canal which connects the Rhine with the Rhone by the Doubs, and thus unites the North Sea with the Mediterranean; the canal which connects the Scheldt with the Somme, and thus joins Paris and Amsterdam; the canal which unites the Rance with the Vilaine; the canal of Arles, that of Pavia, and the canal of the Rhine—the draining of the marshes of Burgoing, of the Cotentin, of Rochfort—the rebuilding of the greater number of the churches destroyed during the Revolution—the building of others—the institution of numerous establishments of industry for the suppression of mendicity—the works at the Louvre—the construction of public warehouses, of the Bank, of the canal of the Ourcq—the distribution of water in the city of Paris—the numerous sewers, the quays, the embellishments, and the monuments of that large capital—the works for the embellishment of Rome—the re-establishment of the manufactures of Lyons—the creation of many hundreds of cotton manufactories for spinning and for weaving, which employ several millions of hands—funds accumulated to establish upwards of 400 manufactories of sugar from beet-root, for the consumption of part of France, and which would have furnished sugar at the same price as the West Indies, if they had continued to receive encouragement for only four years longer—the substitution of woad for indigo, which would have been at last brought to equal in quality, and not to exceed in price, the indigo from the Colonies—numerous manufactories for all kinds of objects of art, &c.—fifty millions expended in repairing and beautifying the palaces belonging to the Crown—sixty millions in furniture for the palaces belonging to the Crown in France and in Holland, at Turin, and at Rome—sixty millions in diamonds for the Crown, all purchased with Napoleon’s money—the Regent (the only diamond that was left belonging to the former diamonds of the Crown) withdrawn from the hands of the Jews at Berlin, with whom it had been pledged for three millions—the Napoleon Museum, valued at upwards of four hundred millions, filled with objects legitimately acquired either by money or treaties of peace known to the whole world, by virtue of which the master-pieces it contains were given in lieu of territory or of contributions—several millions amassed for the encouragement of agriculture, which is the paramount consideration for the interest of France—the introduction into France of Merino sheep, &c.——these form a treasure of several thousand millions, which will endure for ages! these are the monuments that will confute calumny!”
History will say that all these things were accomplished amidst perpetual wars, without having recourse to any loan, and whilst the national debt was even diminishing every day, and that nearly fifty millions of taxes had been remitted. Very large sums still remained in his private treasury; they were guaranteed to him by the treaty of Fontainebleau, as the result of the savings effected on his civil list and of his other private revenues. These sums were divided and did not go entirely into the public treasury, nor altogether into the treasury of France!!
On another occasion, the Emperor reading in an English newspaper that Lord Castlereagh had said, at a meeting in Ireland, that Napoleon had declared at St. Helena that he never would have made peace with England but to deceive her, to take her by surprise, and to destroy her; and that, if the French army was attached to the Emperor, it was because he was in the habit of giving the daughters of the richest families of his empire in marriage to his soldiers: the Emperor, moved with indignation, dictated as follows: “These calumnies uttered against a man who is so barbarously oppressed, and whose voice is not allowed to be heard in answer to them, will be disbelieved by all persons well educated and susceptible of feeling. When Napoleon was seated on the first throne in the world, then no doubt his enemies had a right to say whatever they pleased; his actions were public, and were a sufficient answer to them; at any rate, that conduct now belonged to public opinion, and history; but to utter new and base calumnies against him at the present moment is an act of the utmost meanness and cowardice, and which will not answer the end proposed. Millions of libels have been and are still published every day, but they are without effect. Sixty millions of men, of the most polished nations in the world, raise their voices to confute them, and fifty thousand English, who are now travelling on the Continent, will, on their return home, publish the truth to the inhabitants of the three kingdoms of Great Britain, who will blush at having been so grossly deceived.
“As for the Bill, by virtue of which Napoleon has been dragged to this rock, it is an act of proscription similar to those of Sylla, and still more atrocious. The Romans unrelentingly pursued Hannibal to the utmost extremities of Bithynia; and Flaminius persuaded King Prusias to assent to the death of that great man; yet at Rome Flaminius was accused of having acted thus in order to satisfy his personal hatred. It was in vain that he urged in his defence that Hannibal, yet in the vigour of life, might still become a dangerous enemy, and that his death was necessary; a thousand voices were raised, and answered that acts of injustice and ungenerous actions can never be useful to a great nation; and that, upon such pretences as that now set forth, murder, poisoning, and every species of crime might be justified! Succeeding generations reproached their ancestors with this base act. They would have paid a high price to efface the stain from their history, and, since the revival of letters among modern nations, there is not a generation that has not added its imprecations to those pronounced by Hannibal at the moment when he drank the fatal cup: he cursed Rome, who, whilst her fleets and legions covered Europe, Asia, and Africa, wreaked her vengeance against a man alone and unprotected, because she feared, or pretended to fear, him.
“The Romans, however, never violated the rights of hospitality: Sylla found an asylum in the house of Marius. Flaminius, before he proscribed Hannibal, did not receive him on board his ship and declare that he had orders to treat him favourably; the Roman fleet did not convey him to the Port of Ostia; and Hannibal, instead of placing himself under the protection of the Romans, preferred trusting his person to a King of Asia. When he was proscribed, he was not under the protection of the Roman flag; he was under the banners of a king who was an enemy of Rome.
“If ever, in the revolutions of ages, a King of England should be brought before the awful tribunal of his nation, his defenders will urge in his favour the sacred character of a king, the respect due to the throne, to all crowned heads, to the anointed of the Lord! But his accusers will have a right to answer thus: ‘One of the ancestors of this King, whom you defend, banished a man that was his guest, in time of peace; afraid to put him to death in the presence of a nation governed by positive laws and by regular and public forms, he caused his victim to be exposed on the most unhealthy point of a rock, situated in another hemisphere, in the midst of the ocean, where this guest perished, after a long agony, a prey to the climate, to want, to insults of every kind! Yet that guest was also a great Sovereign, raised to the throne on the shields of thirty-six millions of citizens. He had been master of almost every Capital of Europe; the greatest Kings composed his Court; he was generous towards all; he was during twenty years the arbiter of nations; his family was allied to every reigning family, even to that of England; he was twice the anointed of the Lord; twice consecrated by the august ceremonies of religion!!!’”
This passage is certainly very fine, for its truth, its diction, and above all, for its historical richness.
The Emperor always dictated without the least preparation. I never saw him, on any occasion, make any research respecting our history or that of any other nation; and yet no man ever quoted history more faithfully, more apropos, or more frequently. One might have supposed that he knew history by quotations only, and that these quotations occurred to him as by inspiration. And here I must be allowed to mention a fact which has often struck me, and which I never could satisfactorily account for to myself; but it is so very remarkable, and I have witnessed it so often, that I cannot pass it in silence. It is that Napoleon seems to possess a stock of information on several points, which remains within him, in reserve as it were, to burst forth with splendour on remarkable occasions, and which in his moments of carelessness appears to be not only slumbering, but almost unknown to him altogether. With respect to history, for instance, how often has it happened that he has asked me whether St. Louis reigned before or after Philip the Fair, and other questions of the same kind. But, when occasion offered, when his moment came, then he would quote without hesitation, and with the most minute details; and when I have sometimes happened to be in doubt, and to go and verify, I have always found him to be right and most scrupulously exact: I have never been able to detect him in error.