From this affair the Emperor turned to different branches of the administration. He defended the institution of the post of Inspectors of Reviews. “It was only through them that the actual number of men present could be ascertained; through them alone had this advantage been obtained, and it was one of immense importance in the active operations of war. And these inspectors were not less useful in an administrative point of view; for, whatever trifling abuses might exist in the details, and however numerous these abuses might be, it is on a general principle that such things should be considered; and, in order to estimate fairly the utility of this institution, it should be asked what other abuses would have taken place if it had not existed? For myself,” said Napoleon, “I must say that, checking the expenditure, by trying how much the total number of troops ought to have cost according to their fixed rates of pay, I have always found the sum paid by the treasury to fall short of my estimate. The army, therefore, cost less than it ought to have cost: what result more beneficial could be required?”
The Emperor quoted the administration of the navy as having been the most regular and the most honest; it had become a master-piece. “In that,” said he, “consisted the great merit of Decrès.” The Emperor considered that France was too large to have only one minister for the administration of the war department. “It was,” he said, “a task beyond the powers of one man. Paris had been made the centre of all decisions, contracts, supplies, and organizations; whilst the correspondents of the minister had been subdivided amongst a number of persons equal to the number of regiments and corps. The contrary ought to have been the case; the correspondences should have been entered, and the resources subdivided, by raising them on the spot where they were required. I had long meditated a plan to establish in France twenty or twenty-five military districts, which would have composed so many armies. There would have been no more than that number of accountants; these would have been twenty under-ministers; it would have been necessary to find twenty honest men. The minister would have had only twenty correspondents; he would have centralised the whole and made the machine move with rapidity.
“Messieurs Gaudin and Mollien,” said the Emperor, “were of opinion that it was necessary that the receivers-general, public financiers and contractors, should have very large fortunes, that they should have it in their power to make considerable profits, and openly avow them, in such a manner as to retain a degree of consideration which they might be careful not to endanger; and a character of honour, which they might be anxious not to compromise. This could not be otherwise,” he said, “in order to obtain from them support, service, and credit, in case of need.
“Another set of men, Defermont, Lacuée, and Marbois, thought, on the contrary, that it was impossible to be too watchful, too economical, and too strict. For my own part, I was inclined to be of the opinion of the first, considering the views of the last to be narrow, and such as were applicable to a regiment, but not to an army; to the expenses of a private household, but not to the expenditure of a great empire. I called them the Puritans and the Jansenists of the profession.”
The Emperor observed that the minister of the treasury, and the minister secretary of state, were two of his institutions on which he most congratulated himself, and from which he had derived the greatest assistance. “The minister of the treasury concentrated all the resources, and controlled all the expenses of the empire. From the minister secretary of state all acts emanated. He was the minister of ministers, imparting life to all intermediate acts; the grand notary of the empire, signing and authenticating all documents. Through the first I knew, at every moment, the state of my affairs; and through the second I made known my decisions and my will in all directions and every where. So that, with my minister of the treasury and my minister secretary of state alone, and half-a-dozen clerks, I would have undertaken to govern the empire from the remotest parts of Illyria, or from the banks of the Niemen, with as much facility as in my capital.”
The Emperor could not conceive how affairs could go on with the four or five secretaries of state of our kings. “And, indeed, how did they go on?” said he. “Each imagined, executed, and controlled his own operations. They might act in direct opposition one to another; for as the kings only affixed their sign on the margin of the plans proposed, or authenticated only the rough draft of their ordinances, the secretaries of state could fill them up, or act as they pleased, without fear of any great responsibility. Add to this that the secretaries of state had the griffe[[29]], a contrivance, which they wanted to make me adopt, but which I rejected as a tool appropriated to the Rois faineans. Amongst these ministers, some might have money for which they had no employment, and others might be unable to proceed for want of a farthing. There was no common centre to combine their movements, provide for their wants, and direct the execution of their measures.”
The Emperor said that a minister secretary of state was exactly suited for kings without talents, but vain, who would want the assistance of a prime minister and not like to own it. “Had my minister secretary of state been made president of the council of state,” said he, “he would have been from that moment a real prime minister, in the fullest acceptation of the term; for he would have carried his plans to the council of state to have them digested into laws, and would have signed for the Prince. There can be no doubt that, with the manners and habits of the first race of our kings, or with princes like them, my minister secretary of state would have become in a very short time a Mayor of the Palace.”[Palace.”]
REVISION OF THE CHAPTERS ON THE ARMY OF ITALY.
22d.—The Emperor resumed his researches respecting Egypt. He gave me Strabo to look over; it was the edition which he had caused to be made. He commended the care and pains bestowed upon it, and said that it had been his intention to give us, in course of time, editions of all the works of the ancients, through the official medium of the Institute.—Before dinner the Emperor sent for me and my son, and spent at least six hours with us, reading over and recasting the chapters on the Tagliamento, Leoben, and Venice.
All is fine in these chapters on the Campaign of Italy. In that on the Tagliamento, we see how one single disposition, made on the banks of that river and hardly noticed, one of those movements which the Emperor calls the thought of the battle, must inevitably lead to the gates of Vienna.