“Such, in fact, is the spirit in which these Memoirs would have been continued, and it will even be found that, by a kind of retroactive effect, this spirit is shown in the recitals anterior to 1809. At the epoch in which history was enacting, this spirit was slow in manifesting itself, as I have now described it. Years glided away in sadness timid and defiant, but without hate, and each time that a happy circumstance or a wise measure gave their light to them, the star of hope resumed the ascendant, and one tried to believe that the progress in the direction of evil would have an end.
“The years 1810 and 1811 are the two tranquil years of the Empire. The marriage in the one and the birth of the King of Rome in the other seemed pledges of peace and stability. The hope would have been without shadows, the security entire, if the torn veil through which the Emperor could be seen had not revealed passions and errors, seeds always productive of gratuitous mistakes and senseless attempts. It was seen that the love of excess had taken possession of him, and was carrying all before it. Besides the interminable duration of a war with England, with no possibility of gloriously conquering her, or of doing her any injury that was not damaging to us, and the continuation of a struggle in Spain difficult and unfortunate, were two trials that the pride of the Emperor could not long endure in peace. It was necessary that he should preserve his reputation at all cost, and that by some astounding successes he should cause to be forgotten those obstinate checks to his fortune. Sound judgment pointed out that the Spanish question was the one to end, I do not say by a return to justice and by a generous concession—the Bonapartes are not among those to whom such measures suggest themselves—but by force. It can readily be believed that, had the Emperor concentrated all the resources of his genius and of his Empire upon the resistance of the Peninsula, he would have conquered it. Unjust causes are not always destined to fail in this world, and the Emperor ought to have seen that, in humiliating Spain, he was preparing the occasion, so vainly sought, for striking England, since that nation rendered itself vulnerable by landing her armies on the Continent. Such an occasion made it worth while that something should be risked. Napoleon should have gone there in person, and himself entered the lists with Arthur Wellesley. What glory, on the other hand, and what fortune did he not reserve to himself and to his nation, in persistently adjourning the struggle, and in confronting them both finally on the mournful plains of Waterloo!
“But the Emperor had no relish for the Spanish question; he was tired of it. It had never yielded a pleasant or glorious moment. He half understood that he had begun it unjustly and conducted it feebly; that he had singularly misconceived its difficulty and importance. He tried to have a contempt for it, in order not to be humiliated by it; he neglected it, in order to avoid its anxieties. He had a childish repugnance, if it was nothing worse, to risking himself in a war which did not appeal to his imagination. Shall we dare say that he was not absolutely sure of doing the work well, and that the dangers of reverses turned him from an enterprise which, even well carried to its conclusions, would have gone too slowly and with too many difficulties to have increased his grandeur? A ready extemporizer, his plan seemed to be to allow everything to die of old age that displeased him, and to build up his fortune and fame in some new enterprise. These causes, joined to the logical developments of an absurd system, and to the developments natural to an uncontrollable temper, annulled all the guarantees of prudence and safety that the events of the years 1810 and 1811 seemed to have given, turned him from Spain to Russia, and brought about that campaign of 1812 which logically drew him on to his destruction.
“Two years in which hope had the ascendency of fear, and three years in which fear left very little place for hope—here we have the division of the five last years of the reign of Napoleon.
“In speaking of 1810 and 1811, my mother would have had to show how the two events, which ought to have inspired in the Emperor the spirit of conservation and of wisdom, his marriage and the birth of his son, served in the sequel only to exalt his pride. In the interval all the obstacles between him and the execution of his will are seen to be removed. For instance, since, long ago, he does not pardon Fouché for having a will of his own. Fouché showed that he desired peace. A violent scene occurs to recall that of which Talleyrand had been the object, and the Duc de Rovigo becomes Minister of Police, a choice which beguiles, without doubt, the hopes of the Emperor and the fears of the public, but which seems, however, to expand still more the area in which arbitrary power has sway. The existence of Holland and the indocible character of its King are still an obstacle, at least a limit. The King is compelled to abdicate, and Holland is declared French. Rome itself becomes the capital of a department, and the domain of St. Peter is united, as formerly Dauphiné was, to furnish a title for the heir to the Empire. The clerical order, driven with a high hand, is violated in its customs and in its traditions. An appearance of a council is attempted and broken up, and prison and exile impose silence on the Church. A councilor, submissive but modest, executes the wishes of his master, but does not glorify him; he lacks enthusiasm in his servitude: Champagny is set aside for Maret and the lion is let loose in Europe, and no voice is heard which rouses it to madness. And as, during this time, the fortune of the conqueror and the liberty of the people have found the one its limit, the other its bulwark in those immortally celebrated lines of Torres-Vedras, it becomes essential that this restless and maddened force should dash itself in pieces upon Moscow.
“This last period, so rich for the political historian in its terrible pictures, has but little value to the simple observer of the interior scenes of the government. The cloud became dense around power, and France knew as little what was done as if she had been lost by a throw of dice. Nevertheless, there was still the work of drawing the instructive picture of hearts and of minds ignorant and restless, indignant and submissive, desolated, reassured, imposed upon, unconcerned, depressed—all that at intervals, and sometimes concentrated into an hour; for despotism, which always feigns to be happy, ill prepares the masses of the people for misfortune, and believes in courage only when it has deceived it.
“It is, I think, to this description of public sentiments that my mother would have been able to consecrate the end of her Memoirs, for she knew something of what everybody saw. M. Pasquier, whom she saw every day, observed, by taste as well as by a sense of duty, the discretion prescribed to his functions. Accustomed to conversations with the class of persons whom he ruled without restraint, he was during a great length of time careful to take political notes, when all the world was free to talk politics. The Duc de Rovigo, less discreet, divulged his opinions rather than the facts; and the conversations of M. de Talleyrand, more frank and more confident, were hardly more than the disclosure of his judgments and of his predictions.”
POSTSCRIPT
