“While watching me reëstablish the institutions and reawaken the memories of the Empire, people have repeated again and again that I wished to reconstitute the Empire itself. If this had been so the transformation would have been accomplished long ago; neither the means nor the opportunities would have been lacking.... But I have remained content with that I had. Resolved now, as heretofore, to do all in my power for France and nothing for myself, I would accept any modification of the present state of things only if forced by necessity.... If parties remain quiet, nothing shall be changed. But if they endeavor to sap the foundations of my government; if they deny the legitimacy of the result of the popular vote; if, in short, they continually put the future of the country in jeopardy, then, but only then, it might be prudent to ask the people for a new title which would irrevocably fix on my head the power with which they have already clothed me. But let us not anticipate difficulties; let us preserve the Republic. Under its banner I am anxious to inaugurate once more an epoch of reconciliation and pardon; and I call on all without distinction who will frankly coöperate with me for the public good.”
In contrast to such fair-sounding phrases Napoleon was capable of the most dishonorable tactics in order to gain his ends. Witness the episode of his tempting Bismarck with offers of an alliance against Austria at the same time that he was treating secretly with Francis Joseph for the cession of Venetia in return for Silesia. And while negotiating secretly and separately with these two sworn enemies, he pretended to be so disinterested as to suggest the submission of their quarrel to a European congress.
Browning has certainly presented a good portrait of the man as the history of his own utterances contrasted with the history of his actions proves. In trying to bridge with this apology the discrepancies between the two he has, however, attributed to Louis Napoleon a degree of self-consciousness beyond any ever evinced by him. The principle of imperialism was a conviction with him. That he desired to help the people of France and to a great extent succeeded, is true; that he combined with this desire the desire of power for himself is true; that he used unscrupulous means to gain whatever end he desired when such were necessary is true; but that he was conscious of his own despicable traits to the extent that the poet makes him conscious of them is most unlikely. Nor is it likely that he would defend himself upon any such subtle ground as that his character and temperament being the gift of God he was bound to follow out his nature in order that God’s purposes might be accomplished. It is rather an explanation of his life from the philosopher’s or psychologist’s standpoint than a self-conscious revelation. It is none the less interesting on this account, while the scene setting gives it a thoroughly human and dramatic touch.
Whatever may be said of Napoleon himself, his rule was fraught with consequences of import for the whole of Europe, not because of what he was, but because of what he was not. He was an object lesson on the fallacy of trying to govern so that all parties will be pleased by autocratically keeping each one from fully expressing itself. The result is that each grows more aware of the suppression than of the amount of freedom allowed to it, and nobody is pleased. When added to such a policy as this is the surmounting desire for power and the Machiavellian determination to attain it by any means, fair or foul, a principle of statecraft which by the middle of the century could not be practised in its most acute form without arousing the most severe criticism, his power carried within it the seeds of destruction.
It has been said that “never in the history of the world has one man undertaken a task more utterly beyond the power of mortal man than that which Louis Napoleon was pledged to carry through.” He professed to be at one and the same time the elect sovereign of the people, a son of the revolution, a champion of universal suffrage, and an adversary of the demagogues. In the first of these characters he was bound to justify his elevation by economic and social reforms, in his second character he had to destroy the last trace of political liberty. He had, in fact, assumed various utterly incompatible attitudes, and the day that the masses found themselves deceived in their expectations, and the middle classes found their interests were betrayed, reaction was inevitable.
William Ewart Gladstone
In spite of his heinous faults, however, historians have grown more and more inclined to admit that Napoleon filled for a time a necessary niche in the line of progress, just that step which Browning makes him say the genius will recognize that he fills—namely, to
“Carry the incompleteness on a stage,
Make what was crooked straight, and roughness smooth,
And weakness strong: wherein if I succeed,
It will not prove the worst achievement, sure
In the eyes at least of one man, one I look
Nowise to catch in critic company:
To-wit, the man inspired, the genius, self
Destined to come and change things thoroughly.
He, at least, finds his business simplified,
Distinguishes the done from undone, reads
Plainly what meant and did not mean this time
We live in, and I work on, and transmit
To such successor: he will operate
On good hard substance, not mere shade and shine.”
That is, at a time when Europe was seething with the idea of a new order, in which the ideal of nationality was to take the place of such decaying ideas as the divine right of kings, balance of power, and so on, Napoleon held on to these ideas just long enough to prevent a general disintegration of society. He held in his hands the balance of power until the nations began to find themselves, and in the case of Italy actually helped on the triumph of the new order.