But granting even that Napoleon's soul was not exempt from a tendency to superstition, his intellect was both too strong and too enlightened to permit such vast events to depend upon a weakness. One great inquietude possessed him; it was the idea of that same death, which he appeared so much to brave. He felt his strength decaying; and he dreaded that when he should be no more, the French empire, that sublime trophy of so many labours and victories, would fall a prey to dismemberment.
"The Russian emperor," he said, "was the only sovereign who pressed upon the summit of that colossal edifice. Replete with youth and animation, the strength of his rival was constantly augmenting, while his was already on the decline." It seemed to him that Alexander, on the banks of the Niemen, only waited the intelligence of his death, to possess himself of the sceptre of Europe, and snatch it from the hands of his feeble successor. "While all Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Prussia, and the whole of Germany, were marching under his banners, why should he delay to anticipate the danger, and consolidate the fabric of the great empire, by driving back Alexander and the Russian power, enfeebled as they would be by the loss of all Poland, beyond the Boristhenes?"
Such were his sentiments, pronounced in secret confidence; they, doubtless, comprised the true motives of that terrible war. As to his precipitation in commencing it, he was, it would seem, hurried on by the instinct of his approaching death. An acrid humour diffused through his blood, and to which he imputed his irascibility, ("but without which," added he, "battles are not to be gained,") undermined his constitution.
A profound knowledge of the organization and mysteries of the human frame would probably enable us to decide whether this concealed malady was not one of the causes of that restless activity which hurried on the course of events, and in which originated both his elevation and his fall.
This internal enemy testified its presence, more and more, by an internal pain, and by the violent spasms of the stomach which it inflicted. Even in 1806, at Warsaw, during one of its agonizing crises, Napoleon was[15] heard to exclaim, "that he carried about with him the germ of premature dissolution; and that he should die of the same malady as his father."
[15] By the count Lobau.
Short rides in hunting, even the most gentle gallop of his horse, already began to fatigue him: how then was he to support the long journeys, and the rapid and violent movements preparatory to battles? Thus it was, that while the greater part of those who surrounded him concluded him to be impelled into Russia by his vast ambition, by his restless spirit and his love of war, he in solitude, and almost unobserved, was poising the fearful responsibilities of the enterprise, and urged by necessity, he only made up his mind to it after a course of painful hesitation.
At length, on the 3d of August, 1811, at an audience in the midst of all the ambassadors of Europe, he declared himself; but the burst of indignation which was the presage of war, was an additional proof of his repugnance to commence it. It might be that the defeat which the Russians had just sustained at Routschouk had inflated his hopes; perhaps he imagined that he might, by menace, arrest the preparations of Alexander.
It was prince Kourakin whom he addressed. That ambassador having just made protestations of the pacific intentions of his master, he interrupted him: "No," exclaimed he, "your master desires war; I know, through my generals, that the Russian army is hurrying towards the Niemen! The emperor Alexander deludes, and gains all my envoys!" Then, perceiving Caulaincourt, he rapidly traversed the hall, and violently appealing to him, said: "Yes, and you too have become a Russian: you have been seduced by the emperor Alexander." The duke firmly replied, "Yes, sire; because, in this question, I consider him to be a Frenchman." Napoleon was silent; but from that moment, he treated that great dignitary coldly, without, however, absolutely repelling him: several times he even essayed, by fresh arguments, intermixed with familiar caresses, to win him over to his opinion, but ineffectually; he always found him inflexible; ready to serve him, but without approving the nature of the service.