Those who look at Napoleon’s achievements, and are either dazzled or horrified by them, generally consider his power superhuman. They call it divine or diabolic, according to the feeling he inspires in them; but, in reality, the qualities he showed in his career as a statesman and lawgiver are very human ones. His stout grasp on subjects; his genius for hard work; his power of seeing everything that should be done, and doing it himself; his unparalleled audacity, explain his civil achievements.
The comprehension he had of questions of government was really the result of serious thinking. He had reflected from his first days at Brienne; and the active interest he had taken in the Revolution of 1789 had made him familiar with many social and political questions. His career in Italy, which was almost as much a diplomatic as a military career, had furnished him an experience upon which he had founded many notions. In his dreams of becoming an Oriental lawgiver he had planned a system of government of which he was to be the centre. Thus, before the 18th Brumaire made him the Dictator of France, he had his ideas of centralized government all formed, just as, before he crossed the Great Saint Bernard, he had fought, over and over, the battle of Marengo, with black- and red-headed pins stuck into a great map of Italy spread out on his study floor.
BONAPARTE, 1ER CONSUL DE LA RÉP. FRANÇ.
NAPOLEON WHILE FIRST CONSUL OF FRANCE.
Engraved in 1801 by Audouin, after a design by Bouillon.
His habit of attending to everything himself explains much of his success. No detail was too small for him, no task too menial. If a thing needed attention, no matter whose business it was, he looked after it. Reading letters once before Madame Junot, she said to him that such work must be tiresome, and advised him to give it to a secretary.
“Later, perhaps,” he said, “Now it is impossible; I must answer for all. It is not at the beginning of a return to order that I can afford to ignore a need, a demand.”
He carried out this policy literally. When he went on a journey, he looked personally after every road, bridge, public building, he passed, and his letters teemed with orders about repairs here, restorations there. He looked after individuals in the same way; ordered a pension to this one, a position to that one, even dictating how the gift should be made known so as to offend the least possible the pride of the recipient.
When it came to foreign policy, he told his diplomats how they should look, whether it should be grave or gay, whether they should discuss the opera or the political situation.
The cost of the soldiers’ shoes, the kind of box Josephine took at the opera, the style of architecture for the Madeleine, the amount of stock left on hand in the silk factories, the wording of the laws, all was his business.
He thought of the flowers to be scattered daily on the tomb of General Régnier, suggested the idea of a battle hymn to Rouget de l’Isle, told the artists what expression to give him in their portraits, what accessories to use in the battle pieces, ordered everything, verified everything. “Beside him,” said those who looked on in amazement, “the most punctilious clerk would have been a bungler.”