"What do they want of me?" said he to M. de Metternich.[12141] "Do they want me to dishonor myself? Never! I can die, but never will I yield an inch of territory! Your sovereigns, born to the throne, may be beaten twenty times over and yet return to their capitals: I cannot do this, because I am a parvenu soldier. My domination will not survive the day when I shall have ceased to be strong, and, consequently, feared."
In effect, his despotism in France is founded on his European omnipotence; if he does not remain master of the Continent," he must settle with the corps législatif.[12142] Rather than descend to an inferior position, rather than be a constitutional monarch, controlled by parliamentary chambers, he plays double or quits, and will risk losing everything.
"I have seen your soldiers," says Metternich to him, "they are children. When this army of boys is gone, what will you do then?"
At these words, which touch his heart, he grows pale, his features contract, and his rage overcomes him; like a wounded man who has made a false step and exposes himself, he says violently to Metternich:
"You are not a soldier You do not know the impulses of a soldier's breast! I have grown up on the battle-field, and a man like me does not give a damn for the lives of a million men!"[12143]
His imperial pipe-dreams has devoured many more. Between 1804 and 1815 he has had slaughtered 1,700,000 Frenchmen, born within the boundaries of ancient France,[12144] to which must be added, probably, 2,000,000 men born outside of these limits, and slain for him, under the title of allies, or slain by him under the title of enemies. All that the poor, enthusiastic, and credulous Gauls have gained by entrusting their public welfare to him is two invasions; all that he bequeaths to them as a reward for their devotion, after this prodigious waste of their blood and the blood of others, is a France shorn of fifteen departments acquired by the republic, deprived of Savoy, of the left bank of the Rhine and of Belgium, despoiled of the northeast angle by which it completed its boundaries, fortified its most vulnerable point, and, using the words of Vauban, "made its field square," separated from 4,000,000 new Frenchmen which it had assimilated after twenty years of life in common, and, worse still, thrown back within the frontiers of 1789, alone, diminished in the midst of its aggrandized neighbors, suspected by all Europe, and lastingly surrounded by a threatening circle of distrust and rancor.
Such is the political work of Napoleon, the work of egoism served by genius. In his European structure as in his French structure this sovereign egoism has introduced a vice of construction. This fundamental vice is manifest at the outset in the European edifice, and, at the expiration of fifteen years, it brings about a sudden downfall: in the French edifice it is equally serious but not so apparent; only at the end of half a century, or even a whole century, is it to be made clearly visible; but its gradual and slow effects will be equally pernicious and they are no less sure.
1201 ([return])
[ See my "Philosophy of Art" for texts and facts, Part II., ch. VI.—Other analogies, which are too long for development here, may be found, especially in all that concerns the imagination and love. "He was disposed to accept the marvelous, presentiments, and even certain mysterious communications between beings.... I have seen him excited by the rustling of the wind, speak enthusiastically of the roar of the sea, and sometimes inclined to believe in nocturnal apparitions; in short, leaning to certain superstitions." (Madame de Rémusat, I., 102, and III., 164.)—Meneval (III., 114) notes his "crossing himself involuntarily on the occurrence of some great danger, on the discovery of some important fact." During the consulate, in the evening, in a circle of ladies, he sometimes improvised and declaimed tragic "tales," Italian fashion, quite worthy of the story-tellers of the XVth and XVIth centuries. (Bourrienne, VI., 387, gives one of his improvisations. Cf. Madame de Rémusat, I., 102.)—As to love, his letters to Josephine during the Italian campaign form one of the best examples of Italian passion and "in most piquant contrast with the temperate and graceful elegance of his predecessor M. de Beauharnais." (Madame de Rémusat, I., 143).—His other amours, simply physical, are too difficult to deal with; I have gathered some details orally on this subject which are almost from first hands and perfectly authentic. It is sufficient to cite one text already published: "According to Josephine, he had no moral principle whatever; did he not seduce his sisters one after the other? "—"I am not a man like other men, he said of himself, "and moral laws and those of propriety do not apply to me." (Madame de Rémusat, I., 204, 206.)—Note again (II., 350) his proposals to Corvisart.—Such are everywhere the sentiments, customs, and morality of the great Italian personages of about the year 1500.]