“Pour moi, menacé du naufrage,
Je dois, en affrontant l’orage,
Penser, vivre et mourir en Roi.”
LECTURE VI.
NAPOLEON.
The career of Napoleon Bonaparte is so near to our own times and so commonly familiar, that it is not essential to describe any of those operations which were, within the memory of some men yet living, the wonder and dread of Europe. In certain respects Napoleon was the greatest of all soldiers. He had, to be sure, the history of other great captains to profit by; he had not to invent; he had only to improve. But he did for the military art what constitutes the greatest advance in any art, he reduced it to its most simple, most perfect form; and his and Frederick’s campaigns furnished the final material from which Jomini and his followers could elucidate the science; for it has taken more than two thousand years of the written history of war to produce a written science of war.
I shall not touch upon Napoleon’s life as statesman or lawgiver, nor on his services in carrying forward the results of the Revolution toward its legitimate consequence,—the equality of all men before the law. In these rôles no more useful man appears in the history of modern times. I shall look at him simply as a soldier.
Napoleon’s career is a notable example of the necessity of coexistent intellect, character, and opportunity to produce the greatest success in war. His strength distinctly rose through half his career, and as distinctly fell during the other half. His intellectual power never changed. The plan of the Waterloo campaign was as brilliant as any which he ever conceived. His opportunity here was equal to that of 1796. But his execution was marred by weakening physique, upon which followed a decline of that decisiveness which is so indispensable to the great captain. It will, perhaps, be interesting to trace certain resemblances between the opening of his first independent campaign in 1796, and his last one in 1815, to show how force of character won him the first and the lack of it lost him the last; and to connect the two campaigns by a thread of the intervening years of growth till 1808, and of decline from that time on.
When Napoleon was appointed to the command of the Army of Italy he had for the moment a serious problem. In this army were able and more experienced officers of mature powers and full of manly strength, who looked on this all but unknown, twenty-seven years old, small, pale, untried commander-in-chief, decidedly askance. But Napoleon was not long in impressing his absolute superiority upon them all. They soon recognized the master-hand.
The army lay strung out along the coast from Loano to Savona, in a worse than bad position. The English fleet held the sea in its rear, and could make descents on any part of this long and ill-held line. Its communications lay in prolongation of the left flank, over a single bad road, subject not only to interruption by the English, but the enemy, by forcing the Col di Tenda, could absolutely cut it off from France. The troops were in woful condition. They had neither clothing nor rations. They were literally “heroes in rags.” On the further side of the Maritime Alps lay the Austrian general, Beaulieu, commanding a superior army equally strung out from Mount Blanc to Genoa. His right wing consisted of the Piedmontese army under Colli at Ceva; his centre was at Sassello; with his left he was reaching out to join hands with the English at Genoa. Kellerman faced, in the passes of the Alps, a force of twenty-five thousand Sardinians, but for the moment was out of the business.
